THE REASONS FOR LOW ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF MINERAL RAW MATERIALS GRINDING PROCESSES
The reserves for cost savings are to be searched for in the field of mineral raw material processing, because the bulk of energy that is consumed through ore dressing falls at grinding operations. It is specific that a mill, as a “non balance flywheel”, consumes for rotation the energy that is virtually invariant regardless of whether particles break up or not, increasing energy consumption while the degree of particle fineness decreases. The experiments show that crushing energy and the value of disturbing force decrease as far as the size of broken up particles decreases. The mismatch between physically required and technically consumed energy level is detected. The main reasons for such mismatch are in the field of the processes of grinding media kinetic energy and potential energy transformation and the increase of initial surface under the inward raw materials size reduction. The work examines the most significant factors that determine the difference between the required and actual energy consumption during the processes of grinding, which allow explaining the reason why barrel mills have limited capacity for energy consumption decrease, and trace the ways of constructive solutions on its decrease.