Acoustic Sensing of Fresh Feed Disturbances in a Locked-Cycle Laboratory AG/SAG Mill

In a large-scale operation, feed ores are introduced into the AG/SAG mill in a continuous mode at a given flow rate to replace the discharging slurry. Nonetheless, the variations in the feed characteristics, typically hardness and size distribution, could cause sudden disruption to the mill operation. This would be challenging to detect in practice, owing to the hostile environment of the mill. In this work, an acoustic sensing-based monitoring technique was utilized in a laboratory-scale AG/SAG mill locked-cycle study to keep track of fluctuations caused by feed ore heterogeneity. Analysis of the recorded mill acoustic response using statistical root mean square (RMS) and mill discharge sizes showed that the introduction of fresh feed with varying hardness and size distribution considerably altered the mill product undersize of −150 µm and acoustic emission. Overall, the acoustic sensing technique demonstrated that the AG/SAG mill stability as well as disturbances caused by different feed size fractions and hardness can be monitored using the mill acoustic response, an indication of real-time monitoring and optimisation.