Modeling breakage of green iron ore pellets by impact
Please login to view abstract download link
Damage and breakage of green iron ore pellets in pelletizing circuit have negative implications either to the performance of the induration furnace, the productivity of the plant and/or the strength of the fired pellets[1,2]. Predicting both the extend of breakage of these pellets, as well as their retained strength is worthwhile, as it would allow analyzing the effectiveness of changes in the handling circuit and/or improvements in pellet formulation in reducing mechanical degradation. The present work proposes a mathematical model to describe breakage of single green iron ore pellets by impact that has been initially developed and fitted on the basis of pellets produced in the laboratory[]. The model accounts for impact height (energy), impact surface, impact angle and pellet size. Selected model parameters were then refitted on the basis of experiments where lots of pellets were dropped repeatedly against a steel plate. The fitted model was then validated against data from a set of experiments not used previously to developed the model. The model was able to predict with good accuracy the evolution of broken pellets, as they suffer damage from repeated impacts.
