Utilization of grinding aids in dry horizontal stirred milling

• Effects of different grinding aids on dry stirred mill performance were investigated.
• Specific energy consumption, size distribution, surface area and cement quality parameters were considered in evaluations.
• Test with TIPA based aid had the lowest energy consumption compared to glycol and TEA based aids.
• TIPA based aid had the highest improvement in 28 days compressive strength.
• TIPA aid was found to be the most effective one among the aids tested.

Within the context of the study 3 types of grinding aids, which were glycol-based, TEA-based and TIPA-based, were tested in dry stirred milling of cement. The objective was to evaluate their influences on mill performance and cement quality then find out the most proper type with its dosage rate. The results showed that use of grinding aid improved the grinding performance of the mill as finer size distribution than that of no grinding aid was obtained at the same milling condition. The tests at the same dosage rate indicated that, TIPA-based grinding aid had the lowest specific energy utilization with 16.8 kWh/t compared to that of glycol (17.9 kWh/t ) and TEA-based aids (19.75 kWh/t) respectively. The product size distributions showed that TIPA-based aid had finer product with d50 of 10.54 μm compared to other types. Cement quality tests, which were assessed by measuring the compressive strength, implied that TIPA had the highest improvement in 28-days strength with 18.8% at 700 g/t where 8.9% and 5.6% increase were achieved for glycol-based and TEA-based grinding aids respectively. As a conclusion of the study, TIPA based grinding aid was found to be the most effective one for dry stirred mill application of cement due to its provided operational benefits and quality improvements.

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