Design for separating performance of grinding media in bead mill by DEM simulation

Smaller grinding media beads in bead mills are well known for determining high grinding performances. However, the post-grinding separation between beads and slurry might be a difficult task, especially in bead mills with centrifugal bead separation, where the separating performances are strongly affected by the shape of the rotors in the mill. Aiming to study and design grinding operations, the discrete element method (DEM) is a powerful tool which allows for predicting the grinding and separating performances in the mill. In this study, by using DEM simulations, we examined the slurry-beads separation in a bead mill and we investigated the influence of the rotor shape on the separating performances. We compared the performances of two kinds of rotors, one with conventional shape and one with outside projections for the activation of the media beads. Results of DEM simulation were in good agreement with experimental results.