Abstract
Ball mill is the widely used comminution device for the size reduction of iron ore particles, yet the underlying mechanisms of heat transfer and thermal breakage inside the mills heretofore are not deeply understood. Therefore, the Discrete element method was carried out to study the effect of operating parameters on charge temperature, and the batch grinding experiments of iron ores were conducted to verify the heating temperatures using a laboratory ball mill. Results show that increasing mill speed will result in the charge temperature increasing initially and then decreasing. The temperature fields of the charge and load behavior remain approximately the same for the different ball filling. The main findings of this study are that the heating temperature can contribute to enhancing the breakage behavior of iron ore particles, and correspondingly the optimal feed sizes for different heating temperatures are determined to be 2.48 mm, 2.63 mm, 2.78 mm, and 3.59 mm, respectively.
Introduction
Ball mill is an energy-intensive device for grinding and breaking iron ore particles, which is extensively used in mineral, cement, chemical, and other industries.1–4 In the field of mineral processing, a portion of the energy is converted into heat that will raise the milling temperature and breakage characteristics of iron ore will be changed accordingly. However, little attention has been given to the study of heat transfer and thermal breakage in ball mills, whether the breakage kinetics of material is related to the thermal behavior has not been studied. Additionally, it is difficult to measure the internal physical parameters of charge (grinding media and iron ore) temperature inside the mill because of the harsh environment itself. Therefore, to understand the mechanism of heat transfer and improve the grinding efficiency, the heat transfer model should be established and the thermal breakage experiments should be conducted in detail.
The phenomena of the heat transfer inside the rotating drum are ubiquitous ranging from food products to construction materials, particularly the mills. Unfortunately, there are few attempts on the phenomenon of temperature rise caused by charge motion in ball mills. One of the chief difficulties is to measure the distribution of charge temperature by the experimental method. Thus, a series of numerical methods have been used to investigate the heat transfer including kinetic theory, 5 continuum approaches,6–9 and Discrete Element Method (DEM).10–13 Especially, DEM simulation as an excellent method has been extensively used to simulate the behavior of granular motion and heat transfer. Chaudhuri et al. 14 applied the experimental method and DEM simulation to investigate the load behavior and heat transfer in the rotary calciner. Two materials of alumina and copper particles were analyzed that the effect of particle flow and heat transfer on calcination performance. Xie et al. 15 developed a heat transfer model to investigate the effect of rotational speed, lifter configuration, lifter number, lifter height, and lifter shape on the heat transfer coefficient. It was found that the specific heat transfer coefficient is related to the contact area and load behavior of charge, which is affected more obviously by the rotational speed and lifter configuration. Komossa et al. 16 investigated the heat transfer in indirect heated tumbling drums and found that DEM simulation and experiment shows a good agreement. Gui and Fan 17 used DEM simulation with a thermal conduction model to investigate the effect of rotational speed and wave number on heat transfer. It was found that the wavy drums raise the heat transfer process higher than that of the circular drums under lower rotational speed. Figueroa et al. 18 applied the continuum model to study the relationship between temperature and mixing patterns. The above literature mainly investigates the heat transfer behavior of high-temperature rotation body to granular material. All of these provide an insight into the heat transfer phenomenon. But the temperature rise caused by the charge motion has not been studied in ball mills.
The objective of this paper was to analyze the heat transfer phenomenon and thermal breakage characteristics. A novelty heat transfer model was established from the point of energy view that can calculate the charge temperature of thermal conduction and heat generation by charge collision. Besides, a laboratory ball mill was applied to study the effect of heating temperature on the breakage characteristics of iron ore. These results not only explore the relationship between charge temperature and operating parameters but also can apply in other particle systems that are sensitive to temperature variation.
Discrete element method
Heat transfer model
The principles of the discrete element method, also called the distinct element method, were developed by Cundall and Strack 19 in the 1970s. It is an effective method for modeling and analyzing the bulk behavior of materials. The contact forces acting on particles can be calculated by using the contact detection algorithms and the suitable contact models. Then the kinematic parameters (accelerations, velocities, and positions) can be computed based on Newton’s second laws. In this paper, a heat transfer model was established using the powerful secondary development ability of EDEM (Engineering-Discrete Element Method) software.
Heat transfer mechanisms within the granular materials consist of thermal convection, thermal radiation, and thermal conduction, as shown in Figure 1. To quantitatively describe the discrete heat transfer characteristics of charge in ball mills, this work focused on charge thermal conduction behavior and collision heat. The heat transfer by convection and radiation were ignored. 15 In this model, the mill shell temperature remains constant and no heat transfer occurs between the charge and the mill shell. The thermal-physical properties of grinding media and iron ore were considered to be constant.

The schematic of heat transfer model: (a) heat transfer mechanisms in particles and (b) schematic of heat transfer.
Heat transfer processes consist of thermal conduction and heat generation by charge collision. The thermal balance equation of particle
where
The
where
The
where
Material and method
To study the effect of mill speed and ball filling on heat transfer, the heat transfer tests were conducted in a Φ305 mm × 150 mm ball mill, which was circumferentially fitted with 12 pieces of trapezium lifters. The cross-section of the lifter had a 30° face angle, a short base width of 12 mm, and a height of 10 mm. The initial temperature of the heat transfer model was 298 K. The diameter of grinding media was 30 mm and the size of iron ore is 5–8.5 mm. Due to the irregular shapes of iron ore particles, the mesh models of iron ore particles were obtained employing three-dimensionally scanning technology, and then the iron ore geometric model was established by means of the multi-sphere method. In DEM simulation, the detailed material parameters were listed in Table 1. 4
Material parameters.
DEM results and discussions
Effect of mill speed
The mill speed is one of the vital parameters in ball mills, which is normally specified as a fraction of critical speed. It determines whether the load behavior is predominantly the cascading regime, the cataracting regime or the centrifuging regime. In general, the industrial ball mills rotational speed operates at 70%~80% of critical speed.
22
To understand the interrelation between mill speed and heat transfer, the effect of mill speed on charge temperature for ball filling of

The evolution of charge temperature at different mill speeds (
Effect of ball filling
The ball filling is conventionally expressed as the fraction of the mill volume filled by the grinding media at rest. It determines the charge load behavior and milling efficiency, which has been widely studied.
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Unfortunately, there is no related research on the effect of ball filling on the heat transfer. Figure 3 shows the effect of ball filling on charge temperature for mill speed of

The evolution of charge temperature at different ball fillings (
Thermal breakage experiments
The above indicates that the operating parameters have an influence on the mill temperatures. Unfortunately, there are few attempts to investigate the effects of heating temperature on the particle breakage behavior. Hence, thermal breakage experiments aim to investigate particle breakage behavior in detail.
Theory analysis
Previous comminution theories were based on the empirical relationships between the input energy and reduction ratios. However, these theories neglected the breakage kinetics and other sub-processes in ball mills. To improve the comminution efficiency, the breakage kinetic approaches in the mills have been developed as the applicable models, that is, Population Balance Model (PBM), which was widely used to describe the breakage kinetics. This model can be described by the selection function (
where
The selection function of a given material commonly follows a first-order kinetic process. 25 For a mono-size particle, the particle breakage rate can be described by:
Then, equation (5) integrates to
However, some batch grinding experiments do not follow the first-order law. Austin et al. 25 proposed a non-first-order model:
where
Where
The mean value of the selection function is expressed as follows:
The variation of the specific rate of breakage,
where α,
The cumulative breakage function
where
To determine
where
For a normalized
where the parameters
Test condition
The batch grinding tests were performed in a laboratory-scale ball mill (Figure 4). The experimental parameters were listed in Table 2. This mill was driven by a 3.7 kW variable frequency motor and fitted with 12 pieces of trapezium lifters, which was in accordance with the DEM simulation. 10 kg of steel balls and 1.56 kg of iron ores were used for the laboratory-scale ball mill. The iron ore samples were obtained from Xuzhou. Five kinds of mono-size particles, that is, −0.85+0.6 mm, −3.35+2.36 mm, −6.7+4.75 mm, and −13.2+9.5 mm, were selected for the batch grinding tests. To investigate the effect of heating temperature on iron ore particles, four kinds of mono-sized iron ore particles were heated and then cooled before the test. The test duration of each batch grinding test was 0.5, 1, and 2 min, respectively. Finally, a vibrating screen was used to sieve for 20 min to determine the particle size distributions.

Laboratory ball mill.
Test conditions.
Determination of the specific rate of breakage
Figure 5 shows the variation of the heating temperature for mono-sized particles using the non-first order plots. The results indicate that the mass variations of iron ore particles follow the non-first order grinding kinetics with correlation coefficients varying between 0.9981 and 0.9999. Then, the

Non-first-order plots for different feed sizes: (a) −0.85 + 0.6 mm, (b) −3.35 + 2.36 mm, (c) −6.7 + 4.75 mm, and (d) −13.2 + 9.5 mm.
Figure 6 shows the variation of

Variation of specific rate of breakage with particle size.
Determination of the cumulative breakage function
The cumulative breakage function

Cumulative breakage function for different feed sizes: (a) −0.85 + 0.6 mm, (b) −3.35 + 2.36 mm, (c) −6.7 + 4.75 mm, and (d) −13.2 + 9.5 mm.
Breakage distribution parameters.
As shown in Figure 7, it can be seen that the breakage distribution characteristics for all feed sizes are fitted well. The cumulative breakage function for different feed sizes is independent on the heating temperature, while the breakage distribution parameter listed in Table 3 is sensitive to the feed size. Given the definition, the value of
Conclusions
A heat transfer model is established to study the heat transfer behavior using the DEM method in ball mills. The results show that the temperature fields for different mill speeds have a great temperature difference. Increasing mill speed will results in the charge temperature increasing firstly and then decreasing. Additionally, all the temperature fields of the charge and load behavior remain almost unchanged significantly for different ball fillings.
The breakage of five mono-sized iron ore particles follow the non-first-order. The
The heating temperature enhances the breakage behavior of iron ore and the optimal feed sizes for different heating temperatures are 2.48 mm, 2.63 mm, 2.78 mm and 3.59 mm, respectively.
Footnotes
Handling Editor: James Baldwin
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (Grant No. 19KJB440004) and the Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Suzhou University (Grant No. 2020BS004).
