The invention relates to a method for grinding mill material according to claim 1 and to a roller mill according to claim 11.
The invention is particularly provided for a finest grinding of relatively hard and dry materials, for example cement clinker and granulated blast furnace slag but also cement raw materials and ores as well as for relatively large roller mills.
Known vertical roller mills, also referred to as roller pan mills, of the LOESCHE type for grinding cement clinker and granulated blast furnace slag which can reach product rates of more than 300 t/h have two or three force-impacted grinding rollers and assigned smoothing rollers for the deaeration of the grinding bed. Grinding rollers and smoothing rollers roll on a grinding track of a rotating grinding pan or a grinding bed formed thereon, whereby the grinding pan can have a diameter of over 4 m to nearly 7 m. The arrangement of smoothing or pre-compaction rollers, also referred to as service rollers, before each grinding roller serves to avoid vibrations in an air-swept vertical roller mill and to ensure the guaranteed throughput (EP 0 406 644 B1, DE 42 02 784 C2).
It is known that mill vibrations can limit the throughput and the fineness due to the materials if there are no other external performance limitations such as for example too small filters, fans or drives of the grinding plant. Particularly in the case of very fine and dry products only an insufficiently high grinding force can be incorporated into the grinding bed due to the mill vibrations even if the mill would allow considerably larger through-puts having regard to strength of the components and design of the hydraulic and mill drive.
The reason for the mill vibrations is obviously a combination of grinding bed properties such as fineness, moisture, bulk density, grain-size distribution, particle shape, internal friction coefficients and hardness, in conjunction with the grinding component geometry such as height of retention rim, roller diameter and roller width as well as mill settings, in particular mass flow, inner circulation, contact pressing (grinding force) and grinding speed (grinding pan rotation speed).
The causal interconnection of the influencing variables is an essential reason for the difficulties in the prediction and fight against the mill vibrations which arise mainly at the performance limit of the mill so that the possibilities for vibration-reducing mill settings are limited.
It is known, particularly in the grinding of dry grinding material, to carry out a water injection in order to optimise the grinding bed and to achieve a reduction in the mill vibrations. Water is thereby sprayed onto the grinding bed (DE 198 06 895 A1) through horizontal lances which are provided with nozzles and are respectively arranged before the grinding rollers. The water has a positive effect upon the internal friction in the grinding bed during the incorporation below the grinding rollers, so that the mill vibrations can be effectively prevented and the throughput of the mill increased. However, the use of water requires evaporation within the mill in order to keep residual moisture low in the finished product. The advantages of the water injection regarding reduced vibrations are cancelled out by the greatly increased furnace thermal capacity for drying. In case of cement mills the use of the water injection also leads to an impairment in the product properties, in particular the strength. In addition water is not available in many areas of the earth in the sufficient quantities or the use of water is even prohibited by law.
It is known that mill vibrations and over-grinding of the supplied material to be ground are directly correlated with each other. In case of roller pan mills the material which is generally supplied centrally must be accumulated contrary to the centrifugal force acting on the grinding pan edge in order to be drawn in by the individual grinding rollers and ground in a grinding zone between the grinding rollers and a grinding track of the grinding pan. In case of roller pan mills of the LOESCHE type the accumulation or retention of the mill material to be ground is achieved on a planar horizontal grinding track by means of a variably adjustable retention rim of a predetermined height and shaping. Without a retention rim on the periphery of the rotating grinding pan the grinding material would leave the grinding pan unhindered and a sufficiently thick grinding bed could not be formed between the grinding rollers and the grinding pan or the grinding track. However, the accumulation of material to be ground, necessary for the mill throughput, simultaneously prevents that the ground material can leave the grinding pan. Completely ground material thus gets once again under a grinding roller and over-grinding takes place which leads to a higher specific energy requirement of the roller mill. As the retention rim required in horizontal planar grinding pans or grinding tracks, leads through its height and shaping to a higher grinding bed and to a longer dwell time of the grinding material on the grinding pan, there are over-grinding procedures. The higher grinding bed causes a spring effect through its higher elasticity which has a negative influence upon the efficiency of the grinding and further increases the tendency towards vibrations in large mills due to the grinding material which is all in all finer on the grinding pan.
It is an object of the present invention to create a method for grinding mill material in a roller mill and a roller mill or roller pan mill with which an over-grinding of the grinding material to be ground and mill vibrations can be extensively prevented and at the same time the specific energy requirement can be reduced.
According to the method the object is achieved through the features of claim 1 and according to the device through the features of claim 11. Useful and advantageous embodiments are described in the sub-claims and in the description of the figures.
A core idea of the invention can be seen in that after each grinding roller the mill material ground to fine material is removed as completely as possible and over-grinding is therefore prevented. As the fine material is removed from the grinding bed and grinding pan or grinding track after each grinding roller and fed to a rising conveying air flow, the grinding bed is modified in a targeted way regarding the grain size distribution. Coarsening of the grinding bed takes place and over-grinding can be eliminated or considerably reduced with the consequence that a considerable increase in the throughput of the roller mill can be achieved.
In the inventive method for grinding mill material in a roller mill, wherein mill material to be ground is fed to a rotating grinding pan provided with a retention rim and ground with the aid of stationary grinding rollers, which roll in a force-impacted manner on a grinding bed formed by the supplied mill material, in a grinding zone between the grinding roller and the grinding pan or grinding track, according to the invention after each grinding roller an air jet with a definable impulse is directed from a fine material nozzle from above onto a fine material concentration zone. The fine material concentration zone is formed directly after the grinding zone of each grinding roller and is extensively free from supplied mill material to be ground. This is fed due to the rotation of the grinding pan on spiral tracks to the grinding rollers but thereby deflected by the face-sides of the grinding rollers, in the “shadow” of which a fine material region can initially form with a fine material concentration zone.
The fine material concentration zone and the area-wise larger fine material region are formed in the vicinity of a retention rim directly after the discharge from a grinding roller and thus directly adjacent to the grinding zone of each grinding roller. As the fine material is blown out and upwards of the fine material concentration zone with the aid of at least one air jet of a fine material nozzle it reaches a rising conveying air flow which is fed through a louvre ring arranged between the grinding pan and the mill housing for pneumatic conveyance of the fine material and feeding to a classification process of the mill.
An essential feature is the orientation of the air jet or the fine material nozzle onto the formed fine material concentration zone directly after the grinding zone of each grinding roller and on the retention rim region so that the fine material is blown outwards and upwards before mixing with the freshly supplied mill material takes place and over-grinding is carried out by the next grinding roller. The fine material is blown out essentially from a relatively small triangle, seen in top view, directly behind the grinding zone of each grinding roller and bordered by the retention rim.
Impacting the ground material with air after each grinding roller with the aid of a nozzle-like device is known from DE 33 11 433 A1. However, the ground mill material is thereby shot with air from a nozzle opening of a hollow scraper which is arranged at a small distance above and transversely to the grinding track in order to separate the ground mill material broken up by the scraper and the fine material particles from the coarse material in order that these can be taken along by the conveying air flow from the louvre ring. The known method is directed to a classification of the ground mill material over the whole width of the grinding track after each grinding roller, whereby the coarse fraction is to once again fall completely back to the grinding table and be ground again. Additionally, the powerful shot of air against a layer of the ground material takes place from below after the grinding material layer has been raised by the scraper. Through the shot of air from below and a first classification of the grinding material over the whole width of the grinding table for removal of sufficiently reduced fine material from the grinding table a lower energy requirement is to be achieved for the grinding process and a reduced pressure drop in the conveying air.
In contrast to this known shot of air, in the inventive method a fine material nozzle is directed from above onto a fine material concentration zone which is extensively free of freshly fed material to be ground.
Through trials on a laboratory roller mill it has been ascertained that when using fine material nozzles according to the invention the specific work requirement can be considerably reduced. A reduction in the specific work requirement of approximately 20% with a nozzle pre-pressure of 1 bar was ascertained in comparative trials. The tests have shown in principle that with the aid of the fine material nozzles and air jets directed in a defined way, in particular from above, fine material can be blown out and over-grinding and mill vibrations can thereby be prevented or considerably reduced.
By blowing the fine material locally out of a fine material concentration zone directly behind each grinding roller a reduction in the mill vibrations and simultaneously a reduction in the specific work requirement on the grinding pan by approximately 20% can be guaranteed without any other intervention being necessary in the construction and process technology of the mill.
It is advantageous that using the inventive fine material nozzles the height of the retention rim on the grinding pan periphery and the specific energy requirement can be decoupled in process terms. Higher retention rims can now be used for the purpose of increasing the throughput without disadvantages for the energy requirement on the grinding pan.
A further advantage consists in that the mill material coarsened through the removal of the fine material can be ground without increasing vibrations with a higher working pressure so that the milling progress increases. The inner circulation thereby reduces and the differential pressure decreases so that the throughput of the roller mill can also be increased in this way.
The air jets from the fine material nozzles are advantageously set regarding mass flow and speed corresponding to the respective requirements. Due to the adjustability the grinding bed can be locally modified in a targeted way and the whole grinding process can be positively influenced.
The adjustability of the fine material nozzles and outgoing air jets can take place with respect to an inclination angle and a blow-out angle so that optimisation of the fine material blow-out and thus of the grinding bed can be achieved. Inclination angles and blow-out angles are defined by the fine material concentration zone and the outlet region of the fine material nozzles and are explained further in connection with the description of the drawings. The air jets from the fine material nozzles can usefully be set and changed regarding the mass flow and speed, wherein the speed can have a value in the range of between 10 m/s and the sonic velocity of the gas used, whereby specially formed nozzles can be used for this (Laval nozzles).
It lies within the scope of the invention to not only feed compressed air via a compressed air line outside of the roller mill to the fine material nozzles but instead also to direct other gases or also vapour via the fine material nozzles onto the fine material concentration zones of the individual grinding rollers and to blow the fine material outwards and upwards.
In a corresponding construction of the fine material nozzles the air, gas or vapour jets can be supplied with a temperature which has a value in the range of between −50° C. and 800° C. Gases at low temperatures can be used for example in order to artificially embrittle materials which are ductile at room temperature and vapours of higher temperatures can be suited to local conditioning of ground material for subsequent processes in a targeted way.
An inventive roller mill which is constructed in a per se known way as an air-swept roller mill or roller pan mill and comprises a rotating grinding pan with a virtually horizontal grinding track and a retention rim on the grinding pan edge is provided with fine material nozzles according to the invention. The fine material nozzles are arranged in such a way that an air jet is respectively directed from above onto a fine material concentration zone directly after each grinding roller and on an adjacent retention rim region and blows the fine material accumulated here upwards and feeds it to the rising conveying air flow.
Through the inventively directed fine material nozzles onto a defined relatively small region directly after a grinding roller and on a retention rim region the fine material is blown upwards before fresh grinding material deflected from the face side of the rollers can mix with the fine material or can lie on top of this fine material.
It is useful to design the fine material nozzles which are arranged behind each grinding roller to be angle adjustable in order that the fine material leaving the roller gap between a grinding roller and the grinding pan can be swirled up and blown upwards through the respectively adjustable air jet. The whole of the fine material or at least large portions of the fine material produced can then be supplied from the conveying air leaving a louvre ring with relatively high speed and can be pneumatically transported upwards to a classifier.
It is advantageous that the fine material nozzles are respectively directed onto the fine material concentration zone, in which the majority of the fine material arising during the grinding is collected or accumulated through the retention rim. It is thereby possible in an extraordinarily efficient manner to remove the fine material and at the same time achieve an optimisation of the grinding bed for the purpose of preventing mill vibrations.
It has been ascertained through trials that it is useful to arrange the fine material nozzles with at least one nozzle opening for an outgoing air jet at a defined distance from the reducing zone of each grinding roller. The distance can have a value in the range of from 200 to 1200 mm and is essentially dependent upon the form of the fine material nozzles.
If the fine material nozzles comprise an outlet region with at least one nozzle opening for the outgoing air jet and a feed region which extends from the mill housing radially via the grinding track and with a distance above the grinding bed or a fine material region and/or the fine material concentration zone, the outlet region with the nozzle opening can be directed downwards and outwards in the direction of the retention rim region and onto the fine material concentration zone.
It has been found in laboratory tests with a laboratory mill that air with a pre-pressure (primary pressure) in the nozzle ring line outside of the mill housing of approximately 0.5 bar to approximately 1.5 bar, in particular approximately 1 bar, can be supplied. In large plants the volume flows are higher and the pressures lower.
The fine material nozzles can have in principle any form and be designed for example as round jet nozzles or flat nozzles. In addition they can be designed with one or multiple jets and the use of a plurality of nozzles with the same or different angular adjustment is also possible.
An alternative air supply to the individual fine material nozzles comprises a line which leads for example radially into the centre of the roller mill for the whole air flow provided for the fine material nozzles. In the centre of the roller mill, usefully within an oversize material cone, a distribution device can be arranged, from which even air flows or gas flows or flows of another medium can be distributed via lines, for example branch lines, to the individual fine material nozzles.
Due to the central arrangement of the distribution device a flow enhancing line arrangement to the fine material nozzles in rotationally symmetrical form is possible.
It is particularly advantageous that a roller mill provided with the inventive fine material nozzles can be used for difficult to grind mill materials or mill materials to be ground very finely, wherein due to the desired fineness a high retention rim must be used. An inventive roller mill is preferably used for the grinding of cement clinker, granulated blast furnace slag and also for very hard cement raw materials and ores.
Besides the advantages already described, it is achieved through the inventive orientation of the fine material nozzles that only fine material is swirled up and blown out. The coarse particles or coarser fractions are not captured by the fine material nozzles as the fine material nozzles are directed onto a defined region and swirl up the fine material present in a high concentration.
Through the inventive orientation of the fine material nozzles a transport of the fine material takes place outwardly into the rising air flow from the louvre ring so that an effective transport to the classifier is guaranteed.
A further advantage consists in that the fine material nozzles are not subject in principle to any wear as there is no direct contact with the mill material on the grinding pan.
An essential advantage lies in the decoupling in process technology of the retention rim height and energy requirement, whereby the retention rim can also be increased without disadvantageous consequences for vibrations and energy requirements in the interests of a maximum throughput. It is thus possible to use smaller mills for the same mill throughputs, whereby this is in turn associated with lower investment and operating costs.
The invention is explained in further detail below by reference to a drawing, in which the following are shown in a greatly schematised illustration:
In this example four hydraulically pressed grinding rollers 4 run on the grinding pan 2 with the surrounding and co-rotating retention rim 3, whereby only two grinding rollers 4 are shown in
Through the retention rim 3 the supplied and ground mill material 5 is accumulated and held on the grinding pan 2. Sufficiently reduced fine material 15 lies directly after the grinding zone 7 (
A fine material nozzle 10 with an outlet region 20 and a nozzle opening 22 for an air jet 11 is respectively directed onto the fine material concentration zone 12 in which the directly ground fine material is accumulated (see also
The fine material 15 in the fine material concentration zone 12 and also in the fine material region 14 is virtually free of fresh grinding material, as this—particularly as follows from FIG. 1—is deflected from the face side 18 of the assigned grinding roller 4 and is only then drawn in by the following grinding roller 4.
The direction of rotation of the grinding rollers 4 rolling on the grinding pan 2 or respectively the grinding bed 6 is indicated by the arrow B. Arrow A shows the direction of rotation of the grinding pan 2.
The nozzle opening 22 of the fine material nozzle 10 is formed circularly in the embodiments. The outlet region 20 is formed according to
In
The whole air flow 30 provided for the fine material nozzles 10 is fed via a feed line 26 which can be orientated for example radially in the direction towards the centre of the mill, to a distribution device 27 and via branch lines 28 which advantageously extend evenly from the distribution device 27, to the individual fine material nozzles 10.
It is pointed out that the elements of the air supply in
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/EP2010/007706 | 12/16/2010 | WO | 00 | 8/1/2013 |