Review of Recent Advances in HPGR Designs

High-pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) have increased their popularity in the minerals industry, since their first application in the 1980s for raw material preparation in the cement industry. Recent advances on the technology have been responsible for putting it in a prominent position among comminution processes, with applications that now range from tertiary crushing stages to pressing iron ore concentrates prior to pelletization. This work reviews some of the recent advances in the technology applied to the minerals industry, including efforts toward improvement on roll lifetime, understanding the effect of progressive roll surface wear on machine performance, alternative lateral confinement systems, the phenomenon of skewing and entirely novel machine designs. Such advances, besides recent insights into the equipment operation, are analyzed, whenever possible, with the assistance of advanced simulation tools, in particular, the discrete element method (DEM).