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Mineral Drying

Common & Best Practice A Short Compilation


Jarrod Hart June 2013

Why use water in the first place?


Its simple: Many mineral processes work better wet:
Grinding, blending, size classification Beneficiation by:

Water may also aid in final application:


Paper filling/coating colours Paints & Coatings Ceramic slips

Flotation, selective flocculation, magnets Leaching/acid washing/electroseparation Density/shape (jigs riffles spirals)
Chemical treatments

Surface treatments Bleaching


Transport

gravity flow, piping and pumping

Water can manipulate product form:


Granulation (pelletisation, extrusion) Densification

However
Water has an extraordinarily high latent heat of

vaporization
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So Many Types! Which one????


The Basics Drying may be multiple steps:
Dewatering Thermal Drying Pulverisation

Note: Some equipment combines these processes

Dewatering is usually a solid-liquid separation process, with two major mechanisms


Sedimentation (density difference) Filtration (essentially a size difference)

Drying is usually done by vaporizing the liquid


Direct (mix the material with hot gases) Indirect (radiate or place material in heated vessels)

Other methods include


Vacuum (aids vaporization) Freeze drying (freeze + sublimation) Water displacement (e.g. with solvents)

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Dewatering Methods 1: Sedimentation Based

Concept A separation process based on density difference Calculations rely on Stokes Law

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Dewatering Methods 2: Filtration


Concept Extract water from fluid through a membrane that holds the solids back All concepts play with the compromise between pressure drop (flow vs effort) and fineness of exclusion Mechanical pressure may also be used to compress resulting cake removing more fluid

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Major Types of Filter

Batch Filters Plate and frame filter Horizontal pressure filter Candle/leaf filters (beer) Tube press Continuous Filters Drum/disc filter Belt press

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Major Types of Dryer


Rotary Dryers (direct or sometime indirect) Curtain/belt/band/moving tray dryers Fluid Bed Dryers Spray Dryers and of course ovens!

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Rotary Driers

Pros:
Versatile

Direct fired

Cons:
High Capex and footprint May need a scrubber

Indirect fired

Lifter bars common

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Belt Dryers

Material placed on an air permeable belt which passes through oven

May make multiple passes as below:

Pros
Suited to delicate materials

Cons
Need to distribute carefully on belt No agitation so material drying uneven Poor efficiency for self-insulating materials

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Fluidised Bed Dryers

Upward air movement suspends and agitates bed of material

Pros:
Fair efficiency Fair footprint Fair capex

Cons:
Not suited to all minerals Material must be granular not dusty May require backmixing of dry

product with wet feed

Note: Its common to add cool air at the end, using up all the embedded heat for evaporation theres no added value in having a hot product! See

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Inside a Fluid Bed Dryer

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Spray Dryers

Slurry atomised into hot gas environment, then recovered with cyclone/baghouse

Pros:
Slurry to powder in

just one step Product has good flow and can have good density

Cons:
High energy requirement

unsuited to low solids slurry

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Flash Dryers

Basics: cake/lump dropped into fast moving hot gas current, then recovered with cyclone/baghouse May be with or without mechanical agitation
Eg. Cell mill or Scott AST

Many, many variations available!


Spin flash Pulse (hybrid spray dryer/flash dryer)

Pros:
Versatile Wide range of product forms and moisture levels Fair capex Fair efficiency

Cons:
Low density products
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Selection Process

Methods vary in how water is heated Choice depends on varying importance of:
Starting and ending moisture levels Form and density of feed and product Capital cost Energy efficiency Footprint Mineral physical strength and heat sensitivity Mineral abrasivity

Hybrids and combos also possible


Spin flash Spray-bed

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Dryer Selection Guide

Source: APV Dryer Handbook


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Dryer Performance

Q: how do you know if your dryer is working? A: Product is dry! Q: I mean efficiently? A: Benchmarking!

Benchmarking
Dryers come in so many shapes and sizes, how do we compare? Seek the common features:

Removing water (want this high) Using energy (want this low)
Hence a good measure is the ratio! kWh/kg water removed is a good benchmark

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Specific Energy Use

We often measure something like MMBTU per tonne of product


Great for comparing two dryers with the same drying duty However, no use if anything else changes Starting moisture, ending moisture, mineral type & mineral PSD Therefore we prefer energy per unit of water removed Specific energy use is often in btu/lb, kJ/kg, kWh/t or similar 1 Btu/lb = 2.326 kJ/kg kWH = 3,415 Btu

Confounding factors
Some minerals bind the water so

temps well over 200C may be required to obtain dryness Moisture content is deceptive
To dry from a 10% solids slurry means removing 9mt of water per mt of dry product Variations multiply if your crude drops from 55% solids to 45% solids, drying requirement increases by 50%!

A key value is the heat of vaporization of water


Defines the limit of drying efficiency ~970 Btu/lb or ~2257 kJ/kg at 100C ~1050 Btu/lb or ~2444 kJ/kg at 25C

Alas dryers are usually far off the ideal


Imerys expects 1500Btu/lb or ideally towards 1300Btu/lb, above 2,000 is bad. Some losses are systemic, but many are the result of poor practice.

Some Efficiency Benchmarks Maytag tumble dryer: 1,720Btu/lb Competitor 2,240Btu/lb source Typical spray drier 1,500 Btu/lb Common range for older equipment is 1,600-2,200 Btu/lb water

This number is a good tool to check for issues and benchmark for comparison with other machines and facilities!
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Energy Efficiency In Drying: A Useful Trick

And we know that: energy in = energy out

We want to: separate mineral from water


The best ways are mechanical (filtration, centrifugation, etc) but in a dryer we do it by vaporizing the

water It takes a certain amount of energy to make water turn to steam - everything else is waste!!

Thus the perfect dryer would not waste energy on any other task
Heating the mineral, heating the gases, heating the equipment

Or even heating the water vapor produced

Yet the mass balance tells us these are the only possible places for our energy to go. This means dryer efficiency can be easily monitored using the temperature of the output streams!
Try to minimize these flows and their temperatures (they are energy flows or money flows) The enthalpy (contained energy) of these streams is the product of their mass, temperature

difference and heat capacity.


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Energy Efficiency In Drying: Towards the Ideal Dryer

The ideal dryer would vaporize water at room temperature


Solar drying! Highly efficient. Highly slow.

The ideal dryer would discharge cold minerals, cold gases and even cold (liquid) water
Hence the after-cooling on fluid bed dryers Hence the heat exchangers common on dryers

Heat exchangers may look like they are heating feed but another way to see it is they are cooling the product to avoid energy escaping the system Some heat exchangers actually re-condense the steam thus the output is not only colder but lower in energy this is the trick used in condensing boilers.

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Energy Efficiency In Drying: Towards the Ideal Dryer

Unavoidable heat loss Alas we cannot have all the outputs of a dryer at room temp! A dryer is a bit like a heat exchanger: We need a temperature difference to act as a driving force
Smaller temp differences mean slower evaporation Slower evaporation means more residence time is required More residence time means a bigger dryer bigger = more efficient But bigger means more expensive
But we can learn from heat exchanger best practice:

Dryers can be designed to be counter or co-current


Counter-current can transfer more of the energy Con-current can be smaller

But neither is perfect


Also: sometimes we cannot tolerate condensation

this may mean we need a hot exhaust and/or hot baghouses This hot exhaust is money down the drain

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Consider Recirculation

If your system uses large volumes of gases and the output is not saturated, consider a recirculating setup
Bleed off air at controlled humidity Lowers volumes of hot gas released

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Common problems

By far most common problem:


Poor or uneven exposure of mineral to dry air Poor distribution on belt or within fluidised bed No fluidisation Blocked vents / dirty trays & belts Symptoms Instability Hot gas discharge (know long term trends & compare temp with peers)

Dust
Overdrying or uneven drying

Instability
Swing between too dry and too wet Examine process control Integral and derivative control needs to consider reaction time of system Process reaction time (lag) needs to be reduced Stabilize inputs

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Common Ancillary Equipment

Damp and wet minerals generally flow poorly


Often require carefully designed feed

conveyance systems May require product backmix to ensure suitable flow behavior through dryer Wet or damp minerals susceptible to biological attack storage should be minimized

Most equipment mixes minerals with gases so re-separation is required


Cyclones/Baghouses Permitting and environmental constraints may apply

Some dryers produce lumpy product, some customers require no lumps, so even if product is fine, may still need fresh pulverization

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Focus: Drying for Dispersibility

Some drying methods lead to the formation of grit/small lumps


Some dryers need to be followed by strong pulverisation, Some customers need to mill the slurry they make

Some minerals, such as bentonites or nano-sized pccs cannot be re-dispersed to original PSD

What to do?

Best practices include:


Avoid high heat Avoid compressing damp mineral too hard Avoid meniscus effects

Dynamic vs static drying Freeze drying or supercritical drying are the ultimate
Ensure you are drying from clean water

Minimise dispersants, salts, etc.

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Drying: Summary

Most efficient as a multistep process


Dewater as much as possible Minimise temperatures of outputs

Advice:
Monitor specific energy use Per tonne product Per tonne water removed Do an energy balance Experiment! But only if you measure the effects! Talk to others with similar equipment Get their data Look at their outlet temperatures, gas flow rates ideally compare all energy flows Consider heat recovery Heat exchangers Condensers Finally: get help! Talk to us: Jarrod Hart (energy balances), Kevin Jones (operational excellence), Brian Burns (automation) Talk to other experts such as Pascal Bizarro (thermal processes) Or even better: be an expert for others. Let people know your skills via your Galaxy profile

Dryer choice depends on


Form and density of feed and product Starting and ending moisture levels Capital cost Energy efficiency Footprint Gentleness

Common Issues
Poor contact of heat with moisture Lost heat due to poor operation Instability

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