Improved Method for Manufacture of Air Float Kaolin: A Matter of Grinding Importance 41

Improved Method for Manufacture of Air Float

Kaolin: A Matter of Grinding Importance
Paul Adler

ABSTRACT: A proprietary technology has been developed (patent pending) that has the potential of
redefining the air-float industry for kaolin with implications for other industrial minerals such as calcium
carbonate, sodium bentonite, trona (sodium carbonate), wollastonite, nephthaline syenite, talc, gypsum, and
others.

The current manufacturing process used for air
float kaolin has been the standard for
approximately 75 years. The crude clay is fed to
a flash dryer where it is dried to a final moisture
content of less than 10%. This material is then
sent to a roller mill where the remaining moisture
is driven off. The roller mill also does one other
thing; it crushes all of the material coming in.
The mineral content of the crude, other than
kaolin, is invariably silica. The silica has a
density equal to that of kaolin. When the entire
feed is crushed, a percentage of the silica is
reduced in size enough that its particle size
distribution overlaps with the particle size
distribution of kaolin. Therefore the kaolin and
silica portions cannot be separated from each
other due to the fact that the particle size
distributions and the densities are the same. This
becomes particularly troublesome in the majority
of cases where the incoming crude can contain
greater than 5% silica and, in some cases, the
percentage of silica can constitute 55-60% of the
incoming crude. What this translates to is that the
higher the silica content, the lower the final
product recovery.
The process flow of the proposed new
technology is defined in the following manner.
The raw kaolin crude is fed to a horizontal air
swept tubular dryer that mechanically fluidizes
the crude feed utilizing a horizontal shaft rotating
at high speed with paddles extending from the
surface of the horizontal shaft. This allows total
deagglomeration of the kaolin and the silica,
whether the silica content in the crude ore is 5%,
55%, or some number in between. The final
residual moisture content will be less than 1%
when it exits the dryer. The material is then fed to
a Sturtevant Superfine Classifier where the coarse
fraction is either discarded or sent for a second
classification as a means of maximizing final
product recovery from crude. The great benefits
derived from this new technology are higher
recovery rates, lower thermal energy consumption,
and, since nothing is being crushed as would have
been the case with a roller mill, grit levels in the
final product will be at unprecedented low
numbers. This new process will also allow for
classification of feed that would result in
significant recovery of kaolin that will be entirely
below 20 microns.
In the kaolin sector of the industrial minerals
world, one of the fundamental beneficiation tenets
is solids/solids separation, a minerals equivalent
of the agricultural and metaphorical fascination of
separating the wheat from the chaff.
Although principles of separation are fairly
well understood, reduction to efficient
beneficiation practice can, at times, prove to be an
elusive quest. In the case of kaolin, the most
important “other” solid that needs to be removed
is silica. This separation challenge can be
daunting, especially when one considers that
kaolin and silica have virtually the same density.
Fortunately, in almost all cases, the kaolin is much
smaller than the silica.
With regard to average particle size, the
kaolin ore can be one, two and even three or four
42  Mineral Processing Technology (MPT 2007)
orders of magnitude finer than the silica.
However, among the primary deposits, the silica
content can often be greater than the kaolin in
terms of raw percentages. Indeed, in the
Hirschau-Schnaittenbach region of Bavaria,
Germany, silica constitutes roughly 75% of the
raw crude. In St. Austell, Cornwall, England, it is
not unusual to see silica levels exceed 90%.
The high silica levels are manageable for a
number of reasons. Most products made from
these deposits utilize wet processing techniques
(water wash) where efficient silica removal is
accomplished by employing such unit operations
as water cannon, hydro cyclones, separating
screens, drag boxes, settling tanks, and classifying
centrifuges.
Therefore, with the implementation of proper
equipment, strategically combining centrifugal
force, mesh porosity and/or hydraulic pressure,
residual silica levels are reduced to levels as low
as 0.001% retained on a 325 mesh (44 microns)
screen.
The reasons wet processing techniques work
so well and are highly practical for silica removal
are:
1. Water is a simple and totally predictable
carrier medium for separating solids that
diverge significantly in density, particle size
or both.
2. The selling prices obtained for the products
made with these procedures start at about
US $75.00/tonne and range up to the many
hundreds of dollars per tonne.
The beneficiation of air float kaolin clay is a
whole different milieu. To begin with, air, as a
carrier medium for solids separation, may be
theoretically predictable, but it is limited in
practical implementation. The process for
manufacture of air float clay products was
established many decades ago. It is still in use
today, but represents a prototypical embodiment
of a methodology that is commercially well
proven, yet may not be relevant to our times.
In a typical air float plant, crude ore is
stockpiled and then blended to obtain the correct
performance properties for the product or
products to be made. The crude ore has an
inherent moisture content that ranges mainly
between 15–25%. The blended ore is then fed to
a flash dryer, where most of the inherent moisture
is removed. The material is then fed to a roller
mill, where it is further dried and ground,
presumably to deagglomerate the residual
aggregates that exit the flash dryer. The material is
then sent to an air classifier, where the overflow
discharges as finished product that is able to meet
a residual grit specification that generally ranges
between 0.25–3.0% retained on a 44 micron
screen. The classifier underflow can either be
discharged as a reject stream or partially recycled
back to the roller mill where it is further ground
and blended with the feed to the air classifier. As a
general rule, the lower the residual grit
percentage, the higher the value of the finished
product that discharges from the air classifier as
the overflow stream.
The downside for the air float beneficiation
model just outlined is substantial. The global
market for air float kaolin products is in the many
millions of tonnes annually. However, it is an
industry segment under siege. Prices per tonne are
at or below what they were twenty years ago.
Operating costs have risen over that period of
time. Over the past five years, there has been an
unprecedented spate of air float plant sell-offs and
consolidations. These transactions have been, in
several instances, from companies wishing to exit
an environment of diminishing profitability to
companies confident they could improve
operating margins.
In virtually all cases, the beneficiation model
presented above has become the inheritance of the
acquiring company—an ersatz state of the art
plant design ill suited for the present and future
demands of an industry sector where product
prices are depressed and customers are
demanding tighter quality controls and lower grit
retention on 44 microns.
There appears, at times, to be a fatalistic
acceptance of the assumption that things can’t get
better, because it is intuitively assumed that
beneficiation steps carried out while floating on
Improved Method for Manufacture of Air Float Kaolin: A Matter of Grinding Importance
air cannot get any better. Sometime, intuition can
be wrong. In this particular case, it is dead wrong.
When crude clay is dried and sent to the
roller mill, the material is intensely deagglo-
merated and simultaneously crushed. Let’s
examine the collateral damage. The roller mill
does not distinguish between minerals while
crushing. It simply crushes. Silica, which
typically has a size range between 45 microns and
200 microns, is comminuted preferentially toward
the 45-micron end. Indeed, the lower size end of
the silica particle size distribution is crushed close
to the top size end of the kaolin PSD.
Since the kaolin and silica have the same
density, the only practical way of separating the
two is by particle size differential. However, the
most efficient commercial air classifiers cannot
achieve a clean separation, given the closeness in
size and even some overlapping of the two
minerals at 44 microns, at least not until now.
There has been a breakthrough in dryer and
classifier technology. The dryer is called the Air
Swept Tubular (A.S.T.) Drying System,
manufactured by Scott Equipment Company, in
New Prague, Minnesota, U.S.A. The classifier is
called Superfine (S.F.) and is manufactured by
Sturtevant, Inc. in Hanover, Massachusetts U.S.A.
The A.S.T. dryer operates on the simple principle
of single pass co-current flow. There is no
material re-circulation. The wet crude is fed to the
dryer, where it is immediately mixed with hot air
directly from the burner. The material is fed to a
high intensity agitation zone, where it is fluidized
by paddles extending from a high speed rotating
horizontal shaft. The paddles can reach top speeds
as high as 3600 meters/minute or 216 kilometers/
hr, an impressive speed, even for the autobahn.
The fluidization accomplishes several
beneficial objectives:
1. It starts to immediately de-agglomerate the
wet crude.
2. This de-agglomeration exposes a high
surface area, facilitating efficient heat
transfer.
43
3. Maximum dryness and minimum particle
size ranges can be achieved in a very short
time.
4. The finished dry material reports to a bag
house that functions as a product collector.
The Air Swept Tubular Drying System, when
applied to the processing of air float clay,
contributes in part to a paradigm shift that is
nothing short of profound.
The dryer product will have a moisture
content of less than 1%. The kaolin portion,
which constitutes the overwhelming majority of
the particles, is extremely fine. In some cases, the
kaolin has attained a hegman value of 5+, which
indicates a top particle size of approximately
25 microns, with most of the particles below
10 microns.
The silica portion of the dryer feed, although
subjected to the high intensity, fluidized agitation
zone, does not change its particle size distribution.
There is a reason for this particular happenstance.
The energy imparted during the fluidization is
sufficient to de-agglomerate the silica from the
kaolin. It is, however, insufficient for silica
grinding. This is primarily a consequence of
mineral hardness measured on the MOH’S scale:
kaolin is 2.2, silica is 7.0.
After the dryer step, there is no need to
further reduce the kaolin particle size distribution,
nor is there any need to further reduce the kaolin
moisture content. The material goes directly to
the S.F. classifier where it is efficiently separated
at very high rates. The associated slides illustrate
an actual test where three S.F. classifiers, two in
parallel and one in series, took material from the
AST dryer at a simulated rate of 40 tonnes per
hour (2.4 tonnes of silica and 37.6 tonnes of
kaolin) and yielded a recovery rate of 35.2 tonnes
per hour. (93.6% of theoretical @ a retention of
0.2% on a 44 micron screen.) The standard
recovery rate had been 28 tonnes per hour with
screen retention ranging from a low of 0.25% to
as much as 3.0%. The projected annual savings
are substantial due to increased recovery and
higher quality. There is the added bonus of not
needing a roller mill or any other piece of
44  Mineral Processing Technology (MPT 2007)
equipment that functions in lieu of a roller mill.
By eliminating this traditional unit operational
stage, the following is accomplished:
1. No mechanical grinding takes place.
Therefore, the silica and the kaolin are at
maximum particle size distribution
differential.
2. As a result of (1), there will be increased
kaolin recovery and lower levels of silica
retention @ 44 microns.
3. The capital cost will be significantly reduced
and operating costs/recovery will be
substantially improved.
When one considers the potential cumulative
savings, higher recovery rates and cleaner
classifier separation, it is likely that operating
profits will increase and higher value products,
which have traditionally been the exclusive
markets of water washed kaolin producers, will
be in reach of the airfloat kaolin suppliers.