VANCOUVER 2015

COMMON OPERATIONAL ISSUES ON SAG MILL CIRCUITS

*Malcolm S. Powell1, Marko M. Hilden1 and Aubrey N. Mainza2,
1

Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre Sustainable Minerals Institute

University of Queensland
40 Isles Road
Indooroopilly, Australia QLD 4068
(*Corresponding author: malcolm.powell@uq.edu.au)
2

Centre for Minerals Research,

University of Cape Town
South Africa

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COMMON OPERATIONAL ISSUES ON SAG MILL CIRCUITS

ABSTRACT
We present a compilation of generic operational issues, common across continents and companies,
encountered on SAG mill circuits worldwide when conducting reviews, optimisation studies and plant
surveys. SAG mills are deceptively complex in their physics of operation confounding people and control
systems alike. The paper addresses operation based on insights rather than models or rules. Twenty issues
are listed, the symptoms described, and some theoretical background provided upon which the routes to
tackle these issues are based. It is hoped that this feedback of observations and causes will provide a useful
reference for applied SAG mill operation in the industry.
KEYWORDS
SAG mill operation, process control, optimization
INTRODUCTION
Due to their capacity and favourable capital and operating costs, SAG mills are a favoured
grinding device for most new milling plants. The RoM feed rocks form an intrinsic (and free) part of the
grinding media plus are part of the valuable product. However, for all operations the ore type and its size
distribution always vary, both in the short term and long term, and as they form the grinding media SAG
mill operation is sensitive to this.
Grinding rate
As noted by Powell, van der Westhuizen and Mainza (2009), the consequences of the interaction
of feed type and grinding are expressed in a simple logic flow as:
Variable ore variable operation variable grind variable recovery lower recovery.
It is therefore an intrinsic drawback of a relatively inflexible process, that recovery will be
sacrificed. Grinding is driven by the mill load as defined by the density, volume, and size distribution. A
change in feed type changes the mill contents, which in turn changes the grinding rates, which changes the
mill contents, etc. with the mill responding in a non-linear manner to the change until a new point of
equilibrium is reached. This is illustrated conceptually in Figure 1. Because of the highly interactive form
of this feed-back loop SAG mills can be difficult to stabilise.

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Figure 1 - The interactive drivers of SAG mill operation

For a fixed mill filling and mill speed, the product size will change for a target feedrate as the feed
type fluctuates. For an operator or an expert control system, the question then becomes: What are the
control conditions to target for optimal mill operation? It is most desirable to supply the control system or
operator with a new target set of operating conditions to aim for. These can be based on downstream
requirements, such as a consistent product size, with an average target feed rate. The key is that variable
operation leads to lower recovery. Control systems can generally succeed in stabilising mill throughput, but
at what cost to recovery?
Percent solids in the slurry strongly influences grinding rate. Too low and rate is low due to a
reduction in efficiency of energy transmission to the finer particles held in suspension in the slurry, too
high and the viscous slurry dampens impacts again reducing grinding efficiency. The peak in this curve is a
function of viscosity. Additionally, the lower the percent solids in the slurry the lower the residence time of
finer material (sub 1 mm) in the mill and thus there is reduced grinding of the finer particles leading to
reduced final product circuit product in the SAG mill discharge.
Transport
The transport of material along a mill is an often overlooked critical mill response. It takes a finite,
and surprisingly long, time for material to physically flow from the feed to the discharge of a large SAG
mill. This transport time leads to a substantial lag in the response of the mill to changes in control as the
entire contents need to change to reach a new operating point, not just the feed of the past few minutes. The
work of Mwansa, Condori and Powell (2006) showed how breakage and transport could not be separated
in working out the contents of a mill the more competent material lasts longer so accumulates allowing
these rocks to reach the discharge end of the mill.
As shown in the work of Powell, Perkins and Mainza (2011), careful quasi-steady-state mill
operation achieved through raising the mill feedrate slowly at about 1 tph per min (i.e. 2 tph increase in
feedrate every 2 minutes) indicates a mill response lag of 20 to 25 minutes. The feedrate was increased for
a while, then held constant for about an hour before again being increased, hence the steps in the mill
operation. The lag is shown in the control data of Figure 2, where the lag between change in feedrate and
mill load response plus stabilisation of feed and continuation of climb in load are highlighted.
This lag indicates that the mill contents take this period to work their way through the mill.
Additionally the lag varies with mill filling, indicated by the black arrows showing the lag periods
decreasing as the mill filing increases. The rate of increase in mill filling also changes with mill filling, as
illustrated by the decrease in gradient of the red filling arrows with a higher filling, despite the same rate of
increase in feedrate. Thus there are multiple non-linear effects at play.

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feedrate

Bearing
pressure

30 min
Power
Figure 2 Gradual increase in feedrate and associated lag in mill load response (Powell, Perkins and
Mainza, 2011)
Red arrows show load (bearing pressure) trends and pink arrows show the increase in mill
feedrate. The dotted lines show where the change in feedrate starts and the mill load response triggers, with
the black arrow indicating the time period between the two.
The transport rate in a mill is different for different size classes, which are differentially
influenced by slurry viscosity and flowrate. Fine, sub 1 mm material, flows with the slurry so transport in
these fine sizes responds immediately to changes in water flow through the mill, with transport rate being
proportional to water flow rate. The larger the rock particle the less it is influenced by water addition or
slurry viscosity. The porosity of the mill charge changes the transport rate of the slurry and fine particles
(Powell and Valery, 2006). As the contents become finer the transport rate reduces, as the ball fraction
increases the porosity increases and slurry flowrate increases.
Discharge
The feedrate of a mill is driven by grinding rate, but limited by the discharge rate. Thus if the mill
discharge system cannot pump the product out the mill above a certain rate then it cannot be fed in at a
higher rate without filling up the mill. Filling ultimately increases rapidly to an overload situation due to
grinding rate dropping as the mill filling increases. The impact of grate and pulp systems on slurry filling
and pebble discharge are well recognized but usually poorly considered in mill control.
Grindcurves
The non-linear and interactive response of mill load and grinding rate is well illustrated by the
Grindcurves methodology, that plots the response of throughput, power, filling, and product size as a
function of mill filling (Powell, van der Westhuizen and Mainza, 2009; Powell, Perkins and Mainza , 2011).
Clearly each curve has a peak at different fillings, and different gradients at any given mill filling.
Additionally, the response changes considerably with mill speed.

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100

70% crit

4500

75% crit

90

4000

80

3500

70

3000

60

2500

50

2000

40

Grind, % -150um

Power, kW

&

Feed x 10, tph

5000

30

1500
30.7

1000
10

20

36.8

30

33.4 34.6 39.3

47.3
5010

40

20

30

40

20
50

Mill Filling, %

Mill Filling, %

Power,kW

Throughput, tph

Grind, % -150um

Figure 3 Grindcurves at 70% and 75% of critical speed (after Powell, van der Westhuizen and
Mainza, 2009)
Differential breakage
Competent rock components build up in the mill charge, forming a disproportionate fraction of
the mill charge. This was strikingly illustrated when a small change in competent feed, from about 8% to
14% in an AG mill halved the throughput. Upon crash-stopping and opening the mill for inspection, it was
found that the mill contents were white, the colour of the competent silicate rock while the softer rock was
black. It was estimated that the mill contents were about 90% of the competent rock that formed only 14%
of the feed. This, along with the transport outcomes measured by Mwansa, Condori and Powell (2006),
lead to the extensive work on studying the impact of multicomponent ores on SAG mill performance
conducted by Bueno (Bueno et al., 2011, 2010). This work quantified the differential build-up of
competent ore in a mill, shown in Figure 4 and therefore why averaging of competence cannot be used to
predict mill performance. Not only is the mill throughput non-linear with the ratio of competent and softer
components, but the product size distribution of each component is quite different which no energy-based
calculation can predict as this is a function of the interaction of the different rock types.

%Hard silicate in +30 Load

100
80

Linear response line

60

30% increase in load versus feed

40
20
0
0

20

40

60

80

100

%Hard silicate in +30 feed

Figure 4 - Non-linear relationship between percentage competent in feed and in mill load (after
Bueno et al., 2012)

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Key issues
Key operating issues that confound the control of SAG mills:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

the size distribution of the grinding media changes with RoM feed changes
transport lag of 20 to 25 minutes
water addition changes transport and grinding rates
discharge rate limitations control absolute feedrate
differential grinding rate of competent and soft components
ratio of competent to soft rock in the mill can be 2-3 times that in the feed
rocks above 30 mm dont break they wear out through abrasion
SAG mill response is strongly non-linear
Primary operational drivers include:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

increasing throughput or achieving target throughput

longer liner life
lower operating costs
lower media consumption
finer grind
lower energy consumption
limiting operating inconveniences such as spillage
avoiding reprimandable errors

It may be noted that these operational drivers do not align well with or address the underlying
operating issues. This paper addresses these issues based on insights rather than models or rules.
ESTIMATING MILL CONTENTS
The mill contents the rock, grinding media and slurry both proportions and total quantity drive
the mill performance. Despite not being able to see into the mill, operators need to know the composition
of the mill contents to a reasonable accuracy for maintaining stable mill operation.
Unknown and drifting mill filling
As mill liners wear, the mill becomes lighter in the case reported in Bird et al., (2011), as much
as 350 tons over the liner life. If mills are controlled to a load or bearing pressure set-point, a correction
factor or better, a model, is necessary to account for the change in mill weight over the liner life. A model
is particularly advantageous in cases where groups of liners have different wear cycles and are replaced at
different times. Power models can be a useful tool for estimating mill load based on power-draw and load
measurements and can be combined with a liner mass-loss model developed using laser 3D scanning to
estimate mill contents (Bird et al., 2011). Bearing pressure can vary with other factors such as temperature
and therefore give a cyclically biased estimate of mill load. Moreover, the bearing pressure response is
typically non-linear requiring a separate calibration to be developed to convert to a load mass. The linear
response of load cells is therefore more convenient but also need to be calibrated at least at two points.
Inaccurate estimation of mill filling can lead to operators running the mill inefficiently. If the liner
mass compensation is not implemented, filling is likely to be overestimated at the start of the liner life and
underestimated at the end of the liner life, the drift in filling can easily be 8%, which is considerable.
Throughput will usually be lower than optimal in each case.

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Estimated and drifting ball load

The proportion of grinding media in the mill can be determined by grind-out, but given the
production loss and potential for liner and media damage if not performed carefully, this should only be
carried out infrequently. Regular grinding media addition is usually calculated according to a formula that
estimates media wear, for example on a mill throughput basis. The wear rate can vary however due to other
factors including a change in the abrasiveness of the ore, changes in operating practices and changes in
media quality and the ball load can drift. The ball composition can be inferred using a calibrated power
model.
Slurry pooling
Ideal milling conditions are generally believed to occur when the slurry contained in the mill is
just sufficient to fill the voids between the rocks and the grinding media. When the rate of slurry discharge
is insufficient, the excess of slurry forms a slurry pool. Pooling reduces grinding rates in two ways: the
power draw decreases due to the shift in centre of gravity and toe impacts are cushioned by the pool
(Latchireddi & Morrell, 2006). Slurry pooling is readily diagnosed: if the feed is stopped with the mill
running, the power-draw will initially increase as the pool is depleted (Powell & Valery, 2006). Pooling
conditions are most commonly observed with low-aspect (diameter < length) mills or single stage mills
with high recirculating loads, but intermittent pooling is also encountered in high-aspect SAG mills
(Powell & Valery, 2006; Burger et al, 2011) with pooling exacerbated by a high fraction of (or total)
pebble porting of the discharge apertures.
Low discharge rates that result in pooling have many possible causes. Excessive grate open area
promotes flowback of slurry that has already passed through the grates into the pulp-lifter back into mill.
High speeds on mills with radial pulp-lifters reduce the pumping capacity of lifters due to the high carryover effect. Spalling balls and ball scats can also block the grate apertures preventing passage of slurry
through the grates (Burger et al., 2011). Curved and dog-leg pulp-lifters and twin chamber pulp lifters have
a higher discharge capacity, however preclude the mill being operated bi-directionally.
GRINDING MEDIA
Grinding media is a major expense on many mine sites accounting for up to 40% of the milling
costs (Weidenback et al., 2012) and a significant contributor of embodied carbon emissions in the grinding
process. The selection of grinding media and ensuring that it is of the appropriate size for the duty and of
good quality is therefore of critical importance to the management of the mill.
Inappropriate media selection
Grinding media larger than around 125 mm is rarely justifiable and coarsens the product from the
mill. Larger media are however more effective in breaking the coarser and critical size particles in the mill.
Smaller balls provide more surface area for grinding and therefore a finer product and are less aggressive
on the liners but are generally more expensive and may be easily lost if large pebble ports are used.
Low quality grinding media can have excessive or variable wear rates. Steel composition,
microstructure and treatments such as forging, quenching and tempering control the hardness profile and
wear resistance. Other quality issues include porous, misshapen balls and balls prone to splitting and
spalling (large chips of steel broken from the ball surface due to buildup of internal stresses). Media that
loses its shape before it can pass through the grates can lead to low grinding efficiency. The work of
Powell and Smit (2001), clearly showed that broken and misshapen ball scats, as illustrated in Figure 5,
dramatically reduce mill efficiency. The throughput increased by 11% despite a lower ball load (due to a
shortage of balls to top up the mill); specific energy dropped from 22 to 19 kWh/t, and the size specific
energy to produce 75 m product (SSE75) reduced from 28 to 26 kWh/t -75m. With an equivalent ball
load the mill could be expected to deliver a 16% increase in throughput. So detection of a build-up of these

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scats should trigger a check on ball quality and possible magnetic removal of the scats. Media cost should
never be considered separately of the overall operating cost including consumption rate and milling
performance.

Figure 5 - Ball scats in the mill charge and examples of the misshapen scats
Ball impacts
Ball on shell impacts are detrimental to mill performance (Powell et al., 2006; Burger et al., 2011;
Seppelt, 2012). Mill speed, liner design and filling are the main factors influencing whether the media
cascades onto the liners or onto the charge. Impacts not only result in low grinding efficiency but also high
ball and liner wear and sometimes costly damage. Liner damage can be prevented by understanding the
interaction between liner profile and the throw, which can be predicted using DEM simulation or trajectory
models (Powell, 1991). The analysis needs to consider the changing profile over the life of the liners.
Acoustic arrays or microphones with sophisticated frequency analysis (Shuen et al., 2014) allow
impacts to be detected during mill operation. Mill speed can be reduced when impacts are indicated.
Simple single-microphone systems with basic decibel output however are often unable to reliably detect
impacts when the impact point is away from the detector. The authors have noted that the decibel reading
can alarm and slow down the mill speed when there are no impacts to be detected by the human ear.
Instead the high reading is related to the proximity of the toe of the charge to the microphone position.
Thus as the mill filling changes and the toe position moves up or down, the sensitivity or validity of the
reading changes, which can lead to incorrect control action. This has been noted to lead to unnecessary mill
speed reduction, or overfilling of the mill, both leading to a loss of throughput. Frequency domain analysis,
via Fourier transform, allows differentiation between direct steel-on-steel impacts, steel on rock and mixed
steel-rock bulk charge being struck by the lifter bars. It is concluded that a frequency domain analysis is
essential for reliable mill control.
PROCESS CONTROL
Systems of varying complexity are used for automated process control of SAG mills. Few of these
are capable of operating a mill in a truly stable manner for extended periods and consistently respond
efficiently to all common process disturbances. Many factors cause a SAG mill circuit to therefore require
frequent operator interventions.
Incorrect mill dilution
Although the impact of water dilution is well-recognised by operators, it tends to be misused as a
control variable to maintain a desired mill load or limit power draw below the maximum. As described
earlier, there is a peak grinding rate, which is ore-dependent, for a given slurry percent solids and viscosity.
If the mill is over-fed and the load begins to build up then it can be reduced by flushing out with added

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water this is a particularly poor control response as the SAG product is suddenly coarsened and this
coarser transfer size is passed on downstream to overload the ball mills. A consistently high water addition
is favoured in large primary SAG mills to increase throughput. However, this is at the cost of milling
efficiency and the need for added ball mill capacity to achieve a given final product size. Constantly
tweaking water addition to control mill load is widely practiced, however this is pushing the mill off the
optimal grinding curve suppressing maximum grinding rate and varying the mill product size. It is far
better to keep a fixed water addition with long-term variation as needed to control product size.
Conducting a Grindcurve as a function of mill inlet water ratio, i.e. slurry percent solids, will
identify the optimal water addition for a given ore and milling objective, which can then be used as the
control set point.
The critical role of the mill Operator
The reality in many operations is that the human element, namely the plant control-room
operators and their field operators, have a significant bearing on plant performance (Li et al., 2012). They
can have quite different levels of experience, training and indeed philosophies about how the plant should
be operated. It is not uncommon for performance to be correlated with the particular crew on shift. Control
systems, no matter how sophisticated, seem to be inadequate in reacting to the wide range of disturbances
that can befall a comminution circuit. Operator-dependence is therefore related to the degree to which the
operators trust and accept the control system. It is not uncommon for complex expert systems to be
switched off in favour of manual control.
Training and experience are of course invaluable. Good process control systems, whether on-site
or in a remote location benefit from good quality data, clear visual display of plant operating states, logical
and well-designed trend information, prioritized alarm lists, closed-circuit video cameras and responsive
communication with field operators and other production crew including supervisors, metallurgists, grade
control and mine control operators. Reviewing process control systems on a regular basis and especially
following any plant modifications or other significant process change is recommended; and then
documenting any changes. Dynamic modelling interfaced with process control systems allows process
control strategies to be evaluated and optimised in software prior to implementation (Asbjrnsson et al.,
2015).
Over-reactive operators and control systems
It has been noted by the authors that lag-time is almost universally unrecognised or
accommodated in control response. Thus operators know that changes of 30 to 50 tph are required, usually
twice in quick succession, to note a response in mill filling. The issue is that they are responding too late,
usually based on spot numbers rather than trends. This is reactive rather than predictive control. Automated
control systems are good at identifying trends and reacting in a predictive manner that allows for lag time
based on mill response tests. However, only the better control systems utilise this process knowledge, so
this is an area to check in control systems in order to improve mill stabilisation and optimal performance.
A lack of appreciation of lag times leads to cyclic control, with the operator control response
amplifying variation rather than dampening it. After developing the Grindcurve response shown in Figure
2, with tightly controlled mill load and power over 8 hours, the investigators left the mill with a rock load
that had been stable for a full hour. The Operator coming on shift promptly dropped the feedrate in two
50 tph steps to limit feedrate to the downstream process. Eight hours later the mill was still in 1 MW power
cycles at a frequency of less than one hour! The next operator asserted he would fix the poor control of the
night shift, and succeeded in maintaining the amplitude of the load and power fluctuations while reducing
the period of the cycles quite an achievement of constructive interference.
Operators consistently snigger at the gradual grindcurve technique of changing mill feedrate by
1 tph per minute, knowing that this will make no difference. As noted earlier, this gradual rate of change

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doesnt result in a measureable change in mill filling in the short or immediate term, however it does
produce a significant but controlled response in the medium term. It has been repeatedly demonstrated by
the authors that slow and steady control response results in a higher long-term throughput.
Variable feed size and competence
Many operations have to deal with variations in feed size distribution and competence from the
mine. However much of the variability is induced by plant materials handling design and practices such as
drifting primary crusher gap, stockpile segregation causing biased sizes at different draw-points, use of
stockpile dozing to push in segregated material, pebble recycle crushers turning on and off, and bypass
systems being used, such as after pebble-recycle metal detections. Variability can also be induced by
altering blast conditions or mining practices.
Dozing of the stockpile should never be standard practice; it is not the route to increased
throughput. The outer inverted cone of the stockpile is a conical storage bin made of rock and should be
treated as such. Dozing introduces dramatic fluctuations in feed size as the coarse outer material is pushed
in to the feeders. This dramatically affects mill filling, power draw and product size to the downstream
recovery process, clearly illustrated by the trends of Figure 4 for two mills operating in parallel with the
one having its stockpile dozed during this period. It is preferable to slow down the mill and ease off
feedrate if the stockpile if drawing low, then speed up as the feed comes back on. Continuous or regular
dozing throughout the day simply does not get more ore through the mill, it just reduces recoveries (due to
fluctuating product size). The only use of the outer stockpile structure should be for maintaining production
during extended upstream downtime of emergency use due to RoM feed interruptions.

Figure 6 - Mill control trends for dozing (top) versus standard feeding (bottom) for two mills
operating in parallel
Recycle crusher operation
Pebble crushers often need to be able to operate in an on-off manner in order to match crusher
throughput to the pebble discharge rate from the mill. The impact of this on the milling performance needs
to be considered to prevent cyclical variation in load and power draw. A simple but effective strategy can
be to reduce the feed rate marginally when the crusher is operating and increase again when the crusher bin
is filling. This was used by the plant metallurgist to great effect on a large SAG milling circuit, with a
2500 tph feedrate, where the fresh feed was reduced by 50 tph as the second recycle crusher switched on at

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250 tph, then returned to normal as the crusher turned off. This achieved almost stable operation of the mill
in terms of mill load.
It has been noted on all operations reviewed by the authors, that the recycle crushers are poorly
matched to the circuit. They tend to be over-designed to cope with the perceived power requirement, when
the limitation is in reality the crushing force required to deal with the competent pebbles. This leads to an
overdesign in throughput capacity. As per the description above of tight crusher control, it is best to close
down the crusher as much as possible, and crush as fine as the crusher can manage. This may require a
redesign of the chamber to a different liner specification. If the feedrate of pebbles exceeds the crusher
capacity the then excess can overflow to the product belt. This is preferable to continuous underutilisation
of the crusher.
Feed size can be measured using on-line image analysis or laser-based ore sizing systems on the
mill feed conveyor. Because they view the top of the belt, these are generally subject to errors due to
particle segregation but nevertheless useful because the coarsest particles are usually on the surface. As
noted by Morrell & Valery (2001) however, the ability to vary manipulate feed size can be used
advantageously in process control.
If the recycle crusher is used as an active control input to the SAG mill circuit, the throughput can
be increased and the product stabilised. Crusher CSS and speed and two potential dynamic control
variables are noted later in this paper.
Cyclic operation
Stable operation of a SAG mill is advantageous for consistency of plant throughput and grind size,
but rarely achieved. The large number of variables, the variability of inputs and measurement accuracies
and the long lag times around the circuit mean that SAG mill circuits are particularly difficult to operate at
steady state. The time lag between a feed step change and the increase in load and power draw can be
around 15-20 minutes on a large SAG mill. Process control loops need to be tuned to avoid over-reacting
to process disturbances but also to allow sufficient time for the circuit to respond following a control
adjustment. Small, steady changes to process variables are key to maintaining a steady circuit response.
There is distinct opportunity to apply process control to recycle crushers so as to stabilise
operation with changes in recycle as the RoM ore competence or feed size changes. Crusher speed and gap
can be varied to great effect, as demonstrated by the extensive work by Hulthn and Evertsson (2011) on
aggregate plant crushers.
Unreliable / inaccurate instrumentation
Good process control requires confidence in the instrumentation outputs. Inaccurate outputs from
field instrumentation can mislead operators into inefficient states of operation. Sensor outputs are
sometimes displayed incorrectly in the control room. Examples include faulty or poorly calibrated
instruments, limited accessibility for servicing, poor positioning of instruments, wiring and programming
errors, spillage such as onto belt-weigher frames. Redundant measurements, inferential models, regular
calibration of sensors and routine inspection of the plant are useful for ensuring that process control is not
compromised.
MILL INTERNAL DESIGN
SAG mill liners are designed to sacrificially protect the mill shell while imparting energy to the
charge. Liner design has a complex interaction with the mill performance because the profile of the lifters
changes dramatically over the liner life. Liner and mill internal design can have a significant effect on both
the mill grinding performance and the operating costs.

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Incorrect liner design

The design of mill shell liners requires appropriate specification of lifter angle, lifter spacing, liner
thickness, height and material selection (Powell et al., 2006; Royston, 2007). Profile selection also needs to
consider whether the mill is bi-directional and whether all liners are replaced simultaneously or alternate
rows only. Too aggressive lifter designs (i.e., steep face angle) can result in shell impacts, thus reducing
milling efficiency and resulting in liner and ball damage. Insufficient spacing can promote packing of
solids between liner rows (Hart et al., 2001; Powell et al., 2006). Not only does packing reduce the
effective mill diameter, it poses a hazard when mill entry is required for relining. Packed steel balls or rock
on the roof of the mill needs to be hosed off before physical entry can be permitted. Furthermore, the
mechanical criteria that target a long liner life and the process criteria that target optimal grinding
conditions over the liner life can be in conflict, and therefore liner design needs to balance competing
objectives. This is described at length in the work of Powell et al., (2006).
Mill liner designs typically evolve over time and the first set naturally carries the greatest risk.
Many examples of poor initial liner selection have resulted in hurried remedial action to resolve significant
faults. Careful selection through the use of experienced specialists, independent liner design review and
simulation of liner performance allows the risks to be mitigated. Routine liner inspections are a must.
These inspections have multiple functions: identifying liner or grate damage (cracks, peening), measuring
mill dimensions, measuring liner profiles to calculate wear rates (using manual profile measurements or 3D
laser-scanning), measuring grate wear rates, measuring the slurry depth and measuring mill filling to
calibrate load-cells or relate to bearing pressure.
Lack of compensation for liner wear
Liner wear affects the mill weight and therefore the estimated mill load; the liner profile and
therefore the safe operating speed for a given filling; the grate size and therefore the scats recycle rate and
the load composition, speed and power draw and therefore the grinding rates. Mill performance varies over
the liner life new liners with the steepest face angle and greatest lifter height can require a slow speed at
the start of the liner life to avoid shell impacts. As the liners wear, the combination of feed rate and speed
should be tuned to maximize mill productivity. Finding an optimum operating window for each phase of
liner life guided by experience and modelling allows much improved performance over control that ignores
the significant impact of liner wear on mill performance.
As noted in the work of van der Westhuizen and Powell (2006), as the liner mass changes the
relationship between the load cell reading and the mill charge contents changes significantly, illustrated in
Figure 5. As the liner wears, for a given loadcell reading of e.g. 150 t, the mill filling increases from 18%
to 32% over the wear life of the liner a massive change. As noted from the grindcurves late in the same
work, the difference in through put is over 30% for this difference in mill filling. Clearly, accounting for
the loss in liner mass is essential when controlling by mill load.

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50
Change in liner
& ball fill m ass

45
40
y = 0.2139x - 0.0579

2
1

Mill Filling, %

35
30
25

y = 0.183x - 9.0125
20

Grinding out
(rem ove ore charge)

15
10

Ball filling ~ 8-9%

Rem oving ball charge

0
-50

50
Change in
liner m ass

150

250

Load Cells Reading, t

Jul'05; 7.9% ball; New lifters
Mar'06; 9.1% ball; Fully worn lifters

Figure 7 Filling as function of load cell readings for new and fully worn lifters and slightly
different ball fillings (van der Westhuizen and Powell, 2006)
In the work of Bird et al., (2011), the drop in mill throughput on the Cadia SAG mill was found to
be 10% when the loss in liner mass was incorrectly compensated for, resulting in a drop of mill filling from
32% to 25%, as illustrated in Figure 6.

Figure 8 Loss in SAG mill throughput after relining related to lower mill filling
Excessive change in pebble port apertures
Wear of the shell lifters affects the throw imparted to the charge, but wear of the discharge grates
is equally important. Both have significant effect on the mill grinding performance. The study by Toor
(2011) considered the performance of a SAG mill at several phases of liner life and found that the breakage
rates varied systematically over the liner life. Pebble port aperture size also increased over the life of the
liner and therefore flow rate and top size of pebbles trended upwards over the duration of the grate liner
life. Pebble production rate increase was reported by Toor et al., (2011) from 150 to 250 tph and from 500

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to 700 tph by Bird et al., (2011) over the life of the grates. The differences would have been larger but in
both cases, half-grate relines at the mid-point of the shell liner life were used to reduce the impact of
changing grate aperture size.
Pulp-lifter discharge capacity
Pulp-lifters are designed to allow slurry to be lifted out from the mill after passing through the
grates apertures. Insufficient pulp lifter capacity that leads to low throughput and slurry pooling is widely
reported. An over-designed pulp-lifter with excessive discharge capacity however reduces mill residence
time and therefore specific energy, reduces filling, sends a coarser product to the ball mills or increases
recirculating load and require operating with reduced mill speed and power draw.
OPERATING STRATEGY
Overloaded trommels
It is common for SAG mills installed with discharge trommels to experience overloading issues
following a throughput expansion or other circuit modification. Trommel capacity is not only a function of
the throughput but its feed size distribution, and specifically the proportion of near-size material. Near-size
particles (defined as between 0.75 and 1.25 times the aperture size) have a low rate of passage through a
screen, and therefore tend to reduce the rate at which smaller particles and slurry can pass also. The
installation of a new crusher or HPGR for pebble or feed pre-crushing can significantly alter the trommel
performance, precisely because they create more particles in the near-size fractions. Like screen
overloading, the trommel overload condition can be sudden and because large trommels are usually
covered and difficult to inspect during operation, the onset of overloading can be unexpected and not
always apparent from the control-room displays. The overload condition manifests as a surge of pebbles
and slurry overflowing the trommel onto the pebble recycle conveyor: a crash-stop of the mill due to a belt
slippage may be the first control-room indication.
Trommel re-design or replacing with screens can be expensive while simple solutions such as
increasing trommel aperture size are likely to have unacceptable downstream consequences. It is thus
proposed that this is an area requiring investigation, so as to provide possible acceptable solutions.
Pebble crusher under-utilisation
Pebble crushers are perhaps the most effective means of increasing SAG mill throughput for
highly competent ores types (Morrell & Valery, 2001). Because of the low rate of breakage in the critical
size fractions typically around 10-50 mm, particles of this size can accumulate within the mill charge, and
ultimately affect grinding performance. A pebble crusher that is able to crush the recirculating pebbles to a
size finer than the trommel opening can have a marked impact on throughput. Crawford et al., (2009)
found that a 1 mm reduction in closed side setting (CSS) resulted in a 2.2-2.6% increase in throughput. In
practice however, pebble crushers are frequently operated with a large CSS that produces little material
finer than the trommel opening, and consequently particles remain in the slow-grinding critical size range.
Consequently, these operations are unable to achieve the full throughput benefit of the pebble-crusher
installation.
Typically, the reason for not closing the crusher to a finer setting is unrelated to either crusher
capacity or power draw but instead due to the real or perceived risk of damaging the crusher, specifically in
the event that grinding media or tramp metal enters the grinding chamber. Plants that do operate SAG mills
with a fine crusher setting universally also operate an effective metal removal and tramp steel detection
system and a responsive crusher protection and monitoring/control system to minimise the potential for
equipment damage. The importance of these systems being well designed and operated is therefore
difficult to overstate but the incentive can be up to 20% additional mill throughput and improved energy
efficiency. A large SAG mill operation reported a 5 to 10% reduction in throughput if the CSS setting was

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allowed to drift. By applying stringent metal removal and alarming with a bypass chute, the HP1000 could
be operated at an 11 mm gap with resetting twice per shift as standard practice. This is in contrast to
observed operating practice of 20 to 25 mm gaps on many recycle crushers.
Excessively Fine Feed
Various upstream mining and processing strategies including pre-crushing circuits, mine-to-mill
optimisation, grade engineering and non-conventional mining techniques such as rock-cutting are intended
to produce a finer plant feed. Fine feed is known to increase SAG mill throughput but the risk is in
unintentionally coarsening the SAG mill discharge and transferring the grinding work to the ball mills.
Finer feed frequently leads to the so-called barely-autogenous grinding (BAG) condition with a high ball
load, low rock load and often an inability to draw full drive power. True SAG operation typically requires
around 10% +100 mm rock in the feed to hold a high total filling.
When operated like a large ball mill with fine feed, either the mill speed needs to be reduced to
prevent shell impacts with the lower filling level, or the liners re-designed with a less aggressive face angle
to permit operation at a typical SAG mill speed. Operating with a lower speed reduces power draw and
therefore the grinding rates. Likewise, the grates and pulp-lifters need to be designed appropriately. The
finer feed and mill contents have a higher rate of passage through the grates, and therefore retaining rock
within the mill can become difficult. This issue is addressed in the work of Powell, Mainza and Hilden
(2015).
Imbalance of SAG and ball mill workload
Where throughput is the main performance measure, the optimum performance occurs when both
SAG and ball mills are operating efficiently and at their maximum available power. It is common to ignore
the direct impact of SAG product size on the ball mill grinding load. Circulating load builds up around the
ball mill circuit as SAG throughput is pushed up, exacerbated by flushing to unload the SAG mill. The
authors have direct experience of pushing up the power draw in the ball mill circuit to allow a higher SAG
mill throughput. Usually the critical missing information is the SAG mil product size. Milling circuits are
seldom built with process sampling in mind (other than final circuit product size), so there is no measure of
the much spoken of but seldom measured transfer size. Suggestions on obtaining this are provided in the
work of Morrison and Powell (2006) and Powell et al. (2006). Designing in a cross-cut sampling point at
the trommel or screen undersize is ideal, alternatively a controlled multiple cross cut with a long-handled
(sometimes up to 3 m long) cutter provides a good quality but often difficult and messy sample.
Pre-crushing and recycle pebble crushing both coarsen the grind and need to be accompanied by
added ball milling power to retain the final product size. Balancing of product size can be achieved by
partial pre-crushing (Putland et al, 2004).
Variability in feed competence (Morrell & Valery 2001) shifts the required balance between the
SAG and ball mills. A classic situation is a softer ore that streams through the SAG mill at a high rate, but
can result in a lower fraction of final product passed on to the ball mills, leaving them to cope with a higher
throughput and coarser feed and rapid overloading. The need here is to slow down the SAG mill. This
can be achieved through higher filling, as noted in the Grindcurve outcomes of Powell, Perkins and Mainza
(2011), reducing pre-crushing, cautiously reducing mill dilution, bypassing a fraction of recycle pebbles
back to the SAG mill without crushing them.
Ball load
Excessive reliance on balls to dominate the grinding work results in high media consumption and
coarser feed to the ball mills pushing up their required power and media consumption. Although it is
acknowledged that an adequate ball load is a good insurance policy for throughput, as ball load cannot be
rapidly varied, this does not seem to be balanced against the above operating cost factors. Rocks are free

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grade-carrying grinding media ensure a fine product handed on to the ball mills, so they should be used as
much as possible. It is feasible to significantly increase ball load, by many tonnes in less than half an hour,
if the mill really cannot hold the required throughput over an extended period. Operations tend to drift into
the easy operating regime (noting the Operator drivers listed earlier), instead of actively seeking the low
ball addition point as an ongoing long-term objective.
CONCLUSIONS
In general both mill operators and Metallurgists lack an insight into the physics and mechanics
driving the operation of SAG mills. A basic background is given to these and the insights used to interpret
the impact of control actions and how these may be changed to improve mill performance.
The issues noted are:

unknown and drifting mill filling

lack of compensation for liner wear
estimated and drifting ball load
inappropriate ball size
excessive ball wear
excessive ball scats in the charge
incorrect mill dilution and over-use f inlet water for mill load control
excessive change in pebble port apertures
incorrect liner design lifter angle, lifter spacing, liner thickness
inadequate slurry discharge capacity
overloaded trommels
underutilisation of pebble recycle crusher
excessive pre-crushing of rock media
poor feed size control
over-reactive operators and control systems
cyclic operation
lack of compensation for transport and lag time
imbalance of SAG and ball mill workload
inadequate operator training

The list is surprising long and extends further than the points noted in this paper. The symptoms
of operation issues are described, some theoretical background provided upon which the routes to tackle
these issues are based. It is hoped that this paper will provide a useful reference for applied SAG mill
operation.
Above all - we dont control SAG mills, they control us. Remember this, respect your mill, and it
will reward you with fine and faithful performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the numerous co-workers and students who have assisted in
collecting data over many years, along with the many operating sites at which this data has been collected
and practical experience gained.
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