Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

Lithium mica is one of the important lithium resources, and its lithium extraction process involves multiple processes. Among them, the grinding process has a significant impact on the subsequent lithium leaching rate and the overall production cost. This paper analyzed and compared the technical characteristics of milling process equipment such as dry ball milling, wet ball milling, vertical mill and generalized disc grinding, including key parameters such as processing capacity, particle size control, and electricity cost. The results show that the power consumption of the generalized disc mill is the lowest, but the particle size of the mill powder is the coarsest, which has an adverse effect on the subsequent lithium leaching rate. It is suitable for the process of extracting lithium from lepidolite with low requirement for leaching filter particle size. The wet ball mill is more prominent in energy saving and high efficiency, while the dry ball mill has a large processing capacity, but the energy consumption is relatively high. The vertical mill has the highest power consumption, but the particle size of the mill powder is the smallest, and the particle size distribution of the discharged material is uniform, which has a certain effect on the improvement of the subsequent lithium leaching rate. It is suitable for the process of extracting lithium from lepidolite with high requirements for leaching filter particle size. The research in this paper can provide reference for the reasonable selection of grinding process equipment in the actual production of lithium mica lithium extraction.