Modeling of an Industrial Double-Roll Crusher of a Urea Granulation Circuit

COTABARREN, IVANA; SCHULZ, GASTON; BUCALÁ, VERÓNICA; PIÑA, JULIANA

POWDER TECHNOLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2008 vol. 183 p. 224 - 230

0032-5910

Since for granulation processes the crusher operation has a decisive influence on the system stability, a reliable mathematical model to represent an industrial double-roll crusher of a urea granulation circuit is provided in this work. The crusher is described by the model given by Austin et al. (1980) for mineral processing. The breakage parameters estimation was based on industrial data. The experimental particle size distributions of the feed, intermediate and product streams were obtained from large-scale crushers belonging to a urea granulation plant with a nominal capacity of 1 million tons/year. The results indicate that the model reproduces in a very accurate way the performance of this type of crushers, being a useful tool to: a) optimize the gap setting to meet specific crushed particle size distribution requirements and b) be included as a mathematical module in a plant simulator of the whole urea granulation circuit.