RESEARCH OF PULVERIZED HALURGIC POTASSIUM CHLORIDE AGGLOMERATION

• Main Authors: Mariya V. Cherepanova, Evgenia O. Kuzina, Vladimir Z. Poylov, Dmitry A. Munin
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Tomsk Polytechnic University 2019-04-01
• Series: Известия Томского политехнического университета: Инжиниринг георесурсов
• Subjects: pulverized halurgic potassium chloride; granule; agglomeration; molding; electron microscopy; static strength; commodity fraction; particle
• Online Access: http://izvestiya.tpu.ru/archive/article/view/197/117

The relevance. The industrial pulverized halurgic potassium chloride (KC1) is mixed with the finished conditioning product, which leads to its dustiness and caking, as well as losses during transportation. The enlargement of the pulverized KC1 will increase the quality of the main product, by eliminating the mixing stage of different components. The agglomeration by molding will make it possible to obtain a product of a size close to the concentrate. Investigation of agglomeration features with various binders will allow studying their influence on the efficiency of the process and the quality of the product obtained. The main aim of the research is to study the molding of pulverized halurgic potassium chloride and to establish agglomeration features of moistened fertilizer using various binders. Methods. To study the state of the agglomerates surface, electron-scanning microscopy was applied using the shooting modes BSE3D and SE with an increase to 1500X; to determine the elemental composition formed in molding and drying the fertilizer mixture, the X-ray spectral analysis was used; the quality of the resulting product was evaluated using a sieve analysis and the method of measuring the static strength of an IPG-1M instrument. The results. It was found that increasing the moisture content of the granulated mixture promotes an increase in the content of the commodity fraction to 84 % and a static strength up to 10 N/granule; the use of binders has a positive effect on the quality of the product (increasing the yield and strength of the agglomerates), and they can have fundamentally different features of molding the pulverized halurgic KC1, resulting in formation of agglomerates with significant structural differences, as confirmed using electron microscopy. The use of sodium metasilicate makes it possible to obtain agglomerates with a tight adherence of particles to each other, and the needle-shaped crystals of silicon oxide formed by the thermal decomposition of Na2SiO3·5H2O increase the roughness of the KC1 particles, the number of crystallization centers, and strengthen the bonds in the granule. When molasses are used, the resulting agglomerates have KC1 particles with intimate contact, but the remainders of the binder are visible between them; on their surface there are accumulations of microparticles with a size of 10–30 μm of the initial pulverized raw materials in the form of «shell».