Radiotracer Investigation of Clinker Grinding Mills for Cement Production at Ghacem

Radiotracer Residence Time Distribution (RTD ) method was used to investigate the process of clinker grinding in Ghana Cement Plant (GHACEM) at Tema with the objective of determining hold-up and grinding efficiencies of two ball mills operating in close circuit regime. The experiment was conducted using 40Ci Au-198 radiotracer in liquid state and highly sensitive NaI detectors for radiation measurement. The experimental RTD data revealed that the Mean Residence Times (MRT) of the material in the milling and separator sections of both mills were the same. It was also observed from the estimated mill efficiencies that mill 4 operated with optimal performance while the efficiency of mill 3 was far below the expected value.