Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

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Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

Designing liners for performance not life

Paul Toor a, Jochen Franke a,⇑, Malcolm Powell b, Matthew Bird c, Thomas Waters c
a
Scanalyse Pty Ltd., PO Box 1201, Bentley DC 6983, Australia
b
University of Queensland, JKMRC, 40 Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Brisbane, QLD 4068, Australia
c
Newcrest, Cadia Valley Operations, Cadia Road, Orange NSW 2800, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Scanalyse in collaboration with JKMRC and Newcrest Mining Limited conducted an extensive study of the
Available online xxxx effect of liner wear on mill performance of a 32 foot SAG mill at Newcrest’s Cadia Valley Operations in
Australia. The methodology of determining the optimum liner shape was previously presented at Met-
Keywords: plant 2011, and expanded on at the SAG11. The results presented indicated that liners with a reduced
Comminution mass and shorter life outperform their longer life counter parts in all key production parameters of
Grinding throughput, energy consumption and product size.
Mill
This paper quantifies the benefit of having shorter liner life cycles for improved performance by calcu-
Mill liner
Optimisation
lating the increase in throughput and reduction in power based on historical data for an operational 32
Condition monitoring foot mill. It also presents the total overall gain by accounting for the increase in required reline effort. This
provides a holistic view of the net achievements when designing liners for performance and not life.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Liners play a critical role in SAG milling due to their strong
influence of load trajectory and ultimately breakage efficiency
(Makokha et al., 2006). Generally breakage efficiency depends on
the behaviour of the load inside the mill which governs the nature
of the ore presentation to breakage. However, there is also a trade-
off between liner life and grinding performance which to date has
not been studied closely. Typically, the start of the shell liner life
cycle also coincides with the lowest throughput of the cycle. There
are several possible causes for this;
1. Installation of new liners reduce the internal mill volume.
2. Possible packing of material in between lifters.
3. Decrease in grate open area if discharge grates are relined.
4. Suitable but overdesign of new liners causing a decrease in
breakage.
5. Unsuitable design of new liners for the mill in question.
6. Inefficient adjustment of operational parameters during early
liner life cycle stage.
ner liners would compensate and overcome the extra downtime
incurred.
Scanalyse in collaboration with JKMRC and Newcrest Mining
conducted an extensive 12 month study on the effect of liner wear
on mill performance of the 32 foot SAG mill at Cadia Valley Oper-
ations from July 2010 to June 2011. The methodology of determin-
ing the optimum liner shape was previously presented at Metplant
2011 (Toor et al., 2011a,b), and expanded on at the SAG11 (Toor
et al., 2011a,b). The results presented indicated that liners with a
worn shape and reduced mass, but shorter life outperform their
longer life counter parts in all key production parameters of
throughput, energy consumption and product size. This paper
quantifies the benefit of having shorter liner life cycles for im-
proved performance by calculating the increase in throughput
and reduction in power based on historical data for an operational
32 foot mill. It also presents the total overall gain by accounting for
the increase in required reline effort. This provides a holistic view
of the net achievements when designing liners for performance
and not life.

John Russell hypothesised in his paper (Russell, 2006), that lin-

ers with a reduced mass relined more frequently would outper-
form heavier liners with a longer life in terms of throughput. The
reasoning being that the benefits of increased throughput of thin-
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Scanalyse Pty Ltd., 7A De Laeter Way, Bentley,
WA 6102, Australia. Tel.: +61 8 9355 4422; fax: +61 8 9355 4426.
E-mail address: Jochen.franke@scanalyse.com (J. Franke).
2. Plant data & analysis
Table 1 and Fig. 1 summarise the mill performance over the six
month liner life based on weekly averages. It can be seen there is a
trend of increased throughput and reduced specific energy as the
liners wear. Initially, the mill throughput is approximately
650 tph and increases to approximately 730 tph at the end of the
liner life. This equates to an increase of 12% throughput when com-

0892-6875/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2012.07.004

Please cite this article in press as: Toor, P., et al. Designing liners for performance not life. Miner. Eng. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.mineng.2012.07.004
2 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

Fig. 1. Throughput and specific energy over shell liner life.

Table 1
Mill performance summary over liner life; ore availability constrained throughput periods highlighted in italics.

Period Throughput (tph) Power (kW) Specific energy (kWh/t)

10/12/2010–17/12/2010 652 6744 10.34
17/12/2010–24/12/2010 673 6835 10.16
24/12/2010–31/12/2010 658 6810 10.35
31/12/2010–7/01/2011 682 6669 9.77
7/01/2011–18/01/2011 651 6538 10.04
18/01/2011–26/01/2011 676 6643 9.82
26/01/2011–3/02/2011 711 6629 9.32
3/02/2011–11/02/2011 714 6765 9.48
11/02/2011–18/02/2011 708 6713 9.48
18/02/2011–25/02/2011 746 6607 8.86
25/02/2011–4/03/2011 735 6691 9.10
4/03/2011–9/03/2011 720 6829 9.49
Grates reline
9/03/2011–14/03/2011 672 6760 10.07
14/03/2011–21/03/2011 676 6712 9.93
21/03/2011–28/03/2011 741 6754 9.12
28/03/2011–4/04/2011 716 6776 9.46
4/04/2011–13/04/2011 683 6742 9.88
13/04/2011–20/04/2011 714 6718 9.41
20/04/2011–27/04/2011 743 6632 8.92
27/04/2011–7/05/2011 709 6662 9.40
7/05/2011–14/05/2011 710 6575 9.26
14/05/2011–21/05/2011 740 6526 8.82
21/05/2011–28/05/2011 737 6483 8.80
28/05/2011–01/06/2011 732 6379 8.71

paring a fully worn liner with a new liner, and it also coincides
with a decrease in specific energy of 12%.
A noticeable reduction in throughput occurs at half-life when
the discharge grates (1/2 set) and the feed outer liners are relined.
This causes the regressed throughput curve to taper but still in-
crease as the shell liners wear further. It should be noted that
the throughput post grate reline is still approximately 3% higher
on average than the throughput prior to the grate reline, indicating
the increase in throughput is not only due to an increased open
area of the grates but also due to the wear in the shell liners (see
Table 2).
Another observation is that throughput at the end of liner life is
slightly reduced for this mill, which could be explained by exces-
sive loss of lift caused by severe liner wear at the end of the life cy-
cle (see most worn profile in Fig. 5). However the decrease in
throughput is minor and could therefore potentially be explained
by other operational parameters and plant noise.
There are also some noticeable outliers where there is a sudden
drop in throughput which were caused by lack of ore availability.
These outliers have been highlighted in red in Table 1.
Finally grinding surveys conducted during the course of the pro-
ject indicate that SAG product is finer as the liner wears. This is
highlighted in Table 3, which alongside product sizes shows the
fresh tonnes per hour, recycled tonnes per hour (pebble crusher),
total tonnes per hour and power (kW). Thus from all data available,
it appears that as the liners wear in the mill, the three primary per-
formance indicators of throughput, power and product size all im-
prove considerably.
3. JKSimMet modelling
JKSimMet Modelling of new and fully worn liners was carried
out to compare mill performance with the progression of liner

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 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx 3

Table 2
Effect of key relines on mill performance.

Period Throughput (tph) Throughput change (%) Specific energy (kWh/tph) Specific energy (%)
Shell reline 6/12/2010–17/12/2010 652 0 9.6 0
Pre grate reline 4/03/2011–9/03/2011 720 10 9.1 5
Grate reline
Post grate reline 9/03/2011–14/03/2011 672 3 9.5 1
Pre shell reline 21/05/2011–01/06/2011 732 12 8.4 12

Table 3
Summary of production parameters at survey times.

Liner life Fresh feed tph Recycle crusher tph Total tph Power (kW) Product size p80 (microns)
New 635 156 791 6015 1630
Half (post grate reline) 725 117 842 6338 1440
80% 581 136 717 6085 1373
Fully worn 754 151 905 5861 1395

Fig. 2. SAG breakage rates over liner life new and fully worn. for the 32’ mill studied.

Fig. 3. SAG breakage rates over liner life (intermediates interpolated).

wear. The comparison of breakage rates across the liner life was of Fig. 2 shows the breakage rates for the two liner conditions fully
particular interest. worn and new. The plot illustrates that there is an increased break-

Please cite this article in press as: Toor, P., et al. Designing liners for performance not life. Miner. Eng. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.mineng.2012.07.004
4 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

Fig. 4. Sample 3D thickness models of new liners (left) and completely worn liners (right) as produced by MillMapperTM - note asymmetric wear along shell lifters.

Fig. 5. Example of millmapper liner profile output for design basis.

age rate for the size classes below 16 mm for the worn liner. Con-
versely, the new liners exhibit an increased breakage rate for par-
ticles greater than 16 mm. This result can be explained by new
liners imparting more lift to the charge thereby causing compara-
tively high impact breakage of the coarse particles whereas the
worn liner causes a greater cascading motion of the charge. Thus
a larger amount of breakage would occur through attrition and
abrasion of the finer material for the worn liner case.
SAG feed, which is comprised of fresh feed, recycle crusher
product and cyclone underflow has F80 characteristics in the order
of 15–20 mm. Thus as the liners wear, approximately 80% of the
material entering the mill is experiencing an increased breakage
rate, which explains the associated increase in throughput. The
important conclusion from this modelling is that the change in
liner shape is contributing to the observed increased in through-
put. Traditionally the increase in throughput is solely attributed
to the increase in the mill cavity and the increase in open area.
Fig. 3 shows the breakage rates with the interpolated intermedi-
ates (half-life and 80% worn) to illustrate how the breakage rates
may evolve with liner wear.
4. Millmapper
MillMapperÒ provides high resolution three-dimensional mill
liner thickness information inside a mill by mapping in the order
of 10 million individual survey points. Aside from tracking liner
shape and wear, other variables such as liner weight, net mill vol-
ume, charge volume, ball size distribution, and discharge grate
open area are also quantified, (Franke et al., 2009). Critically this
can be done not just for new liner shapes, but for worn shapes as
well, which is the only way to model grinding behaviour at times

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 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx 5

Table 4 downtime caused by them. As is evident from the graph, the cur-
Summary of improved performance with shorter liners life cycles. rent setup of a reline every six months is not optimal, regardless
No. of relines/6 Throughput (tph) Power (kW) Specific of how long a reline takes within the range of typical durations.
month cycle energy (kWh/t) At present the shell reline of the 32 ft mill takes approximately
1 707 6684 9.47 30–40 h (average 34 h). Interestingly, the throughput curves for
2 719 6638 9.25 the 30 h and 40 h relines indicate that thinner optimised liners
3 733 6548 8.93 which require reline three times per six month cycle would deliver
4 738 6505 8.81
6 736 6463 8.78
the highest tonnage. This equates to a shell reline every 2 months.
8 736 6463 8.78 However if relines are taking approximately 60 h then there is
little advantage in relining thinner liners more frequently. This

other than the very initial period of a liner life cycle. An example of
a liner 3D thickness model output is presented in Fig. 4. MillMap- Feed Outer
Discharge
per™ allows the optimum liner profile to be as identified by corre- Month Shell And misc
Components Grates
lating the profile with an analysis of mill performance based on
production data and JKSimMet Modelling results. 1 half worn
2
5. Designing liners for performance 3
27
From the plant data, survey results and JKSimMet modelling it 4
can be seen that key mill performance indicators of throughput, 5
specific energy/power and product size all improve as liners wear,
6 34
for the mill investigated. This suggests that liners with a reduced
thickness and mass outperform their larger and heavier counter- Total Reline Duration 6 Months = 61
parts. This section highlights the potential benefits of having short- 7
er life liners which deliver more tonnes at a lower power and 8
produce a finer grind. Importantly it is envisaged the increase in
9 27
downtime due to the additional relines is overcome and exceeded
due to the increase in mill performance. 10
It is possible to predict the throughput of liners with reduced 11
mass by analysing existing plant data. For example, to estimate
12 34
the total life cycle throughput for a new liner design with a half-life
shape, one would simply average the throughput from the second Total Reline Duration 12 Months = 122
half of the original liner life. Referring to Table 1, this would simply 13
require the averaging of throughputs from the 09/03/2011 to the 14
01/06/2011. Using this approach, it is possible to predict the result-
15 27
ing increase in mill performance based on having thinner liners, by
utilising existing plant data. Table 4 summarises the increase in 16
mill performance with shorter liner lives and additional relines. 17
It should be noted that the outliers mentioned in Table 1 were ex-
18 34 half worn
cluded when determining the values provided.
Using simplified examples of each additional reline taking a Total Reline Duration 18 Months = 183
possible l 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 h, Fig. 6 quantifies the combined ef-
fect of shorter but more productive life cycles and additional Fig. 7. Case study current reline schedule.

Fig. 6. Effect of reline shutdown frequency and duration on throughput.

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6 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

Table 6
Discharge
Month Shell Feed Outer Operations summary with predicted revenue increase.
Grates
1 Gold Copper
half worn
Current throughput (tph) 707 707
2
Mill availability% 96 96
3 41 Feed grade 1.31 g/t 0.51%
Recovery% 85 90
4
Annual production 6620411.347 g 2729025t
5 Annual Au production (oz) 212854 N/A
6 Price $1,600.00/oz $6/kg
34
Annual revenue $340,567,089 $163,741,470
Total Reline Duration 6 Months = 75
Additional annual revenue (1.25% increase) $4,257,089 $2,046,770
7 Total $6,30 M
8
9 41
10
11 Table 7
Reline cost estimates.
12 34
Relining costs
Total Reline Duration 12 Months =150
Volume current shell liners (m^3) 22.9
13
Mass current shell liners (kg) 178,620
14 Cost of material @ 3$/kg $535,860
Cost of labour @ 10% $53,586
15 41 Total cost of reline $589,446
16 Total annual cost of reline (2 per year) $1,178,892
Volume proposed shell liners (m^3) 18.3
17
Mass proposed shell liners (kg) 142,740
18 34 half worn Cost of material @ 3$/kg $428,220
Cost of labour @ 10% $42,822
Total Reline Duration 18 Months =225 Total cost of reline $471,042
Total annual cost of reline (4 per year) $1,884,168
Fig. 8. Case study proposed reline schedule.
Annual increase of reline cost $705,276

highlights the need to have efficient relining for mill performance,

especially when using the presented philosophy of thinner liners
relined more frequently.
6. Designing liners for performance case study
As stated earlier the above scenarios are simplified to highlight
the concepts of shorter liner lives with improved performance.
Relining every 2 months or less may be impractical for many sites
and not an option. The above examples also do not take into ac-
count the relining of non-shell components. Fig. 7 outlines the
relining schedule currently in use for the main liner pieces of the
case study, which are relined either every 6 months or less. These
are the shell liners which are relined every 6 months as are the
feed end outer liners which are staggered with the shell liners. That
is when the shell liner is fully worn the feed outer is half worn and
vice versa. Half sets of discharge grates are also relined every
3 months, leading to a high–low grate lifter arrangement, and a
mixture of grate sizes (which may help even out pebble discharge
variation over the grate life). Typically liners with greater than
6 months liner life such as the feed inner liners, throat liners and
filler rings are relined in conjunction with the feed outer.
Considering there is a reline every 3 months, there is a window
of opportunity to redesign the liner shape as provided by MillMap-
per at half-life, and reline the shell liner at three month intervals
without any changes to the existing shutdown schedule. Impor-
tantly, this also results in the outcome that the mill does not re-
quire any additional shutdowns, but rather that the existing
shutdowns need to be lengthened to allow for the additional liners
to be changed out. This clearly adds to the appeal of using an opti-
mised liner shape with reduced mass. This additional downtime is
estimated to be 14 h, resulting in the simultaneous reline of shell,
feed outer and grate liners. The proposed new reline schedule with
half-life shaped liners is shown in Fig. 8. Currently every 6 month
cycle requires on average 61 h downtime for reline, consisting of
27 h for the feed outer and grates at half-life and of 34 h for the
shell and grates at the end of liner life. It should be noted that
the reline durations for the shell and feed outer incorporates
non-major components such as feed inner, filler rings and the
throat liners. The reline duration was calculated by averaging
3 years of historical data of reline. This was done as the non-major
liners are not necessarily relined periodically as their liner life can
vary significantly. The reline duration for the proposed design the
reline duration would be in the order of 75 h consisting of two re-
lines one being 41 h relining the shell, feed outer and grates simul-
taneously and the other being the original 34 h where the shell and
grates are relined.

Table 5
Comparison of throughput and power for current and proposed shell liner design - improvements are highlighted in bold.

Current Proposed design Proposed design Difference Difference (%)

design (3 months) (6 month old design equivalent)
Tph 707 719 719 12 1.70
liner life Days 165 82.2 164.4 0.6 0.35
total throughput (kt) 2801 1418 2836 35 1.25
Total power (MWh) 26,525 13,117 26,233 292 1.10

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 P. Toor et al. / Minerals Engineering xxx (2012) xxx–xxx
Table 8
Net annual revenue estimates.
Summary of potential benefit
Annual increase in revenue $6.30 M
Annual increase of reline cost $0.71 M
Net annual revenue increase $5,60 M
As stated earlier, the fact that the extra reline can be incorpo-
rated into a non-shell reline shut to minimise the amount of down-
time makes a redesign far more appealing. Fig. 6 illustrates that
reducing the additional downtime increases the throughput bene-
fit. Assuming that using half shape liners as derived from MillMap-
per will only require an extra 14 h of reline per 6 month cycle, a
comparison can be made between the two designs based on overall
tonnes processed at the power required. The comparison of the
two designs is summarised in Table 5 which shows that by using
the proposed design an increase of 35 k-tonnes is predicted, or
1.25%, with a power reduction 292 MWh, or 1.10%, over a 6-month
period.
7. Cost benefit analysis case study
A broad estimate can be made of the economic benefit possible
in utilising liners designed for performance and not life. Tables 6–8
present a summary of the expected benefits for the mill that was
studied. Note that all dollar figures are given in Australian Dollars.
For the above table, the following data was used:
 Assumed mill availability of 96%.
 Feed grades represent the average gold and copper grades in the
block cave material from 1 July 2011 to 1 March 2012.
 Recoveries were sourced from the Newcrest Cadia Quarterly
Report End June 2008.
To estimate the cost of relining the figure of $3/kg of steel was
used for material cost plus 10% for labour costs. The volume of the
shell liners were obtained from MillMapper for new shell liners
and half-life shell liners (proposed design). Tables 7 and 8 summa-
rise the estimated cost of relining.
From Table 8 it can be seen that the estimated increased in An-
nual Revenue is in the order of 5 million dollars. It should also be
noted that the new design is expected to reduce energy consump-
tion and/or specific energy thus further increasing the net revenue
achieved. Based on the survey data presented in Table 3, it could
also be reasoned that the new design would also reduce the P80
of the product, thereby increasing the flotation recovery. These
two additional benefits of reduced specific energy and possible in-
crease in recovery add further commercial weight to the proposed
design with reduced mass.
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j.mineng.2012.07.004
7
8. Conclusions
The aim of the paper is to quantify the benefit of using shorter
life liners. Previous work (Toor et al., 2011a,b), utilised plant data,
plant surveys, JKSimMet and MillMapper to quantify the improve-
ment in throughput, power consumption and product size experi-
enced by the mill as the liners wore. Using this data a new design
was proposed with reduced mass and shorter life. Upon using plant
data to predict the new throughput and estimating the additional
downtime required it was found that the additional throughput
gained by the proposed design outperforms the current design
with an increase in throughput of 1.25% annually. This equates to
an increase in revenue of over AUD 5 million accounting for an
additional cost of only AUD 0.7 million in relining.
It is acknowledged that a change to relining schedule has to be
considered in conjunction with general plant maintenance work,
so plant maintenance and operational input is required before
pursing such a course of action.
A simple half-life liner profile has been used, there is clearly fur-
ther opportunity to optimise the liner profile if a shorter liner life is
targeted. Optimisation would aim at minimising the wasted shell
plate thickness that is evident at the end of the liner life, plus
changing lifter width to reduce metal wastage there. The excessive
width is a function of the structure required for the very high new
lifter bar, so is not required for a lower lifter design. Improvements
along these lines would further decrease the liner cost, and lighter
liners are faster to replace, with the added potential to decrease the
number of liner elements in line with the liner handlers capacity.
These additional opportunities will be pursued in ongoing liner
studies.
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