Size reduction of minerals by grinding being an energy-intensive unit operation is widely used in the preparation of raw materials for manufacturing of ceramic products. This paper presents briefly the standard Bond grindability testing method, which is widely used for prediction of milling energy requirements. The most frequently used ceramic raw materials, namely kaolin, quartz, and sodium feldspar were chosen for laboratory experiments with standard particle size ranges and the Bond method was applied to them singly, and also their binary and ternary mixtures. The Bond work indexes (Wi) of these singly ground ceramic raw materials were defined as 10.38, 12.49, and 11.85 kWh/t, respectively. The Bond work indices of the both binary and ternary mixtures containing softer kaolin mineral were found to be greater than the calculated work indices of the individual minerals. The work indices of the ternary mixtures were increased significantly from 12.70% to 24.31% with respect to the calculated work index values when kaolin was put in the mixtures at progressively increased amounts of 33.3% and 60%, respectively. The statistical assessments in order to determine the repeatability of the grinding tests pointed out those experiments gave replicated results with standard deviation values between 0.381 and 0.882 and coefficient of variations values between 3.05% and 6.17%.

Keywords: Bond work index, Ceramic raw materials, Grinding, Industrial minerals.