Investigation of milling parameters for floor tile opaque matt glazes at stirred media mill(attritor)

Ceramic tile industry is an energy intensive sector in which high level of gas and electric energy are consumed mainly at drying and firing stages. Thus, sustainable tile production has gained importance by employing sustainable processes which use less raw material, water, electric and natural gas. In the production process; electric energy is used in all sub- operations, especially in milling of glazes depending on type of glaze compositions. In alumina ball mills, milling process are occured between two alumina balls where glaze raw materials are ground by impact and crushing movements of balls. When finest particle sizes are required, alumina ball milling can not be sufficient for efficiency at a low cost. Therefore, other milling systems such as Attritor stirred media mills may be required. In this study, alumina ball mill and stirred media mill was used in combination to have high quality glazes with the lower particle size and lower milling time by grinding coarse particles with ball mill then Attritor stirred media mill used for finest particles to be ground. Furthermore, various stirred media mill parameters such as feed speed, stirrer type and grinding media sizes were investigated in order to see their effects on milling performance and finished glaze quality. It was determined that combined use of Alumina ball mill+Attritor stirred media mill are used at milling process of glazes without any problem. Besides, 30 % electricity saving was maintained.