Towards Local Processing of Ceramic Raw Materials in Nigeria: the Development of an Indigenous Ball Mill

Abstract

Ceramic materials often occur in rock-like form needing processing to render them to useable forms. This has been challenging locally due to lack of processing equipment chief of which is the ball mill. As the cost of foreign mills is prohibitive, this study focuses on the fabrication of a low-cost ball mill with consideration for appropriate ball mill speed. The effectiveness of the ball mill was determined using material charges of quartz and feldspar prospected locally. Ball milling was done on batches of the materials sequel to which the particle size spread was analysed descriptively on a multiple bar chart. It was observed from analysis that the milled materials became finer with increased spread of materials within the fine range as they were milled for longer periods. This study has assisted in revealing the quality of local content in the fabrication of a ball mill.