It sounds like Tide. Shout it out. (Ultrasonics)
The solution to comminution used to be to use greater and greater hammers till the bloody hammers got so large nobody could swing 'em.
Grinding is the least efficient enterprise known to man. Anyone increasing grinding efficiency by 4% in toto will have quintupled efficiency!! Most energy gets wasted as sound, and heat. Rock breaks best by tension, but it is hard to induce tension into a particle, as there is nowhere to "grab it". Compression is the only answer so far to mechanical comminution. Probably ring grinders get their business done a bit better as they drag the particle as they squeeze it. This induces a type of lateral tension, 90 degrees to the compressive force. Grabbing all those tiny particles with ultra tiny tweezers is a hard problem.
Heating particles by sound waves and microwaves has been tried with mixed results in iron ores. So far no energy efficiency is seen to my knowledge. By far the best energy efficiency is seen with blasting. Reducing by blast force is 15 times more efficient than grinding. Dynamite is 5 times more expensive than electrical energy, but this still puts dynamite ahead of grinding with conventional mills by three times. Contrary to what people often think the more dynamite you use the less cost it is to reduce ore by grinding and the less overall reduction cost. All one has to do is find a way to keep blasting ore down to tinier and tinier sizes in vast blasting caverns. Certain gold losses will have to be put up with.
I am in favour of putting all mines on high mountain peaks. The ore would be blasted to sugar size and then combined with carefully rounded boulders of ore, shaped by convict labour. The whole affair would be put in a slalom course cut out of the mountain side and careered down the mountain side to arrive at the recovery plant at the bottom, no doubt ready ground.
Another solution would be to put the ore in drums and dump them in the surf at Waikiki. After rolling around on the bottom for a few weeks the ore should be suitable reduced for free.
EC<:-}
