A hopper is a storage equipment for either coarse or fine ore, it is mainly composed of two parts:
- A converging section located at the bottom known as the nozzle which can have different shapes.
- An upper vertical section which is the hopper itself that provides most of the storage volume.
Advantages of using hoppers
One of the advantages of hoppers is that they help provide a uniform flow of ore to the mills. It provides a mixing medium to provide a uniform feed grade to the plant so that the mill can run continuously.
Types of hoppers in plant
Coarse hopper
It is the deposit of raw material that is extracted from the mine that will serve as feed for the crushers.
The coarse hoppers usually have a parallelepiped shape with an inclined plane at the bottom to facilitate discharge, these hoppers usually have grills to prevent the passage of large material to avoid clogging the crushed material up to the hopper.
Fines hopper
Fines hoppers are those deposits that are used to store the fine material that has already been processed through crushing and thus supply the other processes such as grinding (mills).
The fines hoppers are generally cylindrical or rectangular with a conical bottom. They are very important as they ensure a constant feed to the mills.
