Anelle Janse van Rensburg Mining Weekly Features Reporter The
nature of the De Beers R610-million 24-million-carat combined
treatment plant (CTP) feedstock necessitates an innovative approach
to the process design and it was, therefore, decided that the
process route and process equipment selection would not be
compromised.
However, the overall project design philosophy to minimise the
capital, working costs and implementation time would remain as a
core philosophy.
Diamond-value management principles were also regarded as
fundamental to the plant design. Best practice, fit-for-purpose
design philosophies were adopted, resulting in a small plant
footprint, low builused stone crusher for sale in ukding heights, minimal surge capacity and limited
standby equipment. The process-design parameters to meet the
overall objectives entail the plant throughput to be 1 000 t/h,
latest technologies to be used, a 25-year plant design life, the
plant footprint to be as small as possible, while innovation,
rather than invention, is required, as well as the use of existing
open pits for residue,sale hand mill for powder slimes, tailings and disposal.
Furthermore, a high level of automation will be implemented with
few conveyor drives and transfer points within the plant.
Spillage-free designs to be adopted throughout the plant area and
metallurgical modelling will be carried out.
The CTP has been designed on a Contops philosophy, 24-hours a day,
seven days a week. As part of the prconveyor for crushing plant catalog downloadoject prefeasibility study, an
extensive study into optimal head-feed tonnage determination was
carried out, and showed the optimal head-feed for the CTP to be 1
000 t/h wet. The nature, variability and granulometry of the CTP
feedstock emanating from the various production sources
necessitated an innovative approach to the process design.
Extensive ore-dressing studies, simulatmine processing plants in chinaions and testwork were
conducted to achieve the optimal plant design. The dumps contain
large volumes of contaminants, ferrous, non-ferrous, organics,
synthetics, and others that pose a specific challenge.
Diamond value management is a strategic leverage area identified as
being the single area of greatest impact to the bottom line of the
De Beers mining operations.
This strategicequipos utilizados en canteras leverage area consists of six main points that have
been tackled as part of the CTP design, such as diamond control,
which is centred around the protection of diamonds, diamond damage,
prevention of revenue loss due to damage within the process.
In addition, diamond liberation, optimising the liberation of
locked diamonds from within kimberlite and process efficiency,
maximising the recovery of diamonds from the head- feed material,
top cut-off size of the treatment plant and bottom cut-off size of
the treatment plant.
Dump sources will be delivered by truck to the plant-feed bins
Underground sources will be conveyed to an overspill and emergency
stockpile facility in the vicinity of the tip area and underground
material fed at a controlled rate of maximum 300 t/h to the
scrubber-feed conveyor.
Dump material will be extracted from the main plant feed bin on to
the scrubber-feed conveyor at a controlled rate.
New plant head-feed, high-pressure rolls crusher (HPRC) cakes and
scrubber oversize will be treated in a parallel scrubbing and
screening section. The CTP will use a pump-fed dense medium
separation (DMS) and the CTP will be the first plant within the De
Beers group that will design the concentrate area of the DMS to
fall within an impervious shell, termed the Red Area shell.
De Beers has done extensive testwork on the use of HPRC to liberate
locked diamonds.