Tenova TAKRAF says it recently installed three DELKOR overhead filter presses at a gold mine’s processing plant in Uzbekistan as part of its wider tailings dewatering system.

The system comprises three DELKOR overhead filter presses each processing around 120 m3/h of gold tailings. Each machine contains 177 mixed membrane filter plates with a size of 2 m x 2 m, and includes a high-pressure cloth washing system.

These filter presses form an important part of Tenova TAKRAF’s complete Dry Stack Tailings (DST) technologies solution, which covers processes from sedimentation to filtration and material handling, the company said.

The supply also included several pieces of ancillary equipment, including belt conveyors for cakes discharged from the filter press (each machine is equipped with a cake breaker), pumping skids for membrane inflation, filter cake washing pumps and high-pressure cloth washing pumps.

“The entire scope of supply, including the slurry feed pumps, is fully controlled and managed by state-of-the-art software,” the company said.

It added: “The complexity of the dewatering process required by this project clearly highlights DELKOR’s filter press potential across the dewatering spectrum. In fact, the filter press cycle includes filter cake squeezing, filter cake washing and filter cake air blowing, with the filter cakes washed with process water in order to remove unwanted residual cyanides from the dewatered cakes.

“Importantly, the required residual moisture content within the dewatered cakes was achieved immediately during start-up.”

Marco Zeni, Tenova DELKOR Project Manager, said: “Notwithstanding demanding site conditions, installation and commissioning, together with the required operational training, was successfully completed. With this project, we take another important step towards firmly establishing DELKOR also as a provider of filter presses to round up the filtration product portfolio and once again demonstrating that: it pays to talk to a specialist.”