The Micronics Engineered Filtration Group has introduced to the market its newest filter press cloth product, the MINE-XLLTM filter cloth. This was developed and tailored specifically for the mining industry to provide extra-long life, “dramatically decreasing the frequency of filter cloth change-outs, a pain point in mining & mineral processing dewatering operations including copper, zinc, gold, silver, rare earths, lithium, and more.”
Typical mining filter cloths achieve a lifetime of approximately 1,500-3,000 cycles in mineral processing applications. Micronics’ MINE-XLLTM filter cloth is typically achieving a lifetime of three times that of traditional polypropylene (PP) felted mining cloths, including its own.
The new mining cloth has been tested and rigorously evaluated at ten mine sites and the company says performance has been far exceeding expectations. With Micronics’ MINE-XLL, some mines have already achieved over 10,000 cycles before the need for cloth change-out.
The high-quality cloth is suited to demanding mining operations including dewatering mine tailings (dry stacked tailings management, dewatering mineral concentrates and the Merrill-Crowe process. Micronics manufactures filter press cloth in two state-of-the-art filter media manufacturing facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the US and in Saltillo, Mexico.
Micronics says its new heavyweight nylon filter press cloth is shown to deliver multiple improvements:
- Longer cloth lifetime – 3x the number of cycles before the need for cloth change-out
- Better cake release than traditional PP felted mining cloth
- Greater mechanical resistance to abrasive, high-velocity mine slurries
- Less fabric blinding – cloths stay cleaner with less washing needed
- Lower cake moistures, resulting in lower hauling costs
- More machine up-time
“We are doing really well using the new nylon cloths from Micronics in place of the previous felt cloth your competitor was selling us for the last ten years or so. From the initial start of testing, our moistures ran and averaged 10%, and since installation of the new mining cloth, we are now averaging 7.4%. This is a huge saving when you talk about transportation costs,” according to the Process Manager of the Milling Department from a major copper mining company in North America.
“We are very pleased to hear the reactions of our customers to the cost savings from using our new product. Using Micronics’ new MINE-XLL filter cloth, there is more press up-time and we estimate that clients can experience well over $100,000 per year in cost savings, both through labor & productivity improvements and lower hauling costs,” said Chris Cummins, President & CEO of the Micronics Engineered Filtration Group. Micronics’ Mine-XLLTM Filter Cloth can be manufactured to fit all OEM brands of mining filter presses on the market today.
