Southern Copper Co’s Cuajone mine in Peru has awarded CiDRA Minerals Processing a contract to supply, install, start-up and commission a 48″ diameter SONARtrac flowmeter, the largest to be installed in Peru. The system is required to measure water flow in one of the plant’s principal feed lines. Including the two systems that were recently installed in a mine in Northern Chile, Cuajone becomes the second client in South America that has chosen SONARtrac technology.

Cuajone needs it for its large diameter water feed lines, mainly due to the growing need to monitor flow rates and thereby improve the water balance, in compliance with internal company regulations.
The recovered water comes from Cuajone’s three thickeners to a reservoir near the concentrator plant. The water is then distributed for re-use in the concentrator through the water feed lines to mills, pumps and flotation. Four pumps feed the lines in accordance with process demands. The fundamental characteristic of being a non- intrusive system allows the installation of the 48″ SONARtrac flowmeter without having to stop the process or cut the pipe, which would be required to install conventional flowmeter technologies. As a result, this will be the first time that the client will have a flow rate measurement on this 48″ line.