Tag Archives: HPGR

Weir highlights Enduron HPGR and Terraflow tailings demand in H1 results

Comminution of minerals, Environmental, Equipment maintenance, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining finance, Mining maintenance, Mining services, Sustainable mining, Water management, , , , , , , , , ,

The Minerals and ESCO divisions continued to stand out in Weir Group’s half-year 2019 financial results, with the two mining focused segments now representing around 75% of group revenues.

The Weir Group recorded revenue of £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion) in the first six months of the year, up from £1.07 billion a year earlier prior to the ESCO acquisition. Operating profit, meanwhile, was £172 million, up 25% year-on-year, with the Minerals division posting an operating margin of 17.2% and ESCO recording a margin of 14.1% (up 300 basis points from a year earlier).

In addition to Minerals and ESCO now commanding some 75% of group revenues, the two’s recurring aftermarket sales also now represent about 80% of total revenues.

In the first half of 2019, Minerals orders grew 5% with aftermarket orders up 8%, reaching record levels, according to Weir. “Original equipment orders, which are traditionally lumpier, fell by 2% year-on-year, but returned to growth in Q2 (June quarter) and this is expected to accelerate in the second half,” the company said.

ESCO, meanwhile, recorded a 5% increase in pro-forma revenues to £280 million, with annualised cost savings of $20 million ahead of schedule when it comes to the company’s medium-term target of achieving $30 million synergies.

During the period, original equipment demand within the Minerals segment benefited from miners continuing to expand current operations and investment in new mines, with demand for new technologies that increase efficiency and sustainability while lowering total costs, Weir noted.

This included strong demand for the company’s Enduron® HPGR (high pressure grinding roll) technology that reduces water and energy consumption, the company said, adding that the company had been contracted to support a large greenfield development in the UK in the period.

Weir said it also saw growing interest in its Terraflow® solution to enable tailings waste to be cost-effectively recycled or repurposed. This equipment brings wet tailings down to 90% solids paste to be pumped into a containment area or used for paste backfill.

The company added: “Aftermarket demand was strong, due to production growth and structural trends. These include continued ore grade declines that increase the amount of rock that needs to be processed, intensifying wear and tear and leading to additional demand for spares and services,” the company added.

During the period, Weir also added a new Minerals service facility in Alaska, which, it said, gives the division the ability to rapidly respond to demand for spares and services and is a “key differentiator in need-it-now mining markets, where production intensity is increasing, and the costs of unplanned downtime are significant”.

The company’s technology work continued to focus on incremental innovations and “Mine of the Future developments” aimed at solutions that are smarter, more efficient and sustainable, Weir said. This included focusing research and development on new pump and alloy designs, digitisation, ore hoisting, hybrid separation and tailings management.

Weir ESCO benefited from the same macro mining trends as its Minerals segment including increased ore production and the focus by mining customers on optimising productivity, the company said.

“This supported demand for differentiated technology that is proven to sustainably increase efficiency,” it said.
The first half of the year saw early market share gains for the N70 Nemisys® lip system, which extends the division’s Nemisys technology – featuring a cast or plate lip with shrouds and a three-piece tooth system. This is currently being trialled on smaller machine classes including wheel loaders, Weir said. “The N70 improves customer productivity through increased wear life, lower fuel consumption and reduced maintenance costs.”

The company also launched its GET Detect System during the period, an innovation it worked with Australia’s Mining3 on that provides instant feedback to the machine operator if one of the ground engaging tools used to extract minerals is lost or damaged.

TAKRAF to focus on HPGR, technical studies and data collection at Bauma

Comminution of minerals, Equipment maintenance, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining events, Mining maintenance, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , , , , , ,

Tenova TAKRAF says the company’s high pressure grinding roll (HPGR) technology, among other developments, will be highlighted at the upcoming Bauma fair in Munich, Germany, on April 8-14.

The company said, for the first time, show visitors will be able to have a complete overview of the company’s entire service portfolio, which ranges from project development services to technical studies on comminution and minerals processing, innovative fabrication solutions, various technical services and comprehensive after-sales support.

“With a view to further developing their capabilities within the market of the comminution industry, TAKRAF continues to develop their range of roller presses, with a scale model of a HPGR on display at the booth (pictured),” the company said.

Two of these machines are being manufactured at the company’s specialised fabrication facility in Lauchhammer, Germany. These machines can each handle more than 907 t/h of cement clinker, with each machine incorporating rolls with a diameter of 1,800 mm and a weight of more than 450 t per roller.

“In order to meet the challenging longevity requirements of such a machine, each roll surface is protected from wear by weld hardfacing for cement applications, and with tungsten carbide inserts for ore processing,” TAKRAF said.

The company continued: “With the integration of the well-known DELKOR and Tenova Advanced Technologies (formerly Bateman Advanced Technologies) brand of products into TAKRAF as specialised product lines, the company’s portfolio for the minerals processing and beneficiation sectors has been considerably enhanced.”

At Bauma, visitors will be able to focus upon the company’s capabilities in minerals processing, including solvent extraction and lithium recovery; as well as flotation, thickening, filtration and dry stack tailings, according to TAKRAF.

The company will also use the event to highlight its Mining Technology Centre, TAKRAF said.

“Technical studies, which compare the techno-economic aspects of different system or equipment layouts are an intrinsic part of every investment process. The quality of the study strongly depends on the experience of the study team and the level of customer involvement,” the company said.

“Based upon a common understanding of the weighting of all such decision criteria, the transfer of technical and operational experience and expertise, even beyond their own portfolio, is a key driver in enabling the customer to make a competent decision regarding the optimal solution for the specific conditions of their particular mine.

“More and more customers appreciate the added value provided by the studies as part of the engineering service portfolio, and for this reason, the company has decided to restructure and tailor their services even better in order to best meet customer requirements.

“TAKRAF’s Mining Technology Centre will be present and on hand to present the myriad of possibilities and benefits of innovative study approaches to demonstrate they are pursuing this strategy together with their customers.”

TAKRAF said, in order to provide additional benefits and services to the company’s customers based on new digital technologies, several R&D projects in the field of the industrial internet of things have also been advanced.

“In an attempt to find the most suitable technology, which results in the greatest possible benefit for the customer, first pilot machines were equipped with remote data collection and evaluation systems.

“Utilising a combination of edge computing and a proprietary azure-based platform established by Tenova, TAKRAF is able to develop applications that provide valuable insights of the company’s machines through modern and intuitive interfaces across any remote location.

“First results evince that this information can greatly assist in reducing downtime by identifying problems before they escalate into major issues and optimizing machine design, operation and performance.”

Implementation of more advanced analytics and machine learning strategies are currently on the company’s R&D agenda, TAKRAF said. “In addition, remote support solutions can also be offered.”

The company said: “This enables a remote experts-team to provide on-site assistance to the local commissioning or maintenance personnel using smart glasses and an appropriate software tool.

This is a great solution for reducing reaction times and as a side effect for reducing or even avoiding costs for expensive and time-consuming trips to the destination area.”

The company’s stand will be located in hall C2, stand 349 at Messe München in Munich, Germany, during the event.

HPGR and ore sorting stack up for Vista Gold’s Mt Todd gold project

Comminution of minerals, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining project news, Mining services, Precious metals, , , , , , , , , , ,

Toronto and New York-listed Vista Gold reports recent high pressure grinding roll (HPGR) crusher and ore sorting tests on high-grade samples at its Mt Todd gold project, in the Northern Territory of Australia, have confirmed previous test results.

The company has also announced plans to complete fine grinding and leaching tests in the March quarter and to follow these results with updated prefeasibility study (PFS) economics in the June quarter.

Vista said additional HPGR and ore sorting tests were completed on two, 2.5 t samples from Mt Todd’s Batman deposit containing 1.39 g/t and 1.70 g/t gold, respectively. This testing programme confirmed two important results:

  • HPGR crushing, followed by screening, results in increased concentration of gold in the fine fraction, and;
  • The small amount of gold lost in the rejected material is proportionally lower when sorting higher-grade material.

As with previous tests, the samples were HPGR crushed at the facilities of ThyssenKrupp Industries in Germany and screened at 16 mm. The coarse fraction (+16 mm) was sent to the facilities of Tomra Sorting Solutions in Germany, where two-stage (X-ray Transmission and laser) sorting tests were completed using production-sized and commercially available equipment. The following table summarises the results of the testing programme for each of the samples and compares these results to previous bulk tests on low-grade samples:

Sample

(g Au/t)

 Sorter Feed (+16mm) Sorter Product Sorter Reject Gold Loss (%)
Fraction of Total Sample (%) Grade

(g Au/t)

 Fraction of Total Sample (%) Grade

(g Au/t)

 Fraction of Total Sample (%) Grade

(g Au/t)
1.39 17.8% 0.731 9.4% 1.238 8.4% 0.158 1.0%
1.70 18.6% 0.737 10.3% 1.239 8.3% 0.110 0.7%
Previous Results
0.63 17.5% 0.533 10.5% 0.817 7.0% 0.103 1.1%
0.34 17.8% 0.255 11.0% 0.365 6.8% 0.075 1.5%
0.67 18.7% 0.619 11.3% 0.901 7.4% 0.192 2.0%

Frederick Earnest, President and Chief Executive Officer, said the tests confirmed the benefit of ore sorting for Mt Todd and demonstrated lower gold losses with higher grade crusher feed.

“We attribute these results to the favourable characteristics of the Batman deposit. Simply stated, the gold-containing sulphide minerals and quartz/calcite veining are more easily broken into small particles than the non-mineralised host rock,” he said. “Where this breakage does not result in clean separation from the host rock in the first pass of HPGR crushing, the gold-bearing minerals are easily identified and separated in the ore sorting circuit.”

The results complement Vista’s previously announced fine grinding and leaching test results, Earnest said, adding that he expects them to support additional improvements in the economics of the Mt Todd gold project when the PFS is published later this year.

The crushed and sorted samples have been transported to the facilities of Resource Development Inc, where sample preparation has been completed for assaying and additional fine grinding, leaching and tailings characterisation tests.

Samples are being sent to Core Metallurgy Pty to obtain additional fine grinding data simulating grinding in the horizontal IsaMill and to the FLSmidth Minerals Testing and Research Center to obtain data simulating grinding in the vertical VPX Mill.

“Both tests will target a final product size of 38-45 microns and will generate a sufficient volume of material for subsequent leach tests,” the company said, adding the fine grinding and leach tests were expected to be completed in the March quarter, with final results expected in the following quarter.

The company has completed additional tailings characterisation tests and concluded that no material design changes are required to proceed to the economic analysis using a final grind size of 38-45 microns.

TAKRAF receives HPGR order from Turkey

Comminution of minerals, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Steel and iron ore, ,

TAKRAF is continuing to boost its market share in the comminution sector after receiving a contract to supply two high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) to a cement plant in Turkey.

Demand for HPGR technology from the mining sector has been on the up in recent years as companies, especially those in the iron ore game, look to increase the grades of their product to satsify the increasingly ‘green’ requirements of consumers in China and elsewhere.

TAKRAF’s HPGR machines have been designed with maintainability in mind, the company said.

“A clear target to achieve this goal is the reduction of downtime, which includes integrated maintenance tools and a focus on the changing of wear parts,” the company said.

Furthermore, the machines boast a load optimised frame structure, which ensures effective operations under varying load conditions.

In this application in Turkey, each HPGR incorporates rolls with a diameter of 1,800 mm, a width of 1,600 mm and a weight of more than 50 t. Two variable frequency drives with a combined output of around 3,000 kW provide the power to process more than 1,000 t/h.

Additionally, each roll’s surface is protected from wear by weld-hardfacing.

The company recently installed a specialised welding machine for this very purpose, which is able to guarantee consistent quality throughout the entire hardfacing process and ensures the hardened rolls are able to meet the demands placed upon them, TAKRAF said.

Engineering will be conducted by a joint team based at TAKRAF’s production facilities in Lauchhammer, Germany, together with members of the Cologne team. The machines will be manufactured in Lauchhammer, with delivery scheduled for the first half of 2019.

“We are pleased to be part of this project, which marks an important milestone in respect of TAKRAF’s ongoing strategy to develop within the comminution equipment market and ensure that our clients are best-served to increase efficiency within their operations,” Dr. Frank Hubrich, CEO of TAKRAF, said.