Tag Archives: RC

Centamin-Sukari

Capital in line for another five years of drilling at Centamin’s Sukari

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Capital has been awarded a letter of intent related to a five-year extension to its open-pit drilling services contract at Centamin’s Sukari gold mine in Egypt, with the contractor potentially extending its work there through to the end of 2029.

Subject to conclusion of the definitive drilling services agreement, which will include both blasthole and grade control drilling, the contract will mean Capital has been on site for 25 years when concluding its services. The contract would begin on January 1, 2025.

Back in 2020, Capital entered a conditional open-pit waste mining services contract with Sukari Gold Mines and expanded and extended its existing drilling contract with Sukari, effective January 1, 2021. Collectively, these contracts were anticipated to deliver incremental revenues of $235-260 million over a four-year period, representing the largest award of new business in the company’s history.

In the company’s Q4 2023 trading update released today, Capital noted that the Sukari gold mine waste mining contract saw consistent operations through the three-month period.

IMDEX signs agreement with Tier 1 miner to fast-track development of MAGHAMMER

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IMDEX has signed a joint development agreement with a Tier One mining company to fast-track development of the IMDEX MAGHAMMER™ for commercial use, according to Chief Executive Paul House (pictured).

The MAGHAMMER uses a hybrid drilling technique combining rotary diamond drilling with fluid driven percussive drilling to achieve higher penetration rates compared with conventional coring. The technology enables an entire drill hole to be completed with a coring rig where RC and diamond drilling is required, according to the company.

IMDEX only exercised its option to acquire Flexidrill and its patent-protected drilling productivity technologies, COREVIBE and MAGHAMMER, in December, but it had carried out test work on the MAGHAMMER technology far in advance of the transaction.

Speaking at the company’s AGM this week, House reported a new rental fleet record and month-on-month increases in revenue since May as IMDEX recovered from a COVID-19-related downturn earlier in the year.

With the strength of the gold price and other key commodities, and exploration activity surging, IMDEX’s tool rental fleet is 19% up on the same time last year and exceeds the previous record set in 2012, the company said.

House told the AGM that the recommencement of activity globally since May had continued in most regions, albeit at different speeds.

“We achieved revenue of A$61.4 million ($43.5 million) in Q1 2021 (September quarter of 2020), which was up 26% on Q4 2020 (June quarter of 2020),” House said. “This result is only slightly behind the previous corresponding year at A$67.6 million, or 4.9% on a constant currency basis.”

House said the company is seeing multi-commodity demand, with clients “well-funded” and focused on resuming sustained activity as soon as possible.

The pressures of COVID-19, which forced various governments to impose border and travel restrictions, created strong demand for IMDEX technologies linked to its cloud-based IMDEX HUBIQ™, the company said.

“We have made great progress both because of and in spite of COVID-19,” House said. “The global pandemic has increased demand for our connected technologies that support remote operations. Conversely, it has hindered client trials due to limited access to site for non-essential personnel.

“On balance, the momentum for disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, and the industrial internet of things is gaining cadence.

“The outlook for mining tech is brighter than it has ever been.”

On top of the MAGHAMMER reveal, House said client trials of the award-winning IMDEX BLAST DOG™ had resumed.

IMDEX BLAST DOG is a semi-autonomously deployed system for logging material properties and blasthole characteristics at high spatial density across the bench and mine and is commodity agnostic.

Just last month, the technology, being developed in collaboration with Universal Field Robots and tested at Anglo American’s Dawson coal mine in Queensland, won the Greyhound Innovation (METS) Award at the 2020 Queensland Mining Awards.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mining Innovation Hub uncovers a fraction of processing value

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Extensive testing conducted by a Kalgoorlie, Western Australia-based research hub has found Western Australian Goldfields mine sites can add value to their operations by focusing on small size fractions.

In recent decades, the primary driver to maximise profitability of mining operations has been to mine and process as much material as possible to exploit economies of scale. This has led to bigger equipment, higher throughput and greater production, but not necessarily efficient use of resources.

With the concerns of declining grades, more complex orebodies, greater haulage distances, higher energy costs and water usage, any approach that can alleviate the impact of these issues is highly desirable.

The Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mining Innovation Hub recently explored use of a pre-concentration technique known as “Grade by Size Deportment”.

“This technique exploits the propensity for some ores to exhibit preferential breakage leading to concentration of minerals in specific size fractions,” it explained.

Several sites within the Goldfields region of WA showed significant potential for separation by size to provide value to their operations, according to the hub. This is particularly the case where either marginal grades are present or growing distances from face to surface, or, from mine to mill, are subject to increasing transport costs, it said.

Research and test work by the hub show that natural grade by size deportment during coarse rock breakage and screening is a key lever for generating high-value coarse separation, it said. This, in turn, can drive better productivity and returns for mine operators.

The Kal Hub, established in 2018 by the Cooperative Research Centre for Optimising Resource Extraction (CRC ORE), enables focused collaboration between researchers; mining equipment, technology and services suppliers; and mining companies to unlock value for Australian mining through technology development.

CRC ORE Chief Operating Officer, Dr Luke Keeney, said: “In a short amount of time, the hub has been able to bring together some of the most innovative people in industry and research, enabling collaborative innovation to occur.

“This collaboration is good for the Goldfields, and for the wider mining industry, as it demonstrates the benefits mine sites can experience by deploying various aspects of Grade Engineering®, including grade-by-size deportment.”

Grade Engineering is a system-based methodology developed by CRC ORE designed to reject low value material early in the extraction value chain and pre-concentrate processing plant feed. A key lever for successful Grade Engineering is grade-by-size deportment, the hub said.

The Kal Hub Technical Advisor, Dr Laurence Dyer, said the objective of the Grade-by-Size Deportment project was to undertake initial representative sample testing to determine natural deportment Response Rankings at a range of deposits in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder region.

“This project provided an introduction for industry participants to Grade Engineering and an indication of potential opportunities that grade-by-size deportment may present,” Dr Dyer said.

“A number of companies came on board and we were able to obtain diamond drill core and reverse circulation (RC) drilling samples from a variety of sites in the Goldfields to crush, screen and assay to develop a snapshot of responses to this approach.”

Samples were crushed where necessary and screened into up to six size fractions, with a finer set of screens used for the RC samples to accommodate the difference in particle size distribution.

As expected, gold sites displayed significant variation in response, while all nickel sites tested showed significant upgrade in the finer fractions of both nickel and cobalt, the hub said.

“RC samples were a compelling sample option due to their prevalence and self-preparation for screening, however there remains a question as to the legitimacy of the results they generate,” it added.

Dr Dyer said: “Gold samples produced varied data with the majority of sites producing low to moderate upgrades on average.

“The RC samples generated greater variation and often decreased in grade at the finest size fractions, likely due to particles being below liberation size, creating issues with the response ranking fit.”

The Kal Hub research also showed nickel produced far more consistent behaviour with all sites producing moderate to high responses for both nickel and cobalt. While for some samples the nickel and cobalt response rankings matched well, in others, the nickel upgraded significantly better, it said.

The fine print in FLSmidth’s REFLUX Classifier technology

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FLSmidth has looked to spell out to the mining industry the benefits of its REFLUX™ Classifier (RC™) technology.

The RC is a slurry-based gravity separator designed specifically to upgrade fine minerals generally finer than 2 mm, the company says.

“The key design element is a system of lamella plates or inclined channels and the internal overflow launders. These are contained within the Lamella Settler – the top portion of the RC. The other two main components are an Autogenous Dense Medium Separator underneath the lamella chamber, and a Fluidised Bed Separator beneath that.”

Material from the process plant enters through the slurry inlet and passes over an internal over-size protection screen, removing any tramp or debris that may cause damage to the ceramic underflow valve.

Large, high-density solids quickly sink and settle in the mixing chamber in the middle section of the classifier, forming a fluidised bed of dense material. This bed is created by a series of water jets at the base of the mixing chamber and rejects any trapped lighter particles.

“Lighter and finer particles rise in the RC, through the autogenous zone to the lamella section,” FLSmidth says. “The autogenous section is created by fine suspended solids, and this zone helps convey lighter particles to the lamella section.”

This upper section contains the crucial sloping lamella channels, typically placed 6mm apart – although this distance can be reduced for finer materials. Low density particles rise up through these channels, driven by the upward water flow from the feed. The narrow sloping channels cause a parabolic flow pattern where the flow is fastest midway between the channel walls, the company says.

“The lightest particles are carried by the faster flow before they can settle and they overflow at the top of the channel. They fall into internal launders and are discharged from the RC. The higher density particles tend to slide back along the topside of the lamella channel, where the flow is slower. These particles slide down the slope, back to form the autogenous dense media zone,” FLSmidth says.

Pressure probes monitor the bed density and automatically control the underflow valve to optimise the bed level and density. The fluidised bed keeps particles in suspension and rejects the lighter material up out of the bed, while the denser particles sink and flow out through the underflow valve.

“The valve’s four-link system moves the plug vertically, which reduces wear and provides protection against splashing,” the company says.

In a recent innovation, a modular RC plant, FLSmidth selected the associated equipment – like pumps, screens, dewatering equipment and conveyors – for optimal performance. These modular plants are also automated, using advanced instrumentation and control equipment to keep operations consistent and recoveries high.