This presentation reviews the innovative technology solutions that CiDRA Minerals Processing Inc has developed during the last twenty years to improve the production efficiencies of concentrators. The first of them was passive SONAR flow monitoring technology. It is the only new flow measurement technology since the introduction of the vortex, Coriolis, and ultrasonic flow meters in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Passive SONAR flow monitoring technology is especially well-suited for the erosive and corrosive slurry flows in the mineral processing industry. While the commonly used old magnetic flow measurement technology monitors mainly the propagation of the ions in carrier liquid, SONARtrac measures the propagation of the turbulences that carry the solids forward in the flow providing thus more robust information on the actual production rate. SONARtrac installs and measures from outside of the process pipe. This enables unchanged measurement performance and reliability in highly aggressive slurries and fluids and eliminates the maintenance and process downtime costs associated with traditional slurry flow measurements. This is proven by twenty years continuous operation in numerous challenging flow applications and the measurements still provide the same performance as right after installation. SONARtrac additionally measures the volume occupied by bubbles in the flow. Based on that errors caused by bubbles on density measurement can be corrected to achieve higher accuracy in mass balances. Further SONARtrac provides information on flow model and flow stability and pump operational stability; all this is useful information to optimally run the processes and to prevent production time losses caused by line blockages.
The second innovation is CYCLONEtrac PST, that monitors five different particle size limits in real time directly from the overflow of each hydrocyclone in battery. Based on that customer can optimize the process grinding stage operation and do controlled optimization between throughput and recovery to maximize net metal production. Up to 10% increases in the net metal production of the process line have been achieved. Further, all abnormal operations (e.g. roping events) of hydrocyclones can be prevented. Additional benefits include savings in grinding energy per ton produced and savings in water consumption.
If time allows we will tell also few words on CiDRA novel separation technology P29, which can recover large poorly liberated mineral particles with little to no free gangue entrainment, up to 2 mm. When compared to the 0.2 mm reachable by flotation, this means significant savings in grinding energy per ton produced. In brownfield operations the existing flotation process can be optimized for higher fine particle recovery while coarse particle recovery is done through the P29 process. This can increase the throughput of the existing grinding circuit by 20 - 40% without costly investments in new grinding circuits. As P29 provides also rougher tails the water recovery will be significantly enhanced, and the rougher tails enable also more stable tailings dam constructions.
For greenfield projects P29 offers lower investment and operational cost production process as conventional grinding can be replaced by one or two HPGR stages after crushing to feed the P29 process.