MINING IN FOCUS
colour of the water. That’s where the microns are. We settle it,
concentrate it and then only pump to ponds that which needs to
be pumped. That water then goes into a separate tank. The water
goes into the outside of the AquaCycle and from there it gets
immediately pumped back into the plant.”
Willem du Plooy, CDE business development manager, sub-
Saharan Africa says, “Previously, about 200 000 litres of water was
circulated; in this instance, recirculation to the plant is only 10 000
litres. That’s a very small number compared to what was normally
used on a site like this.”
Because water is used to wash the product, the sand does end
up with a certain amount of moisture. Van Vuuren shares that the
moisture content of the washed sand from the bucket wheel was
inconsistent, as it did not have a dewatering process and the raw
feed wasn’t consistently the same. CDE estimates that with the
bucket wheel the fi nal product contained between 23% and 25%
of moisture.
“Water management would ensure that the fi nal products, using
the Combo, would be dewatered to an average 12% moisture,” says
du Plooy. van Vuuren adds that because clients who collect on site
want the sand to be dry to a certain degree, once it comes off from
the Combo it is moved less than 500m away from the machine.
Meintjes adds that they’ve added another product thanks to the
Combo. “It has opened up a whole new product and market for us.
From the same raw feed, we can supply river sand, and now we can
produce an additional fi ner sand as a washed plaster.”
Wayne Warren, business development manager for CDE sub-
Saharan Africa.
Investing in Africa
CDE is a Northern Ireland company that provides wet processing
CDE maintains that the smaller the machinery’s footprint is, the more mining area you can preserve.
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African Mining November 2019
www. africanmining.co.za