GLOBAL NEWS
Turkish mining company Mikroman has set itself the target of improving
product quality and increasing capacity at its three processing plants
in Turkey. Mikroman has been mining and processing quartz since 1991.
These goals have been achieved, and other gains made at the same time, by
installing four Tomra high-capacity sensor-based sorting systems.
TURKEY:
SORTING DRIVES DOWN COSTS
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According to Nazmi Çetin, mine and plant manager at Mikroman, sorting
machines deliver a wide range of commercial advantages which include
a decrease in mining and haulage costs; reductions in energy and water
consumption; improvements in quality and productivity; and increases in
recovery. Sensor-based sorters also make it possible to significantly increase
the lifetime of a mining operation.
At Mikroman, quartz rocks are blasted and crushed at open-pit mines. The
company runs its own mineral processing plants for crushing, washing
and sorting the raw materials. In 2018 the company installed a Tomra Pro
Secondary Laser sorting machine in two of its three plants, in Muğla and
Aydin Provinces. The third plant, in Usak Province, invested in a Laser sorter
plus a Colour sorter.
According to Tomra’s area sales manager, Jens-Michael Bergmann, the
Tomra Colour sorting machines employ a high-resolution camera that
recognises materials based on their colour. Rocks with surficial and visible
contamination are detected and sorted out, resulting in better recovery rates
and higher quality than is possible with manual sorting.
“The scattering effect of multiple laser beams distinguishes a rock containing
quartz from its identically coloured neighbour. Under the laser beam a
pure or non-contaminated quartz rock registers as a glow crystal, whereas
similar-looking rocks with no quartz content remain dark, without any visible
scattering,” says Bergmann.
After crushing and washing (through a trommel screen), Mikroman’s sorting
process consists of four key steps. In the first step, minerals are screened by
size, with only stones measuring 40-100mm going through to the next stage.
In the second step, the Laser machine sorts out the waste and coloured
gravel from the quartz pieces at about 70 tonnes per hour (tph) capacity. In
the third stage, the remaining minerals are sorted into two streams: one for
coloured quartz; the other for the white and light grey quartz, and the grey
and yellow quartz. Finally, these two streams are hand-sorted into product
types, with some further removal of remaining gravel and waste.
Diversified mining company Rio Tinto has launched the world’s first
automated heavy-haul long distance rail network. The landmark AutoHaul
project was deployed by Rio Tinto in partnership with Hitachi Rail STS.
The 2.4km-long train is monitored remotely from an operations centre in
Perth, and travels across a network of 1700km of railway tracks. Iron ore
from 16 mines is delivered to ports in Dampier and Cape Lambert, with
the trains already having travelled over 4.5km autonomously since they
were first deployed last year.
AUSTRALIA:
GOLD FIELDS HOOKS ONTO
HYBRID
Gold Fields and global energy group EDL announced a AUD112-million
investment in an energy microgrid combining wind, solar, gas and battery
storage. The microgrid will be owned and operated by EDL, which will
recoup its investment via a 10-year electricity supply with Goldfield’s
Agnew mine.
Çetin says, “Before having Tomra sorters, we were worried about quality and
low capacity, but now we have achieved the desired quality standard and we
have seen a decrease in waste, which means productivity has increased.”
AUSTRALIA:
RIO LAUNCHES A WORLD FIRST
A diagram of Mikroman Mining’s processing plants.
www. africanmining.co.za
African Mining Publication
African Mining
African Mining September 2019
13