WORLD PROSPECTS
CleanTeQ deal for Fosterville plant
obert Friedland and Jiang Zhaobai, Co-
Chairmen of Clean TeQ Holdings, and Sam
Riggall, Chief Executive Officer,
recently announced that Clean TeQ,
through its wholly owned subsidiary
Clean TeQ Water Pty Ltd, has entered
into a landmark agreement with
Fosterville Gold Mine Pty Ltd to
design, supply and commission a
two million litre-per-day Clean TeQ
DeSALxmine water treatment plant.
The award of the contract follows a period of
extensive due diligence and testwork conducted
by Fosterville to validate the efficacy of Clean TeQ’s
DeSALxsystem for the treatment of mining process
waters. The value of the contract is A$3.5 million
and serves as a significant milestone for the Clean
TeQ Water division.
“Sustainable water management is becoming
critically important in the mining industry as
environmental regulations are tightened globally
and water scarcity increases. The Fosterville water
treatment plant is an important reference project
for Clean TeQ’s DeSALx technology, which is
expected to add significant momentum to the
growing pipeline of Clean TeQ Water projects.”
R
Fosterville operates the Fosterville Gold Mine
near Bendigo, around three hours
drive north-west of
Melbourne. During
the mining process,
groundwater is
produced which is
currently stored at surface
in limited capacity dams on the
mine site. To create a more sustainable
water management strategy, Fosterville
approached Clean TeQ to provide a system that
will treat the mine water to match the quality of
the region’s underlying aquifer. Fosterville can
then use managed aquifer injection (MAI) to return
the water to its natural source, or alternatively, use
the treated water from the Clean TeQ plant for
further treatment and subsequent recycling and
re-use of the water.
The Fosterville water treatment plant comprises
an integrated precipitation and continuous ionic
filtration process (DeSALx). The precipitation
process removes arsenic and antimony from the
water as a coprecipitate. The water is then treated
by the DeSALxprocess to remove hardness,
sulphate, and other dissolved metals.
DeSALxtechnology is ideal for complex mine
wastewater treatment. The DeSALxprocess
can be used as a standalone or as a
pretreatment for membrane
based
water
treatment
systems.
As the DeSALxby-product is
gypsum-based, it is compatible with
Fosterville’s established lime treatment
facility and provides a zero-brine water
treatment solution. Design of the Fosterville
water treatment plant is already underway, with
equipment supply, installation and commissioning
all scheduled for 2018.
Clean TeQ Water says it is actively engaged with
several mining companies globally in testing its
unique continuous ion exchange systems for the
treatment of process water treatment for recycling
or environmental discharge. www.cleanteq.com
ASI Mining and Enaex progress blast automation
utonomous Solutions, Inc (ASI): ASI Mining,
has collaborated with Enaex (subsidiary of
the Sigdo Koppers Group) to develop semi-
autonomous blasting functionality with ASI’s
autonomous command and control software, Mobius.
“Mobius continues to expand as an enabler of
autonomous applications in mining,” said Drew
Larsen, Director of Business Development for ASI
Mining. “It’s expanding its role as an integration
software platform for autonomous mobile
equipment, including haul trucks, dozers, drills,
etc, enabling them to work together within an
autonomous mining environment. We are excited
to add blasting equipment to that growing list
with the involvement of Enaex.”
ASI’s Mobius for Blasting application provides
capability for tele-op and autonomous navigation
of blast vehicles, including mobile manufacturing
unit and stemming vehicles. In addition, Mobius
has the potential to coordinate drill and blasting,
A
resulting in dynamically
tailored blast processes based
on actual “As-Drilled” hole
data, creating higher efficiency
and increased fragmentation.
Steps were taken to ensure
the autonomous blasting
solutions meet all required
safety, operational and
availability standards, given the
high risk of danger for both
workers and equipment.
“These projects were specially created to
further enhance the mining operation and its
resources by taking care of our greater value,
which are people,” said Juan Andrés Errázuriz,
CEO of the Enaex Group.
Enaex announced the joint robotic effort at a
recent event highlighting Mine-iTruck, a “mobile
manufacturing unit,” using teleoperation and
Miner tracking at Tizapa
“Es Tu Llave de regreso a casa” literally
translated means “Your key to return home.”
This is the central message of Group Penoles
Tizapa silver mine in Mexico to encourage their
workforce to embrace the new high-precision
tracking system designed and supplied by
Becker’s subsidiary Lasec Telecommunications.
The promotional video created by the mine to
roll-out the “Key Out” system shows a miner
leaving home, utilising the Becker Lasec system
during his daily work and returning safely home
to his family at the end of the day.
“We are proud that the safety of each and
every member of our workforce is paramount to
providing a happy, motivated and efficient
workforce” stated Ing Guillermo Hernandez
General Manager from Tizapa mine. “It is
important to us that every single member of the
team gets home to their families every day
without problems.”
autonomous features that operate the vehicle
autonomously inside an open pit mine. This
development is part of an ecosystem of
teleoperation and autonomous units that will
allow Enaex to improve workers’ safety by using
technology to perform tasks on risky mine
environments from a safe location.
www.asirobots.com; www.enaex.com
The system deployed at Tizapa is a state-of-
the-art tracking system using business
productivity software from Lasec and leading-
edge radio technology from German location-
module supplier nanotron. It uses time of flight
technology to deliver new levels of tracking
accuracy for the underground workforce,
providing a non-stop flow of data to locate each
worker and asset continuously with a 1 m to 5 m
resolution and a two seconds update rate.
Each member of the team wears a small
robust radi