An INTERNATIONAL MINING Supplement
March 2018
PASTE
TAILINGS MANAGEMENT
The concept of bolted thickeners, an example of which from FLSmidth is on this year’ s Paste Supplement cover, is growing in popularity. This is a fit-forpurpose, high quality dewatering solution with reduced project construction risk and duration. www. flsmidth. com
International Mining 2 Claridge Court, Lower Kings Road Berkhamsted, Herts. HP4 2AF, UK Tel: + 44( 0) 1442 870 829 Fax + 44( 0) 1442 870 617 www. im-mining. com
An INTERNATIONAL MINING supplement
PASTE
TAILINGS MANAGEMENT
IFC Schwing Bioset has helped Pinos Altos expand its paste plant with the help of a piston pump
P1 Chris Lee and Craig Vucinovich of Golder Associates discuss the safe, rapid and low cost depressurisation of paste backfill pipelines
P3 Jerold Johnson of WesTech Engineering, Inc outlines the water benefits from using paste type thickeners
P5 The Wirth Pump Monitoring System enables early detection of critical issues allowing for preventive and condition based maintenance
P6 An Australian nickel refinery upgraded its pressure acid leach thickener by installing a new SmartDiver ® system from Precision Light and Air Australia
P8 McLanahan Corporation reviews types of thickeners and highlights that success of a thickening system requires proper understanding of the tailings
P10 FLSmidth explains how bolted thickeners help to reduce project construction risk and duration
P11 Erik Vlot and Ron Keijers of Weir Minerals Netherlands review the new GEHO ® DHT pump constant flow / pulsation free option
A pump for growth at Pinos Altos
John Brown, Mining Sales Engineer and Jose Luis Diaz, Latin America Regional Sales Manager at Schwing Bioset outline how the Pinos Altos mine has been able to expand its paste plant with the help of a piston pump
The Pinos Altos gold / silver mine is located in northern Mexico in the mountains west of Chihuahua and is owned by Agnico Eagle. With more than eight years of operation utilising both conventional open pit and underground paste backfill mining techniques, the mine now is set to increase its underground production to its design capacities. The major components of this expansion include increasing the hoisting capacity as well as increasing the capacity of the paste plant. The key element in the expansion of the paste plant is the piston pump utilised to transport the paste back underground to the stopes.
Pinos Altos has been successfully using a Schwing Bioset KSP 140 pump with a capacity of 80 m 3 / h since the inception of the project nearly a decade ago. The solid performance and low operating and maintenance requirements made the selection of a larger KSP 220 piston
pump from Schwing Bioset for the plant expansion project an easy decision.
Schwing Bioset delivered the new KSP 220 pump and a 1,000 HP hydraulic power unit in July 2017. Its technicians returned to Pinos Altos in November 2017 to commission the new equipment to complete this phase of the project. Design discharge capacity for the paste plant has increased to 110 m 3 / h and operates with extremely high efficiencies. The new pump is equipped with Schwing Bioset’ s proprietary Ideal Control Circuit( ICC), which reduces paste flow velocity changes at the end of each pumping stroke to
mitigate the pressure surges commonly seen in paste pipelines and provide a more smoothly operating pumping system.
The new pump transfers paste approximately 2.1 km underground at which point it is distributed to the appropriate stopes up to another 600 m at an angle of inclination up to 32 degrees. This system is remotely controlled from the existing operations room on the surface and has allowed the operating capacity of the paste plant to increase by 30 %, meeting all the projections from the beginning of the project.
The new KSP 220 pump from Schwing Bioset