Cradle to grave
Tyres in a time of scarcity
The Department of Mineral Resources
(DMR) lists 881 quarrying operations
located throughout South Africa.
In 2016, 92.2 million tonnes of
mined aggregate, clay, natural sand,
dimension stone, and limestone to
the value of R9.4-billion were sold
locally, while the value of exports of
quarry products reached USD61.5-
million. (https://www.prnewswire.
com/news-releases/stone-quarrying-
clay-and-sandpits-in-south-
africa-2017-300539976.html)
Every day, dozens of short haul
dump trucks amble from the breaking
and loading site to the first crushing
site, carrying those millions of tonnes
of payload — the rock that will
eventually become the paths, roads,
and bridges we all traverse.
If the average resident does not
realise the intense, lengthy process that
aggregates like limestone, for example, go
through to become the familiar cement sidewalks, even more so, they would not
realise the vital role that mining tyres
play along the way.
In quarrying, the tyres on all the
equipment are key to ensure that the
product gets mined and transported to
the crushers until the finished product
is ready for industry. Tyres used in
quarries are placed under severe stress,
and it is important that they always
perform optimally.
Eight years after Kal Tire was
established in South Africa, and having
acquired Tyre Corporation in 2017,
the company now has more than 1 100
team members providing mining tyre
maintenance and supply across 80 South
African mine sites.
Considering training standards, a
scarcity of tyres, and customers’ need
for value, Kal Tire is demonstrating
how advanced training and tyre
maintenance go a long way to meeting
customer expectations. In a bid to reduce injuries and fatalities,
South Africa’s mining bodies have
developed policies that insist workers are
sufficiently trained and certified before
even entering a mine site. For Kal Tire,
an international company with more
than 6 500 team members serving mine
sites across five continents, consistency
and high training standards are key.
As the Kal Tire Mining Tire
Group began orientation with Tyre
Corporation team members, the
company rolled out waves of training
that reached even the most remote
corners of South Africa to ensure
everyone was trained to both the
country and Kal Tire’s standards. It was
also an excellent opportunity for Kal
Tire to introduce new team members
to the company’s AIMS: seven guiding
principles that define who Kal Tire
is, and to instil the Kal Tire values,
describing everything from safety and
quality to relationships and integrity.
(usually less than a minute), which
results in a long lifetime for the
adsorbent material.
Recent advances in adsorption
technology and system design by Linde
Engineering have enabled oxygen
VPSA plants to become less expensive,
more power-efficient, and smaller in
size. The result is that an oxygen VPSA
system offers a very cost-competitive,
flexible oxygen supply solution that
has demonstrated excellent results in
a variety of commercial applications
in the mining, chemical, and refining
industries on a global basis.
For low-purity (<95%) applications
with flow rates from 10 to 342 tonnes per day, which are the typical
requirements for gold mining
applications, VPSA has proven to be
the most cost-effective solution. The
VPSA plants have a very low specific
energy consumption and operate at
low pressure, with booster compressor
to achieve customer pressure demands.
They offer an extremely competitive
capital and operating cost per tonne
of oxygen produced. VPSA plants
provide oxygen on demand with
easy turndown from 0 to 100%, have
high availability, are fully automatic,
and can be remote controlled and
monitored. Furthermore, VPSA plants
are standardised with a modular construction, enabling reduced field
construction and commissioning time.
As part of the Goldox PSO, Afrox
can also offer a downstream oxygen
management service where Afrox
operates and maintains the oxygen
injection equipment to achieve the
desired dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in
the leach as required, thereby freeing up
the plant metallurgists to concentrate on
managing the gold plant.
“The supply of oxygen to the gold leach
needs to be supplemented by an efficient
injection system to ensure optimum
oxygen utilisation in the slurry, otherwise
the benefit of the oxygen injection may be
limited,” explains De Zoeten.
MAY 2018 MINING MIRROR
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