Capital Equipment News June-July 2020

Weir Minerals’ integrated solution approach helped a customer increase production by 35%.

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The economic efficiency of the mining process hinges on the overall efficiency of all pieces of equipment deployed across the whole system

Pump efficiency According to Koorts, pumps are important in the overall efficiency of the plant. “A typical plant will have one or two mills, one or two large clusters of hydrocyclones, and hundreds of pumps,” he says. He adds that pumps generally consume a lot of energy. According to Koorts the largest power consumer in a typical plant setup is the furnace, followed by the mill and then the pumps. In some of the coal plants, he says, the largest consumer of power may be the pump. “To provide context, recently, at one of the coal projects where we were a supplier, the plant had an installed power of 2 MW. 1,6 MW was attributed just to pumps. Indeed, in most plants, the annual cost of energy the pumps consume outweighs the cost of the pumps

Like any other piece of equipment in the system, pumps, pipes and valves play a significant role in the overall efficiency of the processing plant

System optimisation can help all parties understand how every piece of equipment in the mining process affects overall economics

To complement its pump offering, Weir Minerals offers a wide range of pipes and valves

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CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS JUNE - JULY 2020