Modern Mining December 2021

SUPPLY CHAIN News

Verder Pumps partners with ProProcess on Anglo American project cous or corrosive liquids.

Verder Pumps South Africa, a market leader in advanced industrial pumping solutions, has been selected as one of the pre- ferred pump suppliers for Anglo American Platinum’s new Modular Fines Flotation Pilot Plant and supplied 16 pumps for vari- ous applications within the mobilised plant. In August 2020, the modular process plant supplier ProProcess was awarded an engineering, procurement, and construc- tion contract for Anglo American Platinum’s new Modular Fines Flotation Pilot Plant. As a preferred Anglo American vendor, Verder supplied peristaltic pumps to ProProcess on the project. This test facility for platinum concentrate flowsheet optimisation had to be designed with maximum road transportability in mind,

as it is earmarked to be moved around vari- ous concentrator sites owned by Anglo. To this end, the entire plant was fitted onto 16 road transportable ISO frame skids conforming to 40 foot marine container dimensions. The plant consists of more than 40 flotation cells (including a high intensity flotation cell), a mill, approximately 30 tanks (some agitated), approximately 50 pumps (including centrifugal slurry, peristaltic, and vertical spindle), blowers, compressors, and other items. Verderflex peristaltic pumps are man- ufactured in the EU within ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 18001 accredited facilities. The Verderflex positive displace- ment pumps are used with a large variety of fluids. The liquid is totally contained

The pumps selected on this project included the Verderflex VF65, Dura 25, Dura 35 and Dura 45. “Pilot plants have much less stringent equipment require- ments than production plants and this needs to be taken into consideration to avoid over designing the plant, thus unnec- essarily escalating the capital outlay. This required a lot of out of the box thinking and many new ideas and concepts were explored to ensure a built-for-purpose plant,” says Stefan van Dyk, project man- ager at ProProcess. According to Kean Southern, mechani- cal lead at ProProcess, the firm applied its specialised modular approach to the design of this plant for simplified site instal- lation and ease of transport. “All equipment is pre-mounted, piped up, and tested at our workshop before shipment to site. Once testing is complete, all that is required is for flexible, intercon- necting piping between the frames to be disconnected - which is made easy with the use of flanges and claw couplings. Given the numerous pipe sections run between frames, each connection of flexible hose needed to be tagged to ensure the correct hoses were reconnected during assem- bly. Since the plant arrives on site already partially assembled, site installation is a breeze,” says Southern. 

within a flexible hose or tube fit- ted inside the pump casing. The hose or tube is the pump’s only consumable part. This makes the Verderflex peristaltic hose and tube pumps the ideal solution for “difficult to pump” liquids or demanding applications. These range from smal ler vending machine OEM pump modules and precision metering tube pumps to the world’s largest high-pressure hose pumps pumping dense, solids-laden, mining thickener slurries and highly abrasive, vis-

Multiple pumps installed on site.

BME wins industry award for safe disposal of used oil

Omnia group company BME has been recognised by the Chemical and Allied Industries’ Association (CAIA) for its contribution to a cleaner environment – winning the CAIA Responsible Care initiative of the year award, in the company projects: Category A segment,

during an online award ceremony last week. The award was for BME’s incorporation of used oil as a base product for its emulsion explosives, removing the risk that this oil could contaminate water or soil. According to BME MD Ralf Hennecke, the initiative is part of the company’s ongoing environ- mental, social and governance (ESG) commitment. “On the environmental side, our treatment and disposal of used oil in this way reduces risk and improves regulatory compliance,” says Hennecke. “The positive social impact is through our engage- ment of small independent enterprises to collect the used oil.” He adds that the used oil initiative also included a strong gov- ernance aspect, by meeting stakeholder requirements in terms of responsible waste management systems. Ramesh Dhoorgapersadh, BME’s GM for Safety, Health, Environment and Quality (SHEQ), said the initiative reflects the company’s close collaboration with customers – where used oil from large mining customers was also collected and utilised for re- purposing and responsible disposal through the blasting process. These partnerships have been initiated in Africa and are being rolled out to BME’s global network of operations. 

From left: BME marketing manager Michelle Fedder, BME MD Ralf Hennecke and Ramesh Dhoorgapersadh, BME’s SHEQ GM.

34  MODERN MINING  December 2021