Beneficiation Plant Construction & Design
Iron ore has been the dominant ore mined in Australia and PNG since the early1960s. Beneficiation is the extraction of the worthless gangue (pronounced ‘gang’) from pulverised metal, separating it into valuable, usable minerals. Fraser-Lever specialises in beneficiation plant construction and design with its leading engineers using extensive knowledge of the ore’s processing, location and mineralogical characteristics to create tailored solutions.
Leaders In Minerals Processing
Both Australia and PNG’s rich iron ore reserves and resources comprise both hematite and magnetite, often in remote locations and requiring tailored beneficiation plant designs. Fraser-Lever has a multidisciplinary team that specialises in beneficiation plant design and construction to optimise minerals processing, no matter how challenging its location, to ensure the commissioning of safe and constructible designs to drive productivity and performance for
our clients.
Case Study – Mt Moss Mine
The mine at Mt Moss, north west of Townsville, mines predominantly iron ore. However there is also a copper and zinc deposit at Mt Moss. The work carried out by Fraser-Lever has been for the iron ore beneficiation plant design and construction which has included a 3 stage crushing plant, grinding mills and both dry and wet beneficiation plants. The iron ore is magnetite and is sold as lump, fines or as metallurgical magnetite for use in coal prep plants.
The scope of work has included a 3 stage crushing plant, dry beneficiation using magnetic separators and this section has included conveyor systems feeding the magnetic separators and then conveyor systems conveying both product and waste away from the area and into various stockpiles.
The wet beneficiation plant is fed from a stockpile and consists of cyclones, screens, spirals and jigs to remove the fine nonmagnetic particles. This plant is also used to produce a weight coat product which is used to coat subsea pipeline.
For the metallurgical magnetite plant, the iron ores fines are fed into a grinding circuit which reduces the size fraction to approximately 45 microns via two small mills in series. The product is then filtered using a belt filter and air dried prior to shipment. The plant currently produces approximately 2,000,000 TPA of iron ore and some 500,000 TPA of weight coat.