OUTPUT AT OMV STILFONTEIN BOOSTED BY UPGRADES

A range of upgrades at OMV’s aggregate
and sand plant at Stilfontein in North West province has led to a 40% capacity
growth over just 18 months.

OMV’s plant processes quartzite rock dumps generated from shaft-sinking in the area to produce road construction material. While production capacity could previously be pushed to about 1,000 tonnes a day, the plant’s daily output now regularly reaches some 1,400 tonnes.

One of the first improvements was the
installation of a 100 metre overland conveyor extension from the dump to the
feed box. This improved productivity and overcame the loading constraints
experienced previously with the use of front-end loaders. A new feed box was also
installed – with its own six metre conveyor belt – to feed the overland
conveyor. This addition reduced excessive wear and tear, improving uptime on
that part of the plant.

Production has also been improved with
the incorporation of a vibrating pan feeder on the secondary crushing plant, regulating
the flow of material onto the conveyor belt. Supplied by Weir Minerals Africa and
installed by the OMV team, the feeder was the first step in the automation of
the secondary crushing process.

A programmable logic controller (PLC) and human machine interface (HMI) has been added to the circuit to automatically regulate the feed box. This allows the choke-feeding of the crusher, which is difficult to accomplish manually.

To raise sand production, a deep cone thickener was installed to extend fines separation. Among the benefits of the new fines separator is that it reduces the amount of saleable material discharged to tailings. It recovered about 10% of saleable product previously discarded into the tailings pond, and contributed to the plant’s sand production capacity rising from 25 to 33 tonnes per hour. This step also reduced the plant’s environmental impact by reducing the quantity of tailings.

Contact information

On
behalf of OMV .

+27
18 484 4388

www.omv.co.za

From
Coralynne & Associates

communicate@coralynne.co.za

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