McLanahan shows that a small solution is sometimes all it takes to change the way an industry works.
In an industry as complex as mining, even the smallest innovations can save millions. Whether it’s cutting downtime or reducing the footprint of tailings facilities, new solutions are often redefining what efficiency and responsibility look like.
McLanahan is continuing to help the industry with its new patents-pending QUICKCHANGE filter cloth system, and its drive to tackle one of mining’s toughest long-term challenges: tailings management.
Anyone who has worked with filter presses will likely say that changing filter cloths has always been a headache. With a crane needed to lift cloths weighing little more than 2.25kg, the process is slow, awkward and potentially unsafe.
Workers have to clamber onto machines or climb inside them, taking 20 minutes or more just to swap out a single cloth.
Multiply that by hundreds of plates, and the downtime adds up fast.
The QUICKCHANGE system has turned that problem on its head with a new design that uses a slot-and-slide mechanism. McLanahan executive vice president of sales and business development Corey Jenson described the new system as a complete rethink of the process.
“The QUICKCHANGE is basically completely reimagining how you change the filter cloth,” he said.
“You don’t need cranes, you don’t need any special lifting equipment, and you can change the filter cloth in less than a minute without getting inside or on top of the filter press.”
The impact is immediate. While exhibiting at recent trade shows, McLanahan has found visitors who had spent years battling with filter presses were able to successfully swap cloths in less than a minute on their very first attempt. Some competitive souls have managed the change in just 13 seconds.
“Meeting anybody who’s had a filter press with 200 plates on a machine, and each one takes 20 minutes to change, they walk by the booth and see this changing in less than a minute, they were stopping in their tracks,” Jenson said.
The design also makes inspections significantly easier, reducing the risk of plate damage when cloths are left too long. Operators can even replace one side of the cloth if it’s damaged, instead of discarding both.
With reinforced wear areas, McLanahan said the system extends cloth life by up to 50 per cent, driving down costs and waste.
A shorter tail
For all the excitement around QUICKCHANGE, McLanahan’s focus stretches beyond equipment efficiency to one of mining’s greatest responsibilities: what happens to the material left behind.
Tailings have historically been stored in vast ponds or dams that can stretch for kilometres.
“There’s increasing social expectation for how we responsibly deal with, manage, store, reprocess and reuse tailings,” McLanahan director of global process engineering Scott O’Brien said.
“It’s a risk on the balance sheet. Suddenly, it’s got an economic implication. So can we reduce that risk? Can we do that better, more efficiently, more effectively for the environment?”
The answer lies in dewatering. By removing water from tailings, waste can be turned into a more stable material that can be stacked, rather than left as slurry.
McLanahan’s thickeners and filter presses are designed to make this possible, and each step along the way squeeze out more water, creating a smaller footprint and a safer storage solution.
Dry stacking is also gaining ground. Unlike tailings ponds, dry stacks minimise water risk and reduce land requirements. And in especially vast places like Western Australia, that can translate into significant cost savings on lease fees.
Water scarcity adds another layer of urgency. Mines increasingly compete with agriculture and communities for limited supplies. The ability to recover and reuse water from tailings gives miners a social licence advantage and can even dictate the size of a project.
“The more efficiently you can use it, the better you can recover it, the more times you can reuse it,” O’Brien said. “That has an influence on permits and on how much ore you can even process.”
The shift comes at a pivotal time. The world is demanding more copper, lithium, graphite and rare earths to power the energy transition, but it is also demanding higher environmental standards.
“To implement a greener energy environment needs a lot of mining,” O’Brien said. “But if you don’t manage tailings, you won’t be mining at all.”
McLanahan’s recent innovation shows how clever engineering and long-term thinking can reshape an industry often accused of being slow to change.
The QUICKCHANGE system makes filter cloth maintenance faster, safer and cheaper, while the company’s work in tailings management reflects a broader recognition that mining’s future depends on solving its waste problem.
This feature appeared in the December issue of Australian Mining magazine.