Metso Ouotec has added complete stirred mill plants to its range of concentrator plants, including patented features like hydrocyclones, samplers, analysers and slurry pumps for increased efficiency.
The units have been designed to produce finely ground products at the most cost-effective rate, with a total cost of ownership calculation available in conjunction with the plant.
Metso Outotec vice president of concentrator plants and process islands Subhashis Ghosh said these mills were good for the product and the planet.
“With industry-leading plant configurations, the Metso Outotec stirred mill plants feature frontrunning energy efficiency as well as a compact plant design that reduces footprint requirements and makes even the brownfield installations easy,” Ghosh said.
“All our stirred mills are part of the Planet Positive product portfolio, thanks to the sustainability benefits they deliver.”
“The solutions cover equipment and a comprehensive range of services, including parts, to ensure continuous operation of the plant at an optimal performance level.”
The portfolio includes the Vertmill, HIGmill, and Stirred Media Detritor (SMD) mills which all use gravity-induced and fluidised technologies.
In this way, secondary, tertiary, fine, ultrafine, regrind and lime slaking applications are all a possibility with these stirred mill plants.
The Vertmill, for example, can turn six millimetre products to finer than 20 microns, while using 40 per cent less energy than previous solutions.
Standard sizes on the range include chamber of up to 50,000 litres as well as up to 6500 kilowatts of installed power.
The plants are modular and pre-engineered for quick installation, of which Metso has performed over 500 worldwide.
One of which was at Cracow gold mine in Queensland – then owned by Evolution Mining in 2019.
The issue at Cracow was a large feed rate at low pulp density which the HIGmill was able to overcome.
By implementing the HIGmill at Cracow, Evolution saw a 1.62 per cent increase in gold recovery, setting a benchmark for the future of the operation.