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Cutting it fine – moisture measurement

The Pilbara is iron ore.

The region is a story of massive material movement and bulk handling.

In moving iron ore, every hour wasted can cost a company thousands; so even when companies are facing an issue as seemingly simple as wet iron ore fines it seriously harm a miner's bottom line.

If a shipment of iron fines is suspected to be wet, the ship must stay in port until they are dried, or face the potentially dangerous problem of these fines turning into a slurry during transportation – a slurry which has been known to overbalance and roll transport vessel, putting them at risk of capsizing.

The best way to avoid this is to monitor and recognise the moisture levels in these fines to begin with.

However current methods are either too time consuming or require high level technical knowledge.

Speaking to Aidan Harmon and Andrew Game from JW Industrial Instruments, they told Australian Mining "typically moisture measuring instruments take between three and eight hours to get a result, which is a massive cost in time for miners".

In addition to this other methods which use radiation to measure moisture content, though slightly faster, are more likely to draw environmental criticism, on top of the need for its results to be taken to a laboratory. 

So what can be done?

JW has released MoistTech's new CCS 3000 online continuous moisture analysis system which it says cuts the time down from hours to mere seconds.

Already on trial with an iron ore miner in the Pilbara, this non-hazardous approach emits rapid energy pulses 7000 times per second from a specifically designed energy source onto the fines using an optimised optical design using forward optical reflection. 

This is returned in a beam of collimated energy CE to its detection system.

By using this "miners can get an instantaneous measurement, as it can give a reading nearly every second" prior to the material being loaded on the ship.

This also saves time as wet ore does not have to sit in the ship and wait to dry, instead being able to be dried out prior to loading.

The technology is designed "to be a policeman, it can stop the material from being wet but here there is a big slug of wet material going then this technology can pick it up".

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