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A common problem with minerals processing is the relative unpredictability of the machinery involved.

If a machine breaks down and unplanned maintenance has to take place, it results in an unexpected and often prolonged shutdown of the crushing plant.

Metso Minerals has been working to improve servicing and maintenance at KCGM’s Crushing and Materials Handling Facility at Fimiston Plant in Kalgoorlie.

According to Metso Minerals’ service manager for the western region Nick Puca, KCGM wanted to not only regulate and monitor the life-cycle of the plant’s machinery and ensure greater efficiency, but also increase throughput at the plant.

“It basically started with them wanting to get more ore, especially harder ore,” he told Australian Mining.

The first decision was to upgrade the plant’s primary crusher so that it could accommodate greater volumes of harder minerals.

“We suggested to them that we bring the crusher up to what we call a Mk2 model, which is of course an upgrade from Mk1,” Puca said.

“The new machine allows for a bigger engine and different gears to be fitted.

“This allows for a higher input, which allows for crushability better and improves the overall throughput of the machine.”

Wear materials

A Mill’s liners are often subject to wear.

They are especially important to monitor because unexpected breakages can result in unplanned maintenance, which leads to costly and time consuming unplanned shutdowns.

According to Puca, having the correct liners for the correct materials is important to their life cycle.

“Depending on what you are crushing you need to do both the abrasive index and the hardness index of the materials and have the appropriate liners,” he said.

In order to achieve a more specific life cycle for the liners at the Fimiston Plant, Metso worked with different liners for different ores before settling on the one that best suited their needs.

“Liners are often made out of manganese, which will start hardening after impact,” he said.

“With others there is erosive wear, which is a lot of fine material going through, so there is a need for material that doesn’t erode.

“So the move is made to white irons and alloys.”

Through a process of testing Metso changed the materials used for the liners, which resulted in an improved life span for the wear materials.

“We have gone from manganese to alloys, and then we have gone from alloys to white irons,” Puca said.

“The white alloys are hard and more brittle, but they give it greater life and greater throughput.”

It is this more precise life and increased throughput that improves overall efficiency at the crushing plant.

“At the end of the day a longer lifespan and improved throughput reduces costs because there are fewer shutdowns, greater productivity and lower costs per tonne,” Puca said.

Maintenance

A significant part of the life-cycle work being done by Metso at the Fimiston Plant is reducing the unplanned maintenance and shutdowns.

“That is what the contract between Metso and KCGM is all about,” Puca said.

Maintenance is now done at scheduled times after any faults have been detected. This means that shutdowns are scheduled and work during them can be done with greater efficiency.

“It is about picking them up prior to any faults occurring and making sure that if there is a leak or there is an issue, it is planned on any available downtime,” Puca said.

“The work is done during that planned downtime rather than having to have an unplanned shutdown.”

According to Metso’s onsite project manager Andre Swart, it is important for the company to take steps to address problems before they have to be told by KCGM.

“The customer rarely needs to come to us to ask questions as we like to be proactive and solve any queries before they are asked,” he said.

According to Metso, optimising the wear materials in the primary crusher at Fimiston has increased the life of the machine by 300% between liner changes, which has increased the availability of the crusher to more than 95% between shutdowns.

Predictive life spans of wear materials has not only enabled the Fimiston plant’s machinery to improve throughput, but also for the plant itself to run more efficiently.

“We predict when the changes are to happen rather than when the machinery is old or falling to bits,” Puca said.

“It is planned and you can have your labour sources available and it is in a controlled environment as opposed to a reactive environment where everything is helter-skelter.

“We are able to plan it totally.”

Metso

08 9420 5578

www.metso.com.au

minerals.info@metso.com

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