Engineering & Mining Journal

JUL 2017

Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr

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PHOSPHATE 46 E&MJ; • JULY 2017 www.e-mj.com Satisfaction Guaranteed. sales@schurcoslurry.com Call Us for more info 9410 Florida Mining Boulevard East Jacksonville, Florida 32257 (904)356-6840 Unmatched price, service, and attention to detail. Since 1975 Schurco has been a driving force in the pumping industry. Slurry Pumps for Hard Rock Mining Manufacturing pumps and parts to be installed wherever solids are pumped all over the world. Made in the USA Serving global mining, processing, and general industry with reliable pumps, parts and service. Engineered, Built, and Tested in the USA. Starting at an elevation of around 650 m, the pipeline initially rises to a summit at around 760 m before descend- ing to Jorf Lasfar at less than 100 m above sea level. Hence most of the flow in the pipeline is through gravity, with choke valves installed at the lower end to help control the flow and pipeline pressure. The slurry pipeline has brought major changes to the processing and transport system that was previously in use. Fol- lowing crushing, washing and flotation, in the past the concentrates had to be dried before being stockpiled, then load- ed on to railway wagons for transport to the coast. The new system has done away with much of the materials handling, with wet concentrates from the washing plants only being thickened before being sent through the pipeline. OCP stated that the pipeline, which has a 38-million-mt/y nameplate capaci- ty, has cut its logistics cost by some 90% while saving 3 million m 3 /y of water and nearly 1 million mt of CO 2 emissions from its driers and transport operations. Handling the Pipeline Discharge One of the challenges facing OCP was how to transform the concentrate slurry leav- ing the pipeline into material with charac- teristics suitable for use as fertilizer-plant feed. The solution adopted, designed by FLSmidth, was to use well-established technology applied in an innovative way: the company installed deep cone thicken- ers between the pipeline and the leach- ing tanks where phosphate concentrate is converted into phosphoric acid. This en- abled OCP to reduce water consumption at the leach plant without adding water, and to reduce the energy used for dewa- tering at its mines. A paper on the technology, presented at the Symphos 2015 conference, provid- ed an overview of what is involved. Originally developed in the British coal industry, deep cone thickener tech- Installing the pipeline from Khouribga to Jorf Lasfar. Buried for its entire length, the pipeline has no effect on existing farming or transport routes. (Photo: Paterson & Cooke)

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