Technology Research and Development
Global development of Metallurgical process technology has increasingly focussed on large scale processing with excellent innovations released onto the market in recent times.
Study of the complex process flow sheets of plants in operation 100 years ago demonstrates a clear difference to the simple flow sheets of large scale process plants today. The small plants operated by large companies 100 years ago achieved high recovery of metals and often achieved 94% recovery in oxide and sulphide ores. Modern plants generally aim for a recovery of 85% of the target metal.
We were compelled to revisit the old metallurgical pathways if we were to successfully develop small scaled processing achieving high recoveries. We had the advantage of modern materials of construction and could draw on the recent advances in technology for possible inclusion in processing.
Research and development by our company has been ongoing since the company formed in 1986 with developments resulting from problems encountered as specific ore was assessed for metallurgy. We have not marketed the developments and simply install them in a plant.
The results of our R&D do have wider application and include:
- Instrumental in development of a continuous Jig spigot borne out of a “Pope” brand water sprinkler used by many Australian households for watering lawns
- Separation of fine particles from dry grinding of natural stone for pigment. This was aided by the then installation of fine size measuring equipment at a University in Adelaide, South Australia
- The design of the Solvent Extraction plant for the Whim Creek project caused development of Oil/ Water separation technology. This differs from current processes where this works better at large scale with application to major spills such as marine disasters. Uni-SA is assisting the trialling of this technology
- Acid Mine Drainage is a major problem for large operations with waste dumps and tailings producing acid and potentially releasing soluble metals into the environment. Our consulting work on projects producing AMD throughout Australia over 20 years resulted in a single step process to allow discharge of clean water into the environment. The finalisation of this process is recent with a pilot plant built and destined to be installed at the Redbank Mine in the Northern territory, Australia.
- Gold extraction technology. This is very complex for our company and has resulted in extending research in areas proposed 100 years ago but limited by construction materials. Installation of some of this development has resulted in application for R&D grants for a South Australian company. Areas of R&D efforts include:
- Work on accurate assaying of coarse gold in ores
- Work on back-loading of gold on iron in leach solutions
- Metallurgical pathway options that allow coating of gold rendering the gold irrecoverable
- Metallurgical pathways resulting in reduced leach times
- Development of a continuous rotary precipitator for the high grade leach solutions exiting the Kanmantoo leach paddocks had a secondary and unexpected effect of producing strange shaped copper metal crystals. This is of interest only but did result in visits from Universities in China and Europe. Photos are located on this site that may be of interest.
- Underground mining research. We are focussing on underground mining of narrow veins combining air-leg mining with diesel equipment to support small scale mining operation.