The ASIA Miner - Reporting Important Issues to Mining Companies in the Asia Pacific Region
Issue link: https://asiaminer.epubxp.com/i/632337
50 | ASIA Miner | Volume 13 • Issue 1 | 2016 Supplier News DESPITE diffcult industry conditions, mines are showing increasing in- terest in the benefts of new models of FX-series lightweight steel dump bodies developed and marketed by Australian company Duratray. Mantoverde, an Anglo American open-pit copper mine in the Chilean Coastal Cordillera, required a cost-effective solution to add to its feet of haul trucks and front loaders while guaranteeing availability close to 100%. Following the mining methods and mine strategy, feet managers at Mantoverde were looking for dump body solutions to improve the time spent in operation while minimising maintenance. Duratray then offered a lightweight, high capacity dump body ca- pable of carrying payloads above 149 tonnes with the objective of maximizing movement of waste material hence increasing the mine's production capacity. The project represents the expansion of existing relationships with Anglo American group by supplying Duratray FX-series steel dump bodies as an affordable and cost-effective solution for Mantoverde, while ensuring low levels of maintenance as requested. As a result, a new feet of 10 FX-series steel dump bodies for existing Caterpillar-785C trucks was acquired and was recently commissioned at the site. This frst feet of FX-series Duratrays for Mantoverde increased the number of trays in operation across Anglo American's mine sites in South America and South Africa to more than 100 units. A similar case occurred at one of the large coal mines in the Bowen Basin coal region of Queensland, Australia, where a long-term cus- tomer of Duratray recently acquired a signifcant feet of FX steel trays for its operations. Despite the current situation with commodity prices, this mine was seeking for an affordable alternative to improve mining capacity. The mine released a tender among many suppliers of mining equipment and decided to select the FX-series Duratray coal bodies for the proj- ect. Duratray worked with the mine maintenance and engineers team closely to develop a truly light dump body with the main objective of reducing maintenance costs and increasing payload capacity for haul- ing coking coal, which is a very low density material. Subsequently the mine acquired a feet of fve Duratray FX steel bodies, the last of which was commissioned during the last week of May 2015. TRONOX Western Australia operates the world's largest fully integrated titanium ore and titanium dioxide (rutile) project, covering mining of mineral sands through extraction and upgrading to obtain TiO2 pigment. The project is also a major producer of zircon. Rutile and zircon are loaded into bulk bags at Tronox's Henderson shipping facility and transported in shipping containers to Fre- mantle port for export and domestic use. The loading of bulk bags had become a bottleneck which has been remedied by a special bulk bag flling station from Flexicon Corporation Australia. The bagging operation was largely a man- ual process in which a forklift held the bag while a second forklift held a V-shaped fun- nel or hopper over the bag and a front-end loader dropped ore through the funnel into the bag. When the bag was nearly full it was weighed and the remaining material added by hand. Tronox dramatically improved bulk bag flling with a heavy-duty skid-mounted mo- bile bulk bag flling station that integrates a 2.5-cubic-metre capacity hopper, a 4.5 metre-long steel tube screw conveyor and a Twin-Centrepost bulk bag fller. The flling station stands 3.3 metres at its highest point and is 3.6 metres long. It was engineered and supplied by Flexicon. The unit doubles output per operator over the former method, while improving health and safety since flling is enclosed and essential- ly dust-free. Formerly, three employees flled about 80 bags in a 10-hour day. Current- ly, two employees fll about 90 bags in an 8-hour day. The Flexicon Twin-Centrepost design with two on-centre posts maximises strength, which is essential since the unit must fll ma- terial of differing weights - 1000kg, 1750kg and 2000kg. The basic design consists of two steel posts, which support a fll head and pneumatically-retractable hooks on which the bag hangs. Enclosing the bulk bag fller and supporting the 4.5 metre-long tubular conveyor is the station's heavy-duty outer frame. The bulk bag flling station moves between the zircon and rutile flling operations, which are about 800 metres apart. Due to its rela- tively small footprint, the skid-mounted sys- tem can be moved using a 3-ton forklift. The hopper can hold 6.4-7.3 tonnes of zircon or 4.5-5.4 tonnes of rutile. During fll- ing, a front-end loader empties material into the hopper while the conveyor transports it 4.5 metres at an incline of 40 degrees be- fore it gravity feeds through the conveyor outlet, transition adapter and telescoping steel downspout into the bulk bag. Flexicon Australia's bulk bag flling station has solved a bottleneck issue at Tronox's mineral sands facility in Western Australia. Flexicon has it in the bag for Tronox Lightweight steel dump bodies designed and manufactured by Duratray. Interest in lightweight dump bodies