Ore sorting_Preconcentration Plant at Gold Mine Navachab in Namibia

Описание: When cost margins were eating away the mine’s profits, Navachab gold mine started to employ a new technology in mining: sensor-based ore sorting should upgrade the gold grade and remove useless material that will not burden on the following processes and should result in cost savings. That was six years ago.
Since 2016 two STEINERT XSS-T X-ray transmission bulk sorting systems are installed in a 200tph production plant to upgrade the low grade stockpile material. “What has amazed us is, that the machine is very robust. We are getting a good reliability on the units and 80-90% running time is absolutely possible”, Hildebrand Wilhelm (Ore processing manager) says. “I think it is a challenge to pursue new technologies in a very conservative mining environment. It is very important that you are confident of the people that you work with.” Navachab gold mine took risk and learned that with Steinert’s capabilities it was possible to innovate in the mining industry, and was able to cut processing costs. “We have set up the plants such that we get about a 25% mass-pull to concentrate and we get an average of 70% gold recovery with this kind of set up – that makes sense to us. That is a profitable operation. We treat the material to the XRT machines and in general we double the grade of our input material and that is where the value is generated because then with the doubled grade the material can be profitably treated by the processes that come after that.”