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Increasing productivity and quality of the final concentrate at Stoilensky Mining and Processing Plant

Stoilensky Mining and Processing Plant is a part of NLMK Group and is engaged in comprehensive processing of iron ore raw materials. As part of the customer's development strategy to increase the capacity of Stoilensky Mining and Processing Plant from 43 to 47 million tons of raw ore, Sever Minerals engineers came up with a unique solution.

Sever Minerals team developed a project to increase productivity and product quality by using gravity spiral separation process and involving weakly magnetic iron, which was previously lost with the tailings (waste from mineral processing, consisting mainly of waste rock, i. e., with a minimal content of useful component) of the wet magnetic separation in the processing.

The idea of using spiral separators is novel for the iron ore industry. They are mainly used at gold mines to isolate free gold. Sever Minerals pioneered the application of such process on iron ore in a project for Olenegorsk and Processing Plant and proved the stated effectiveness of this solution.

The gravity separation process depends on the quality of the feed unique to each deposit, including the specific gravity of the particles, mineral and chemical composition thereof. This process has not been used at the customer’s facility ever before, and production testing is a prerequisite for the customer. Sever Minerals gave the customer the opportunity to test the process in-house.

Increasing productivity and quality of the final concentrate due to the use of gravity spiral separation process.

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Project

Increasing productivity and quality of the final concentrate due to the use of gravity spiral separation process.

“The objective of the tests is to confirm the effectiveness of the process under real operating conditions. We have developed equipment that is as close to real operating conditions as possible. This solution is a small modular plant, completely designed, configured and installed by Sever Minerals engineers,” says the lead engineer of the Classification and Separation department.

The mobile pilot plant makes it possible to combine and implement various process schemes and to move it relatively quickly to other plants for similar tests.

The unit consists of three Multotec spiral separators, three Metso VT-50 vertical pumps with sump tanks and branch pipes. An additional fourth tail tank allows the collection of the resulting product and its return to the process without losing the customer’s raw material at the time of testing. The solution also includes WEG electric motors and Danfoss frequency converters.

The design is easy to maintain: it is connected to the water supply of the factory, equipped with flushing devices and hydraulic slurry mixers in sump tanks. Due to the design features of the unit, it is possible to provide long-term autonomous operation for the formation and sampling of the submitted feed.

Installed equipment

  1. Multotec SC20, Multotec SC21, Multotec HX5 spiral separators
  2. three vertical Metso VT-50 pumps with sump tanks and branch pipes
  3. Weg electric motors
  4. Danfoss frequency converters