PRODUCT News
62
MODERN MINING
May 2014
With the price of diamonds rising, a special-
ised 5 t/h Dense Media Separation (DMS)
pilot sampling plant designed by SNC-
Lavalin’s South African office could pave
the way for the increasing reclamation of
very fine diamonds from dump material.
The innovative containerised plant
was ordered for deployment at a mine in
Russia. It is the third order that has been
placed with SNC-Lavalin’s South African
office in recent times for this region.
“The new 5 t/h DMS sampling plant has
SNC-Lavalin designs innovative DMS plant
been designed to process the fine dump
material previously generated by the oper-
ation’s autogenous grinding (AG) mill,”says
Roger Rousseau, Manager of the modular
group at SNC-Lavalin’s South African office.
“The material contains a high amount of
minus 0,5 mm materials, mostly clay and
other fines, and our scope was to treat
material fromminus 2 mm to plus 0,5 mm.
“This was handled as a fast track project
because we needed to ship the contai-
nerised plant to site before the onset of
winter in the northern hemisphere.
However, since winter temperatures in
this far eastern region of Asia drop as low
as minus 60 deg C, the recovery plant will
only operate during the summer months.”
The full scope of the order involved the
design, manufacture and commissioning of
the 5 t/h pilot plant, comprising front-end
scrubbing and screening and a DMS plant
to recover diamonds from alluvial and kim-
berlitic deposits in the required range.
The plant was designed and executed
by a dedicated modular team at the
Johannesburg office. This specialised team
was established three years ago to meet
the increasing market demand for com-
pact plants that can be split into smaller
sections and transported in containers to
all parts of the world. The DMS sampling
plant was skid mounted and shipped to
site in two containers.
Rousseau comments that the trend
towards containerising operational plant
equipment has a number of advantages,
including simplified logistics and a reduc-
tion of the time spent on site, since the
equipment can be cold commissioned
at the SNC-Lavalin yard before being
despatched.
“The modular team is made up of highly
skilled professionals who are able to multi-
task on any given project,” Rousseau adds.
“This invariably creates a price advantage
for SNC-Lavalin when tendering for smaller
projects.”
Alistair McKay, SNC Lavalin, tel (+27 11) 535-4906
Two views of the 5 t/h pilot sampling plant designed by
SNC-Lavalin.
