Copper concentrate slurry

Los Pelambres, Chile Geho 2 piston diaphragm pumps for 120 km pipeline transportation of copper concentrate slurry, 165 mYh at 150 bar... 

Minera Escondid, Chile Geho 1 piston diaphragm pum for copper concentrate slurry transportation, 295 mVh at 69 bar... 

Venton, P. B. and T. J. Boss. 1996. An Analysis of Wear Mechanisms in the 155 km OK Tedi Copper Concentrate Slurry Pipeline. Working paper, BHR Group, Hydrotransport, 533-548. 

Copper smelting Copper concentrate, siliceous flux Sulfur dioxide, particulate matter containing arsenic, antimony, cadmium, lead, mercury, and zinc Acid plant blowdown slurry/sludge, slag containing iron sulfides, silica... 

The method for solids transported in slurry form is called hydraulic transportation. Today there are long distance rubber lined pipelines carrying a variety of minerals such as coal, limestone, rock phosphate, copper concentrate, nickel refinery tailings, iron ore concentrates and tailings in various parts of the world. The most important slurry pipelines in operation around the world are given in Table 4.2. 

Materials that are currently being transported over long distances by pipelines include coal, iron ore, limestone and copper concentrates. For hydraulic transportation over long distances to be economic, it is necessary that solids are reduced to an optimum size. To keep solids in suspension, a certain minimum velocity must be maintained. This velocity increases with the size of the particle. The increased velocity has a bearing on the wear life of the rubber lining. Wear in a slurry pipe line system increases with the cube of the velocity as well as increasing directly with the particle size. 

The soft high clay taUing from a copper concentrator develops a Bingham viscosity of 400 mPa s at a weight concentration of 45% as well as a yield stress of 5 Pa. The slurry density is 1350 kg/m. The taUings flow rate is 1600 m /hr. If the maximum allowed slope is 1.5%, determine the suitable size for a half-full smooth HDPE pipe (i.e., ignore roughness factor). 

One of the largest copper mines in the world is operated by Minera Escondida Ltd. in Chile. The mine is located at an altitude of 3100 m (10,170 ft) above sea level. To transport the copper concentrate a pipeline was constructed. The pipeline uses a single pump station at the beginning of the pipeline and gravity throughout the remainder. The pipeline spans 165 km (103 mi) of mountainous terrain and transports the slurry at a cost of 1-1.5 dollars per metric ton. This style of transportation is considerably cheaper than the alternative option of trucks and railroads. Nordstrom valves were used on the pipeline (Bog-gan and Buckwalter, 1996). 

Not every slurry pipeUne requires thickeners. Dredging pipelines and phosphate rock pumping are both trarrsport low-concentration slurries. These slurries are pumped over shorter distances and use pipes and pumps that are physically relocated from one point to another. Some pipelines operate totally as an open channel flow, such as the tailings pipeUne of Southern Peru Copper in Peru. 

Slurry Electrolysis Process.TTie slurry electrolysis[16] is a novel method and early use for the extraction of copper concentrate. Qiudingfan etc who come from Beijing mining research institute present the process on slurry electrolysis for treating bismuth concentrate after deep research in treating copper concentrate by slurry electrolysis. This basic flow sheet are as Figure 3 showed. 

Liquid-Solids Separation. A slip stream of the circulating scrubbing liquid is sent to a decanter where it is separated into a concentrated slurry of copper-sulfide solids and a diluted purge stream of clear, acidic copper and ammonium sulfate solution. 

Roasting can be used instead of pressure leaching to regenerate the copper sulfate solution in Step 3. If roasting is selected, batch centrifugation instead of decantation is required to concentrate the copper sulfide slurry to effect a cleaner liquid-solids separation. Step 4, copper recovery, can also be accomplished by ion exchange. 

Sundararajan et al. [131] in 1999 calculated the slurry film thickness and hydrodynamic pressure in CMP by solving the Re5molds equation. The abrasive particles undergo rotational and linear motion in the shear flow. This motion of the abrasive particles enhances the dissolution rate of the surface by facilitating the liquid phase convective mass transfer of the dissolved copper species away from the wafer surface. It is proposed that the enhancement in the polish rate is directly proportional to the product of abrasive concentration and the shear stress on the wafer surface. Hence, the ratio of the polish rate with abrasive to the polish rate without abrasive can be written as... 

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