More than merely the project’s immediate technical and engineering requirements fall under the purview of the metallurgists and engineers designing a new plant. Some of the broader issues that should be considered for your next design job are covered in this blog.
What are the rules for efficient plant design?
First rule: The most critical single item in process design is understanding the feed material the plant will be treating: What is the mine going to be sending to the mill, and how do each of these feed types react metallurgically?
Frequently, people drastically disregard the first rule. It’s a really fundamental one that everyone is aware of and acknowledges as being essential. Projects fail as a result of it since it just doesn’t always seem to get the attention it deserves.
Right from the time that an exploration project begins to look as if it might warrant development, a project metallurgist needs to start working with the project geologists: looking at core; going over geologic cross-sections; discussing with the geologists how you think different portions of the deposit might give different metallurgical results and, from them, how this correlates with their interpretation of the various geologic zones.
Every sample or composite selected for metallurgical testing should be the product of discussions between the project metallurgist and the geologic staff: overall composites chosen to represent (insofar as possible) the entire deposit, those for each of the major geologic/metallurgical zones, and those that represent smaller zones with potentially differing metallurgical characteristics.
Author: Doug Halbe
