The first zinc cathode was pulled from the
electrowinning cells in the tank house at Skorpion Zinc’s training
facility site near Rosh Pinah in southern Namibia recently. Anglo Base
Metals included this facility in the project to ensure the technical
skills required to operate the process could be developed and learned
by plant management and supervisory staff. It will be used by Skorpion’s
operational personnel to train Namibian recruits and other operators
in all aspects of the novel, zinc refining, flow sheet.
SPJV, a joint venture between
BATEMAN and SNC LAVALIN, together with the owner’s team, undertook
the design, procurement, construction and commissioning of the facility,
a 1/1200 scale replica of the main refinery which is due to be commissioned
during the latter part of 2002.
It includes all of the main
refinery’s hydrometallurgical unit operations, from milling through
leaching to neutralisation for iron removal, thickening, re-acidification,
residue belt filtration, zinc recovery from the wash liquor via basic
zinc-sulphate precipitation, effluent treatment, sand filtration, solvent
extraction and electrowinning. It also includes all the reagent-handling
facilities and utilities such as an electrode boiler plant, reverse-osmosis
plant, compressed-air facility, concentrated sulphuric-acid circuit,
flocculant circuits and cooling towers necessary to operate the facility.
At the training facility, 3,6
t of ore is processed daily to produce 360 kg/day of special high-grade
(SHG) zinc cathode using the same solvent-extraction process as that
to be used in the main refinery.
It is fully automated using
the same PLC (programmable logic control) and SCADA (supervisory control
and data acquisition) systems that are to be used on the main refinery.
Much of the development of the latter’s face plates was
done during the design of the training facility.
The facility was designed, procured, constructed and
water commissioned in 12 months by a team consisting of 12 SPJV staff;
with only three working on the project full time, the remainder of the
team spending less than 20 % of their time on the project. The first
zinc was produced two months later.The budget was R34,85M with the final
cost being R29M.
To date, 25 t of SHG zinc cathode has been produced
by the training facility. Training has also progressed well and 130
operators, none of which had previously seen a pump, let alone a chemical
process plant, have been trained for duties on the main refinery when
it is commissioned.
More information may be obtained from:
Steve Burks, Managing Director, Bateman Metals,
on
+27-11-899-2756 or email base@batemanengineering.com
Richard Klue, Business Manager, Zinc, on
+27-11-899-2651 or email base@batemanengineering.com
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