The front-end ore preparation circuit of the NLK2 plant at Miba. The run-of-mine ore is delivered to a 70 t single-feed bin (the brown-coloured unit in the top left-hand corner of the picture). It then passes through a jaw crusher onto an apron-feeder and then up a troughed-belt conveyor to the scrubbing and screening circuit (in the centre of the picture).

Here the stream of ore is split in two and the clay material is removed using two streams of two Bateman Roller-Supported Scrubbers (the blue-coloured horizontal cylinders), each with a capacity of about 200 t/h. The scrubbed material is then sized by dual double-deck screens.

The re-crush or secondary-crusher circuit at Miba. The preparation circuit is out of sight on the right of this picture.

The oversize material from the screens is conveyed to the top of the re-crush circuit and enters a 50 t surge bin (behind the 150 t DMS surge bin). The gyratory crusher is fed by a variable speed belt feeder. The re-crushed material is returned to the second scrubber stage in the preparation circuit by the inclined conveyor in the front right of the picture.

The fine material from the screening circuit is conveyed to the DMS surge bin and from there by two feed conveyors (emerging from the back of the re-crush circuit) to the DMS circuit (back right-hand side of the picture).

The DMS circuit, as seen from the top of the ore-preparation circuit. It consists of a 200 t/h twin-stream new-generation DMS module, each stream consisting of feed-preparation screens, mixing boxes and cyclones into which the slurries containing the diamonds are pumped at high pressure to separate the more dense material, containing the diamonds, and the light material. The latter goes to the float screen and is conveyed onto a tailings conveyor which links with the existing tailings system.

The dense material passes through the sinks screens and is conveyed to a 100 t concentrate bin (on the far right of the picture). The diamond concentrate from the bin is transported by truck to the central diamond-recovery plant.

New diamond-recovery plant installed at Miba in DRC

NLK2, the 400 t/h kimberlite-processing plant ordered by Miba, has been successfully commissioned by BATEMAN in Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The commissioning was completed in two-and-a-half weeks by a BATEMAN team of process, equipment and electrical engineers.

The plant comprises a front-end ore-preparation circuit, a re-crushing circuit and two new-generation twin-stream mega 200 t/h dense-media separation (DMS) modules. The entire plant was fabricated in various workshops in the Reef area of South Africa. The mega DMS modules were pre-assembled and tested in the works prior to dismantling and packing for transport to the DRC.

The complete plant was transported in 90 DZ rail wagons from the Kazerne rail siding in South Africa, through Zimbabwe and Zambia, to the Mwene-Ditu mine siding in the DRC, some 100 km from the Miba mine at Mbuji Mayi. Some 800 t were railed to the mine siding, with the mega DMS modules alone weighing 130 t.

This is the second plant of this type supplied to Miba. The first DMS unit for NLK1, supplied in 1998, was a single-stream DMS unit with a capacity of 150 t/h.

More details may be obtained from Robert Abate, General Manager, Modular Plants, on +27-11-899-2238 or
email modular@batemanengineering.com.

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