Bateman scrubbers control dust emission on De Beers mining vessels

Bateman Engineering has installed Bateman Dynamic Wet Scrubbers on two of De Beers’s deep-sea diamond-mining vessels, the MV Debmar Atlantic and the MV Peace in Africa, to minimise dust emission during the processing of diamondiferous materials.

The onboard diamond-processing circuits each consist of about 15 different pieces of equipment and include a Bateman Pneumo-Drier and Bateman Dynamic Wet Scrubber.

The wet scrubbers treat about 5.5 Am²/s of air from each extraction system, loaded with approximately 15 gm/Nm² of dust, and ensure that the air vented to the atmosphere contains less than 30 mg/Nm² of dust. The dust extracted from the air is collected and slurried in the wet scrubber and is then discharged into onboard sumps that utilise seawater.

The contracts for the projects, with a total value of approximately R1.5 million, covered the design, procurement, supervised erection and commissioning of the scrubbers. Both scrubbers took about three months to manufacture in a works near Johannesburg, South Africa, and to transport to Cape Town, South Africa. There they were incorporated into the modular diamond-treatment plants being assembled on the quayside before installation onboard the vessels. Hot commissioning and trials were then completed at sea.

In the diamond-processing industry, wet dust-collection systems are the preferred means of achieving low dust-emission levels to protect both operators and machinery.

Bateman Dynamic Scrubbers are simple to operate and enable low dust emissions to be achieved with relatively low capital and operational costs. Bateman Engineering has installed its wet scrubbers on most of De Beers’s sea-mining vessels and in the past five years has also installed over 20 such scrubbers on land-based diamond-processing plants.

More information may be obtained from Jimmy Tomlin, Contracts Engineer, Bateman Engineered Technologies, on +27-11-201-2300 or email sales@bateman-bet.com.

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