New BATEMAN Base-Metals Projects and Studies
BATEMAN’s order book for base-metals business has been given
a good boost during the recent months with the receipt of several orders
or letters of intent for new work. Some are discussed briefly below.
Servicios Industriales Peñoles, S.A de C.V in México, in association
with Mintek of South Africa and BacTech of Canada, has awarded BATEMAN
a lump-sum turnkey US$3,2 million contract or a copper bioleaching demonstration
plant to be installed at Peñoles’ Center for Research and Technological
Development, at Monterrey, N.L., México.
The feed to the plant will be a mixture of three copper concentrates
from existing Peñoles processing plants. The plant will simulate a full
leach-solvent extraction-electrowinning operation, up to production
of copper cathode, and will include an attrition machine to regrind
the concentrates, followed by bacterial leaching in agitated-leach reactors.
Leaching will be aided by injection of specially prepared bacterial
cultures.
The bio-leach circuit will also include two experimental reactors which
will be used to test novel technologies. The bio-leach plant will have
a nominal capacity of 111 kg/h of concentrate and the solvent extraction
(SX)-electrowinning (EW) plant will be designed for a capacity of 500
to 650 kg copper cathode per day, sufficient to balance the expected
production of copper in solution from the bio-leach section.
BATEMAN was selected for the project because of a long association
with Peñoles and Mintek and because of its track record in design and
construction of leach-SX-EW plants. Mintek and BacTech ill supply the
bio-leach process technology and BATEMAN will do the engineering design,
primarily out of its México City office, supported by Tucson and Denver
personnel. Work on this project commenced in June 2000,and is scheduled
for completion in April 2001.
A lump-sum turnkey project for a molecular recognition technology (MRT)
plant to remove mercury from sulphuric acid is being undertaken for
Britannia Zinc in the UK. The concentrated sulphuric acid is a by-product
of a metallurgical roasting and smelting operation and the mercury content
has to be below 0,1 p pm to meet new stringent regulations. This level
of purification is not achievable with traditional ion-exchange systems
which are ineffective when used with high acid or relatively low mercury
concentrations.
Britannia Zinc’s MRT plant will be installed in Bristol, UK. IBC
Advanced Technologies, Inc., of American Fork, Utah, USA, is providing
the processing technology and BATEMAN the engineering and project management.
The engineering design will be done in BATEMAN’s South African
offices with support from London-based personnel. The plant is scheduled
to be commissioned early in 2001.
MRT pilot plant test-work and cost studies are underway on an improved
process to remove cobalt and nickel as impurities from zinc solutions
at Zincor’s existing plant in South Africa. Environmental and commercial
considerations are driving the work and could lead to a project to recover
the metal impurities from the current plant solutions for sale as by-products.
An MRT pilot project was successfully completed at Chambishi Metals
Plc, Zambia, to recover and purify cobalt in the raffinate-bleed stream.
It was demonstrated that high purity copper and cobalt could be recovered
separately and further tests are being conducted on the electrowinning
of the high purity cobalt stream. If successful, this could result in
a project aimed at replacing the cobalt purification circuit with an
MRT circuit.
A feasibility study is being conducted on the Sepon copper / gold project
in Laos. Oxiana Resources recently acquired 80 % of this project from
Rio Tinto. BATEMAN was appointed to carry out a feasibility study to
define the reserves, conduct metallurgical test-work and prepare cost
estimates. The intention is a phased development with gold production
to be followed by copper production using heap-leach and solvent extraction
and electrowinning. This is feasible because the copper and gold ore
bodies are adjacent and can be treated separately.
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