SOLID BOWL CENTRIFUGE TECHNOLOGY MAKES TAILINGS DAM REDUNDANT

摘要

A member of the Bloomfield Group of Companies, Rix's Creek South is an open cut mining operation that produces both thermal coal and high quality semi-soft coking coal for overseas customers. Located 5 km northwest of Singleton in New South Wales, it is based in the heart of the Hunter Valley, one of Australia's largest coal mining regions. Rix's Creek South had a vision to address their limited tailings dam capacity and had recognised for some time that a suitable dry tailings disposal method had to be found. The existing tailings dam used on site was nearing capacity and there were no suitable alternative sites for a replacement dam. Within this operational context, they set out to find the best solution for dewatering thickener tailings at Rix's Creek South. Rix's Creek South questioned if there was a dewatering technology that could handle tailings containing high levels of clays. Four different technologies were trialled at pilot plant scale on-site for dewatering their thickener tailings from their Coal Handling and Preparation Plant. Eventually the Alfa Laval Solid Bowl Centrifuge was selected based on the outcomes of the trials. Three Alfa Laval 720mm Solid Bowl Centrifuges were installed at Rix's Creek South to handle part of the tailings flow. In 2018, two more new larger Solid Bowl Centrifuges were installed to handle the total volume of thickener underflow. The new installation has made the existing tailings dam redundant thereby removing the need to go for a new tailings dam. This paper will outline the process results and decision making that drove Rix's Creek South over a few years to install Solid Bowl Centrifuges. These centrifuges are also known as Decanter Centrifuges.