Audits & Studies
Mechanical audits enable us to see what’s going on with your thickener and what’s required to get performance to where you want it to be. Through inspections and audits, we can pinpoint the performance gap and identify ways to bridge that gap, whether that’s through rebuilds or upgrades. If rebuilds are required, we’ll pinpoint when these need to happen to maintain optimum efficiency and availability, so you aren’t left with prolonged poor performance or downtime.
Upgrading
Thickener and clarifier upgrades come in four main categories:
1. Feed well upgrades optimise sedimentation so you can increase water recovery. By upgrading the feed well, you can increase capacity without increasing the footprint. E-DUC® and P-DUC® upgrade packages improve underflow density and reduce flocculant usage and when coupled with the E-Volute™ feed well upgrade can have a dramatic impact on thickener performance.
2. The thickener drive upgrade increases torque measurement and improves drive reliability, increasing thickener availability and helping you avoid unplanned outages.
3. The Spiral Rake Blade upgrade package is a new rake design that helps eliminate short-circuiting in the thickener mud bed, providing a more consistent mud bed residence time and higher underflow density. The spiral rake design contributed to an 11% increase in underflow density at one customer’s site in Kazakhstan and a 15% increase in water recover.
4. Instrumentation upgrades enable you to take advantage of the latest process control and automation software to stabilise and increase water recovery from the tailings thickeners. Continuous optimisation of thickener performance also increases underflow density, reduces flocculant consumption, and improves water quality. When integrated with intelligent process dynamic simulation, it allows remote monitoring and condition prediction, so targets can be adapted to real-time conditions to improve controller performance and alert operators to current situations. One customer undertaking an instrumentation upgrade achieved a 14% reduction in water to tailings and a 15% reduction in flocculant consumption.
Rebuilding
Our rebuild services for thickeners and clarifiers includes all the key thickener components, such as the rake and rake lift mechanisms, centre column, feed well, feed pipe, dilution system, drive, power pack and bridge. Work can be carried out onsite during planned maintenance shutdowns and will take up to 5 days. Rebuilds should be considered as an insurance policy to guard against unplanned outages and form an important part of a predictive maintenance strategy.
