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Upgrades, rebuilds and exchange

Greater water recovery, longer life – thickener and clarifier upgrades

Improve sedimentation and reduce water to tailings by up to 46% with thickener and clarifier upgrades from the OEM. We’ve poured our process and materials expertise into helping to solve mining’s water problem. The result is a series of thickener upgrades that improve environmental performance and deliver a swift ROI.

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Key benefits of thickener and clarifier upgrades and rebuilds

  • Significant reduction in water to tailings

    Customers have reduced water to tailings by up to 46% by upgrading their thickener. An Australian gold mine reduced water consumption by upgrading their thickener with E-DUC® autodilution and E-Volute™ feedwell systems. The E-Volute feedwell optimizes flocculation and aggregate growth, while the E-DUC feed dilution system minimizes flocculant use and increases settling rates. This resulted in a 50% solids (w/w) underflow density, 46% less water to tailings, and a 40% reduction in flocculant consumption (gram/tonne).

  • Swift ROI thanks to increased throughput

    Thickener and clarifier upgrades can pay for themselves in less than a year, depending on the application, thanks to increased throughput and lower operating costs. With increased water recovery and lower flocculant consumption, day-to-day costs are significantly lower. One customer’s increased water recovery saved them US$18 million per year.

  • Increase in availability with predictive maintenance

    Older thickeners, though reliable, should be assessed for rebuild every 20 years to prevent failure and downtime. A catastrophic failure, especially in tailings thickeners with no redundancy, could cause an entire plant shutdown. Our thickener and clarifier rebuild services extend the life of your equipment through timely maintenance. Regular mechanical audits are recommended to identify necessary work. Rebuilds can be completed in as little as 2 days, fitting within planned maintenance outages.

Solutions to maximise efficiency, reliability, and water recovery

The FLS approach to thickener and clarifier upgrades, rebuilds and exchange.

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    Establishing the diagnostic

    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.

Taking responsibility for water recovery

Water consumption is one of mining’s biggest environmental impacts, and a critical area for improvement. Thickener upgrades make it possible to increase water recovery so that mine affected water can be recirculated through the mine. The more recycled water you can use, the less raw water needs to be drawn into the plant – which has an immediate positive impact on the planet and on your bottom line.

Want to talk? Reach out to our experts.

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Downloads for thickener upgrades and rebuilds

Frequently asked questions

FAQs for thickener upgrades and rebuilds

The factors that influence thickener performance are feed solids content, use of flocculant and how effectively they are mixed relative to the feed and settling rate of the material.

The thickener and clarifier have different ‘jobs’. The thickener works to produce the maximum solids content in the underflow, while clarifiers are designed to produce very clear liquid in the overflow.

Sedimentation can be improved through the use of flocculants and effective mixing of the flocculant in the feedwell at the targeted feedwell solids concentration.