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Mining & Minerals

Reliable material handling is crucial to avoid poor flow, segregation, abrasive wear, flooding, and other common challenges in the mining & minerals industry.

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Overview

Mining & Minerals

Worldwide consumption of steel, aluminum, and electronics has significantly increased the mining demand for precious metals, base metals, and mineral commodities.

With increased demand comes the need for reliable material handling in the Mining and Minerals industries. Whether it is stockpiles, dump hoppers, ore-passes, surge bins or belt-to-belt transfer chutes, proven, practical solutions are available to improve handling of ores and concentrates.

Minerals on an iron-ore belt line.

Production processes at a diamond mine.

Deep mining pit.

Mining site.

Processing of copper ore.

Mining & Minerals Services

Plant visit to audit process or problems
ROM, ore, concentrate, flow and TML testing
Silo, bin, hopper, or feeder design
Stockpile design (gravity-reclaim)
Drainage & Seepage Analysis
Transfer chute design using proven DEM analysis
Ore pass flow troubleshooting and design
Silo structural engineering
Abrasive wear testing to assess liners
S.H.O.T. – Selective Heat Ore Treatment

Whether you are mining iron ore, bauxite, copper or gold ore, Jenike & Johanson helps facilities worldwide keep materials flowing reliably (mass flow), providing higher throughputs and increased profits.

Challenge

Common Mining & Minerals Industry Challenges

At the mine site, the run-of-mine (ROM) ore, as well as crushed ore, needs to be stored, reclaimed, and conveyed reliably, whereas at the processing plant, the concentrate needs to be fed reliably to furnaces, calciners, roasters, or smelters. Moisture content, time of storage, particle size distribution, and impurities (such as clay) can drastically alter the reliability of material flow through a handling system. Poor flow will interrupt process uniformity and increase the costs for the mining operation. Particle size segregation in stockpiles and bins can cause problems particularly when handling erratic concentration of fines. Segregation can lead to problems in uniform feeding to pyro-processing or hydrometallurgical operations. Many ores and mineral oxides attack hoppers and transfer chutes causing rapid abrasive wear. Fine concentrates and powders can be prone to flooding (flushing), creating poor process control. Gravity reclaim stockpiles often experience ratholing, resulting in severely restricted “live” capacity.

Base of a mining orepass.

Limestone piles at a mining plant.

Materials

Common Materials Handled

Here is a shortened list of some of the most common bulk materials we have successfully handled in the Mining & Minerals industry to date. For more materials, please refer to our extended list of materials or ask us about your specific material.