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Aus company involved with work at top South African projects

LC3 SPIRAL The new spiral from Mineral Technologies can provide two high-quality coal products

GOING GLOBAL QCC Resources is mainly involved in projects in Australia and we are expanding into the world market

Photo by Bloomberg

5th August 2016

By: Victor Moolman

Creamer Media Writer

  

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Australian consulting company QCC Resources and process solutions company Mineral Technologies have discussed with Waterberg Coal Company (WCC), the lead partner of the Waterberg coal project, the supply of the proposed mine’s coal handling and processing plant (CHPP).

The project consists of eight coal tenements totalling 7 979 ha and has identified South African Mineral Reporting Codes-compliant coal mineral resources of 3.4-billion tonnes within the granted mining and prospecting rights.

It is located immediately adjacent to coal and heavy minerals mining company Exxaro’s Grootegeluk mine, in Limpopo, and is a joint venture between WCC, Australian exploration and development company Firestone Energy and black economic-empowerment partner mining and energy company Sekoko Resources.

“QCC is mainly involved in projects in Australia and we are expanding into the world market. We’ve worked on coal projects in the US and are quoting on projects in India. The largest project we worked on in South Africa is the Goedgevonden (GGV) coal mine in 2008,” QCC regional manager Africa Wayne Busch tells Mining Weekly.

GGV, in the North West, is owned by mining company African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) and multinational commodity trading and mining company Glencore. QCC designed and commissioned the CHPP used to process 6.4-million tonnes of coal a year at the mine.

With more than 200-million tonnes of saleable reserves, the GGV mine employs more than 500 people and 471 contractors, according to ARM’s website.

“We have only re-entered the coal market in early 2015 because of the noticeable uptake in mining projects. “We used to focus primarily on mineral sands, but are now placing greater priority on the coal and chrome markets,” Busch asserts.

QCC builds CHPP plants for mines, while Mineral Technologies supplies the coal mining industry with spiral separators that increase coal quality by separating heavy waste materials from finer coal dust.

A spiral separator mixes fine coal dust with water, pumping the slurry to the top of the spiral. Through gravity, the spiral can separate the high- and low-quality coal in the water and deposit the product at the bottom of the spiral into separate bins.

“Product will be on the outside of the spiral, middlings in the centre and waste tailings on the inside,” Busch explains.

Mineral Technologies developed its latest spiral offering, the LC3, in 2014, which was introduced to the South African market in 2015. The company hopes to enable the coal industry to provide higher- quality processing capabilities, as the LC3 can deliver two high-quality coal products simultaneously – one that is export quality and another that can be sold to power utility company Eskom.

“The LC3 spiral is being tested at diversified miner Anglo American’s coal processing plant, Umlalazi, situated near Emalahleni, in Mpumalanga. The test results show that the spiral can produce two products in the fines coal circuit,” Busch enthuses.

He points out that the LC3 does not raise the price of coal. It does, however, enable larger companies like Anglo American, coal mining and trading company Wescoal and Exxaro to produce two products using one spiral. This is achieved due to the spiral’s D50 cut points being in the range of 1.45 µ to 1.6 µ.

Mineral Technologies also develops the LD7 and the LD7-RC spirals that are in use across Africa. GGV is the largest mine that uses the LD7.

Busch concludes that, while some of the spirals and processing plants supplied by QCC and Mineral Technologies are being manufactured in Australia, the company can supply spirals from its African factory and, through strategic partners, deliver world-best technology CHPPs manufactured in South Africa for South Africa.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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