As the mining industry faces growing pressures of containing costs and maintaining profits while overcoming industry challenges, mining houses are looking towards the engineering industry to offer innovative ways to do so. This was the challenge which faced the Mogalakwena platinum mine near Mokopane in the North West Province. The company turned to Tshwane-based Rand Technical Services to provide an innovative solution to its air filtering requirements on a project which had specific design parameters.

Ian Fraser, Managing Director of RTS, says that the company supplied a tailored air filtering system to the mine which had to meet certain requirements while also overcoming these challenges. “There were significant space constraints on the project which the mine outlined from the start. RTS had to do design an air filtering unit that could run at 32 000 Nm3/h on a platform which had other items of equipment on it. RTS held a number of meetings with Anglo Platinum and we designed the product which was installed in January,” he said. Another challenge which RTS had to overcome, according to Fraser, was the amount of dust which was created by the process of stripping the overburden. This is a common problem on open cast mining operations; and although the dust created on platinum mines is not as much as on coal mines, it is still a significant problem.

“We provided an air filtration system that forced air into the machinery space – thus preventing dust rising through the open floor grid into the enclosure. The solution which was offered to the mining company was a standard industry product which was modified to suit individual needs. Fraser says that there is a demand for this version of the product in the industry because of the performance that Spin Filters offer on opencast mining operations.  Fraser points out that RTS worked closely with the mining company on the project, and are in constant contact with the mine to monitor the performance of the unit.
“Our feedback from the client has been excellent, and we are in discussion to potentially design more units for the project,” Fraser concludes adding that the ability to successfully complete a project which had very specific design parameters gives the company confidence that it can undertake similar projects in the future.