Monday 8 June 2009

Gravity Concentrators

I met up with my old colleague Del Codd yesterday at cricket, and he was reminiscing about his time at Renison Tin in Tasmania. He mentioned the Kelsey jigs there, and we wondered if anyone still uses these- I have not heard of their mention for sometime.

Also Reichert Cones- they were very poular in the late 70s and 80s. Are they still manufactured or used?

Comments would be welcome.

3 comments:

  1. The Reichert Cone was popular many years ago as a high tonnage rougher unit to treat low grade deposits. They were available in both a 2 meter and 3.5 meter diameter. The 2 meter units are still available but no new cones have been installed for several years. Cone technology has largely been superseded by numerous developments in spiral separators. The cones were able to treat 80 tph (2m cone) or 300 tph (3.5m cone) in a single unit and upgrade the feed about three times for a mass recovery of about 40%. Hence a 1% heavies grade 300 tph feed stream could be turned into 3% heavies grade concentrate stream of about 120 tph using a single cone. This would then still need several stages of further treatment to generate a high grade concentrate.

    Depending on the application there are now a number of more economical and efficient processing solutions manufactured and marketed by Downer EDI Mining – Mineral Technologies inculding the HC1RS spiral that can treat 30 tph so a bank of 4 such spirals can readily handle 120 tph at much higher upgrade ratios than possible with Cones. This results in a smaller plant with fewer processing stages using the Mineral Technologies High Capacity spirals compared to what was possible using Cones.

    The Kelsey Centrifugal Jig (KCJ) is most definitely still being used – primarily in the mineral sands industry, but also in gold and tin (including Renison) – and is manufactured and marketed by Downer EDI Mining – Mineral Technologies, who have made improvements to the technology and offer modular plants with all the ancillary equipment required for a compact, effective KCJ circuit (see pictures). In addition to traditional mineral sands applications, the KCJ has recently found application in the tungsten industry recovering fine scheelite and/or wolframite and is being pursued for other applications such as chromite and iron ore. The KCJ continues to show high levels of separation efficiency on fine mineral separation / recovery duties and is capable of separating minerals with relatively low specific gravity differentials. Two commercial units are available – the J1300 and J1800 – with unit capacities up to 50 t/h solids, depending on feed size, concentrate mass yields and other relevant application-specific factors. For further information on the KCJ, please contact Terry Jones – Kelsey Product & Sales Manager at terry.jones@downeredimining.com.

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  2. Many thanks Terry
    Barry

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  3. I commented before that in Bolivia we have tested several tin tailings with a Pilot plant Kelsey jig, the test were very succesfull and now we are evaliating to implement this technology which has showed to be the best available in the market compared with other centrifugal concentrators. Jorge Lema patino, President Mineral processing, BOLIVIA

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