Background

Arrium Mining had been experiencing excessive wear in their cyclone spigots. The traditional rubber spigots had a service life of only 3-4 weeks. Ceramic spigots would certainly extend the service life by up to 8 times, however, due to large scats and the odd stray mill ball, ceramic was not an option. The metallurgists were looking for an alternate material that would improve the service life of the spigots and approached Keramos for advice.

Solution

Ceramic materials were considered too brittle for this application. Keramos considered the use of A05 chrome steel as a possible alternative spigot liner material. Keramos had successfully supplied A05 vortex finders to a mine site in Western Australia that had experienced similar issues. Chrome steel A05 provides exceptional wear resistance and the toughness to withstand impacts from scats and mill balls.

Inspection

The worn A05 spigots were taken out of service after 8 weeks and it is estimated they would have offered a further 2 weeks service life.

A senior metallurgist had the following to report. “The service life out of our spigots has doubled as a result of moving from the standard rubber to the Cr alloy materials. With rubber, the service life was between 3 to 4 weeks, compared to 8 to 9 weeks with the Cr alloy material. Our shuts are at 4 week intervals, so the Cr alloy spigots are being taken out at 8 weekly intervals. This has been a good saving for us, thank you for your help with that”.

Benefits

The Keramos A05 chrome steel spigots are changed out every 8 weeks, saving the customer on spares and labour costs, as well as maintaining performance.

Background

Phu Bia Gold Mine had been experiencing excessive wear in a cyclone overflow pipe elbow and contacted Keramos for a solution. The traditional rubber lined pipe lasted around 4 weeks before replacement from excessive wear. A trail of an alumina ceramic tiled option had been conducted with another company and had lasted about 3 months and this was initially deemed a satisfactory result. However, they asked Keramos if we thought this could be improved.

Inspection

The worn alumina tiled ceramic pipe showed premature wear at the ceramic joins and general wear throughout.

Solution

After inspection of the worn ceramic pipe, Keramos recommended trialling a cast nitride bonded silicon carbide ceramics lined pipe. The advantage of this design is a superior wear resistant ceramic combined with the elimination of joins in the ceramic lining, where the main wear had initiated.

Benefits

The Keramos elbow lasted 14 months in continuous service, compared with 3 months for the alumina ceramic lined elbow and 1 month for the rubber lined elbow. Direct savings on each elbow totalled over $7,000 per year.

Background

St Ives Gold Mine in Western Australia had experienced major wear issues with Falcon concentrator lids to the point where the 25mm thick rubber lining required replacing every 6-8 weeks. Keramos were asked to provide a better solution.

Investigation

The main wear area was located in one zone. The slurry causing the wear was a very abrasive sulphide ore with a particle size less than 1mm. Some previous attempts at installing ceramic tiles had failed due to poor design whereby slurry had been able to penetrate joins in the ceramic, resulting in premature failure.

Solution

Keramos installed a series of siliconised silicon carbide ceramic tiles to the main wear area. The tiles were custom engineered with stepped joints to prevent ingress of material behind the joins. The wear life of the lid was extended from 6-8 weeks to an amazing 182 weeks!!!! This is over twenty times the wear life of the original rubber lid.

Benefits

Direct savings achieved totalled $130,000 or approximately $40,000 per year.

Background

Keramos were asked by a copper/zinc producer to investigate the excessive wear in the mill linings and agitator arms of their Metso Detritor Mills. The mills were using an alumina ceramic grinding media and achieving satisfactory grinding performance, but the wear rate of the mill linings was intolerable. The mills required complete relining EVERY 6 WEEKS.

Investigation

The mills had originally been running a poor quality ceramic media with excessive consumption rates (>35 tonnes per month) for the two mills. In order to reduce consumption rates and costs, the company approached another ceramic grinding media supplier and were offered a better quality of media, which reduced the consumption rate to around 25 tonnes per month. However the wear rates on the mill linings increased dramatically (change out every 6 weeks) and the new supplier of ceramic media could not offer any alternatives.

Solution

Keramos determined that the SG of the media being used by the company was incorrect for this type of application and recommended the use of a lower SG media with specific properties. The Keramos media resulted in an immediate drop in consumption to 18 tonnes per month and even more significantly, the mill linings then needed to be changed only EVERY 12 MONTHS.

After successfully helping our customer, Keramos proposed the development and trial of an even better media. The new Keramos media has a consumption rate of about 10 tonnes per month, and the mill linings still only need to be changed every 12 months.

Benefits

Keramos has saved the company around AUD$2 million per year directly on media costs. The other savings are mill linings, agitator arms, maintenance costs, downtime, freight and storage. Consequently, the company has awarded Keramos a long-term contract for the supply of their ceramic grinding media.

Keramos were supplied the ceramic lined pipe spool in the photograph by a customer to investigate its premature failure. The ceramic lined pipe (supplied by a competitor company) was manufactured such that the ceramic lining was comprised of three pieces (two straights and one elbow) with join lines between the ceramic sections.

It was clear that the failure was due to erosion and abrasion about the join in the ceramic.

In this type of application, Keramos supplies the ceramic as a one-piece cast product with no joins in the ceramic and our ceramic lined elbows do not have the problem such as that in the photograph. We can (in most cases) supply Y-pieces and Tee-pieces and custom made pipe spools with no joins in the ceramic lining. This is unique compared with that of our competitors’ products.

Typically, our ceramic lined pipe spools outlast steel pipes by 15-20 times and outlast rubber lined pipes by 8-12 times, proving very cost-effective and resulting in significant savings and reduced maintenance downtime.

We are happy to provide a no obligation quotation and references on request.