One of the world’s largest steelmakers has opted for allmineral’s cutting-edge technology and tried-and-tested competence to redesign, expand and upgrade the iron ore beneficiation process at its iron-ore mine in the Kazakh town of Atassu.
At the core of the upgraded process are two high-performance allmineral alljig® jigs – an alljig®GR with three chambers and a throughput of 200t an hour used to process grain sizes from 0mm to 10mm and an alljig®GR with three chambers and a throughput of 300t an hour used to process grain sizes from 10mm to 60mm – which enable the efficient, simultaneous processing of the extracted ore.
The previous plant was incapable of simultaneously processing the entire size spectrum of extracted ore.
“The plant had to be re-tooled each time there was a change in material size which was obviously an inefficient system. With the new, revamped plant, we expect annual capacity to increase to 1.7 million tons from the current 1.5 million and for the Fe content to increase from 40.6% to 55%, significantly improving product quality,” says an spokesperson.
The Process
With the patented alljig® process, the feed material is initially fluidised with pulsed water and the grains then graded by density with the jigs separating the lighter yield from the heavier ore in the stratified material bed.
The air-pulsed alljig machines are physically stable in operation, allowing an optimum jigging stroke with minimum energy consumption. The jigging motion used to separate the particles is wear-free and induced by air, allowing the stroke motion (frequency, amplitude and shape) to be adjusted within a wide range of operating parameters. Sensors are used on alljig® systems to automatically monitor and control the discharge, with their signals captured and processed electronically. This allows the volume of heavy product fed into the jigging machine to be discharged with precision.
More than just Iron Ore
Iron ore mines are just one area of application for the alljig® jigging machines, which are extremely easy to operate and maintain. These energy-saving systems are capable of reliably and efficiently sorting primary and secondary raw and waste materials of different particle densities in: gravel, coal, ore, slag, sand, rubble, and various recycling materials. More than 500 alljig® jigging machines are in operation worldwide.