Weir Minerals Africa is preparing to ship a complete cyclone package designed in Africa to First Quantum Minerals’ new Sentinel copper project in Zambia
This will be one of the biggest installations ever supplied by Weir Minerals Africa to an African application and includes six cyclone clusters.
The equipment destined for the Sentinel project will be very large for any greenfields project and at the upper end of global engineering practice.
The Sentinel copper project at Kalumbila, approximately 150km west of Solwezi in northwest Zambia, is a part of the Trident project that includes the Enterprise nickel project and several other exploration undertakings.
The order was placed with Weir Minerals Africa in mid-2012 and the cyclone clusters have been custom designed for this application to achieve a specified metallurgical performance. Commissioning of the project has been scheduled for the first quarter of 2014.
Weir Minerals Africa process manager JD Singleton said that he believed that the company was preferred in its bid to supply this equipment based on its unique Cavex technology and associated application skills, as well as its quick response time to technical queries during the tender adjudication period.
Singleton added, “In addition to our proprietary Cavex technology, which is well proven in the Zambian copperbelt, other unique features of this order include various grades of Linatex rubber lining for superior abrasion resistance and our Isogate knife gate valves with full port flow which will ensure that the Cavex cyclones receive a laminar feed.”
