Mining Magazine > Panorama > Bateman flotation cells for SA platinum projects

Panorama

Bateman Engineering, part of the Bateman Group, has been awarded contracts to provide BQR Flotation Cell technology to Ridge Mining’s Blue Ridge Platinum project, and Platinum Australia’s Smokey Hills mine, both in South Africa.

The BQR flotation solutions are growing in popularity and Bateman has also taken orders for flotation circuits from Hindustan Zinc Ltd in India, Mowana Copper mine in Botswana owned by African Copper Plc, and the SOMISY SA Syama gold mine in south-east Mali, all of which have now been successfully completed.

The Smokey Hills project is located in Mpumalanga, on the eastern limb of the Bushveld Complex, and has a plant design capacity of 97,000oz/yr of PGE metals and gold. The contract for the flotation circuit was awarded to Bateman by GRD Minproc, and consists of six banks of flotation cells, comprising eight BQR200 Flotation Cells for primary and secondary roughing, four BQR100 Flotation Cells for scavenging and 13 BQR50 Flotation Cells for cleaning and re-cleaning. Bateman also supplied interconnecting piping walkways and blowers for the circuit.

For Blue Ridge mine in Groblersdal, Bateman supplied two circuits of BQR Flotation Cells. The primary circuit consists of seven BQR300 Flotation Cells for roughing and eight BQR100 Flotation Cells for cleaning and re-cleaning. The secondary circuit is made up of eight BQR500 Flotation Cells for roughing and 11 BQR100 Flotation Cells for cleaning and re-cleaning.

In conjunction, Bateman was also awarded US$59 million to carry out a turnkey project to construct the concentrator for Blue Ridge mine, and conduct the pre-feasibility and full feasibility studies for the plant, which is targeting 125,000oz/yr of PGE metals.