Mining Magazine > Panorama > DSI supplies Los Filos conveyors

In cooperation with M3 Engineering, DSI (Dos Santos International) has been awarded a contract to supply an overland conveyor system to Goldcorp’s Los Filos project, located in the Nukay mining district, southern Mexico.

Los Filos is a heap leach operation. A previous system conveyed ore from the crushing plant to the leach pads via a glory hole ore pass, but experienced severe material flow problems, especially during heavy rains. Geological instability ultimately collapsed the ore pass, putting the transport system out of service only four months into its operation.

M3 Engineering was tasked with developing an alternate conveying route and the project was awarded to DSI on May 19, 2009. The original ten-conveyor-flight system was rationalised to only seven flights, and the third conveyor flight was specially designed to accomplish agglomeration by mixing through five intermediate tripped transfers.

The en-route agglomeration, conceived by Goldcorp, results in substantial cost savings by eliminating the need for an additional agglomerating drum. The overland conveying path is predominantly downhill and the flights have been designed to be decisively regenerative. The drive motors, now generators, feed back power into the grid which powers the other mine equipment. The conveyors will also be equipped with variable frequency drives to ensure they operate at maximum efficiency.