OREANDA-NEWS. Construction crews have commenced enabling works - excavation, piling, concreting operations, followed by erection of steel structures. Conveyors, cone and jaw crushers will be installed on 360 square meters of the new facility. Launch of the concentrate recrushing complex is scheduled for July 2015, with production capacity reaching half a million tons of ore per year.

Launch of the complex is one of the main components of the project "Modernization of ore preparation circuit for further processing." Its implementation will introduce new ore processing flow and, consequently, reduce finished product cost.

Currently the first ore preparation step is ore crushing to 200 mm fraction, after which it is divided into rich and poor ore. Before being fed to hydrometallurgy unit, rich ore passes two stages of grinding to minus 0.1 mm fraction.

After commissioning of the recrushing complex, one grinding stage will be abandoned. In addition, three ore flows can be organized: minus 10 mm fraction fed to ball grinding mill, 10-40 mm fraction fed to heap leaching, and 40-200 mm fraction fed to X-ray radiometric separation. "The new workflow will reduce the costs of ore preparation, leaching and sorption stages. As a result, ore processing costs and the cost of finished product will decrease. Replacing the primary grinding stage with crushing will make the process more efficient and less costly. Part of the auxiliary equipment will not be used, resulting in savings on repair and maintenance and reduction of energy consumption. Just for the period from 2015 to 2019 the savings will amount to about 300 million rubles,"- says Dmitry Tupikov, chief engineer of PIMCU Hydrometallurgical Plant.