March 4, 2022
Purpose-Built Pipe Floats Drive Up Efficiency and Safety at Cooljarloo
When it became apparent to the dredging operations at a Western Australian mineral sand mine that almost one kilometre of slurry pipelines where at critical risk of causing significant downtime, they looked to a local company to resolve problem.
A Sinking Slurry System
Cooljarloo Mine, located about 150km north of Perth, Western Australia and currently operated by Tronox was owned by Tiwest in 2009. Tiwest contacted Coerco's project management team after learning their existing floatation system needed to be upgraded to avoid downtime and improve pumping efficiencies.
The mine’s dredging operation uses two large floating dredges in a purpose-built pond to pump ore slurry to a floating concentrator which recovers heavy minerals from the sand and clay using a series of gravity spirals. The original system of pipelines transporting the slurry from the dredges were being supported by steel floatation cells, aptly named ‘coffin floats’ due to their shape. Some of the floats were doubling as an access walkway and due to the nature of construction, were prone to corrosion.
With the slurry weighing up to three times more than water, the discharge pipelines were placing considerable load on the floats. The loss of draft and buoyancy in the outdated steel floats was posing a safety hazard and leading to significant pipe sag. If the pipes continued to sink in this way, it would culminate in system failure, posing significant replacement costs and downtime.
The new pipe floatation system removed the inherent safety hazards identified in its original floatation units by transferring the system away from the steel floats and walkway, while averting potential downtime and allowing the remainder of the slurry transfer system to continue mining operations.
Manufacturing Custom Pipe Floats
Tiwest was keen to work with a Western Australian-owned manufacturing company to develop and manufacture a system of large polyethylene pipe floats, which led them to their initial contact with Coerco. The brief also involved customising its initial pipe float design to include just the outer casing to comply with environmental regulations at the mine site.
With close collaboration, tenacity and engineering expertise, Coerco developed, manufactured, and delivered 156, 450mm pipe floats as well as several 90mm floats for electric cables and 315mm floats to the Cooljarloo mine site in just three months.
New System Breathes Life into Ailing Slurry Pipelines
The new pipe floatation system removed the inherent safety hazards identified in its original floatation units by transferring the system away from the steel floats and walkway, while averting potential downtime and allowing the remainder of the slurry transfer system to continue mining operations.
In addition, the service life of the slurry pipeline was increased by separating each individual pipeline and thereby removing any potential exterior wear or failure points.
Since the introduction of the poly pipe floats from Coerco, the Cooljarloo Mine has continued to mine ore deposits from its mine site by dredging and then running it through a concentrator to produce a heavy mineral concentrate. This reliable pipe float system also ensures the company's feedstock can continue to be derived from the Cooljarloo mine for its northern operations.
The longstanding collaboration with the mine site has led Coerco to extend its pipe float offerings to develop a premium range of pipe floats from 50mm to 1650mm.
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