Duaplate DX is a revolutionary weld overlay material engineered by Bradken to perform under the most extreme abrasive operating conditions.
Trialed in the lower section of a surge bin, the Duaplate DX was installed in an iron ore mine in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The bin was compared to an identical chute lined with Duaplate D80.
Duaplate DX is manufactured to Bradken’s proprietary composition to create an incredible fine microstructure that provides a substantial improvement in the operational life over traditional chromium carbide based overlay.
Sandvik has introduced its new Golden Shank, a corrosion protection coating for increased service life and lower drilling cost per metre.
Sandvik’s Golden Shank is equipped with a low-friction, nickel-plated coating with a polymer top sealant for improved corrosion resistance.
Applied throughout the entire shank and flushing slot, this coating minimises wear on flushing seals and rock drill parts while reducing breakages on other rig and tool machine parts.
“Prioritising operator safety and minimising environmental impact through reduced tool replacements are critical considerations in our product development process,” Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions product manager top hammer Thomas Blomfeldt said.
The Golden Shank will enable some customers to potentially double efficiency.”
Sandvik’s field tests have confirmed a 30–100 per cent longer product life.
Even at mine sites where corrosion is not prevalent, Golden Shank field tests have consistently demonstrated two to three times longer performance life.
The extended service life of the shank adapter enhances safety and sustainability for customers by reducing operator handling and heavy lifting, inventory needs and emissions from transportation.
A coating with less environmental impact also improves the sustainability footprint in manufacturing.
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Dewatering pump solutions company Sykes Group has announced the launch of the Skyes/Primax XH250.
The Skyes/Primax XH250 was developed with the requirements of the mining and quarry industries in mind, specifically to address challenges these industries face, including the need to reach greater depths and widths and the need for reliable dewatering solutions.
The Sykes XH250 steps in to address this challenge by delivering higher heads and flow rates. This ensures consistent equipment access to all areas of mining and quarry sites.
Key features of the Sykes XH250:
1.Versatile drive options: The XH250 is available in both diesel and electric drive configurations, and it can be mounted on skids, trailers, or pontoons.
2.Impressive performance: The XH250 is engineered to deliver 200L per second at 220m or 250L per second at 200m, ensuring reliable and efficient dewatering.
3.Innovative pump design: The pump’s design incorporates several key features to enhance its longevity and performance, including shaft stiffness ratios, multiple priming options, advanced bearing arrangements, and sealing solutions.
4.Front and rear wear plates: Sykes Pumps’ inclusion of wear plates offers the ability to make fine adjustments to the impeller-wear plate clearance, enabling customers to restore pump efficiency without the need for extensive overhauls.
5.Material pptions: The Sykes XH250 is available with various material options to suit specific applications, including 316 SS Impeller, wear plates, and SG iron Volute, among others.
“The Sykes XH250 is a testament to our commitment to providing efficient and reliable dewatering solutions for the mining and quarry industries,” Skyes Group said.
Kayasand-manufactured sand uses up to 20 per cent less cement than natural sand to create concrete of the same strength.
Kayasand believes quarries are critical to the construction industry’s goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The United Nations warning of a global sand shortage was described by United Nations Environment Programme’s Pascal Peduzzi as the “elephant in the room” for the 21st century.
The world’s second most consumed material is used to make roads, bridges and houses. Given the world’s reliance on natural sand in concrete creation, the “elephant in the room” left many searching for sustainable alternatives.
Manufactured sand is often used as a substitute for natural sand in concrete, especially in areas where accessible natural sand sources are scarce or of poor quality. This is also true in countries where heavy government regulation limits companies mining natural sand for construction.
Manufactured sand used to be solely about repurposing surplus quarry materials, like crusher dust. It was often labelled unequal to natural sand in concrete production, especially in developed construction industries. However, it has come a long way since it first entered the market.
Kayasand believes with the innovative technology available today, it’s more consistent in quality and performance and can be precisely engineered for specific construction applications.
When processed well, this ‘engineered’ sand has many advantages over traditionally manufactured sands: precise shape, good particle size distribution, no contamination, and regular consistency. In fact, it produces stronger concrete than many natural sands with less cement.
Kayasand trials show that concrete made with Kayasand-manufactured sand uses up to 20 per cent less cement than natural sand to create concrete of the same strength.
While most countries support the future of manufactured sand, not all of them have embraced its potential. New Zealand Green Investment Finance delivered $3.5 million earlier this year to support Kayasand’s first V7 high-technology manufacturing demonstration plant in the Waikato region of New Zealand.
Global bodies, including the United Nations, have warned about the shortage of natural sand and the need to reduce carbon emissions, so manufactured sand is set to become an increasingly critical construction material.
A United Nations Environment Programme report suggests that 50 billion tons of sand and gravel are used yearly. This makes it the second most used resource after water.
In an interview with Quarry, Kayasand’s national sales manager, Frank Grech, said the opportunity for quarries selling manufactured sand is better than ever.
Kayasand-manufactured sand uses up to 20 per cent less cement than natural sand to create concrete of the same strength.
The process
Innovative technology, like Kayasand’s Kemco quad-deck air screens and V7 sand plants, makes the process dust-free, low-noise and uses no water for washing. This means quarries no longer need sediment ponds or water tailings and there are no hidden costs for water management.
Kayasand’s unique design combines the accuracy of mesh screens with the high throughput of air classification system. Their equipment specialises in screening materials that have high fines content. The fully enclosed nature of the V7 plant limits dust exposure, while its negative pressure from the built-in dust extractor keeps dust contained and away from operators.
Waste glass can be recycled into concrete sand. Cement substitutes can be created from limestone filler and waste slag using Kayasand’s V7 plant.
Grech says this versatility allows quarries to reduce their environmental impact while increasing revenue opportunities and enabling a circular economy
Researchers are exploring ways to enhance the properties of manufactured sand for use in sustainable concrete mixes.
By incorporating manufactured sand in innovative concrete formulations (such as carbon-sequestering concrete or high-performance, sustainable concrete), the construction industry can reduce its carbon footprint per unit of construction material.
Grech said engineering sand to have highly consistent properties, allows for more precise and optimised concrete mix designs.
This can lead to reduced material wastage during construction, which, in turn, facilitates a project’s overall carbon footprint.
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
Using manufactured sand enables the construction industry to minimise waste generation and maximise resource utilisation to align with sustainable development principles and carbon reduction reporting requirements.
It helps to conserve natural resources by reducing the riverbed and coastal sand demand. Preserving these ecosystems can help mitigate carbon emissions associated with habitat destruction.
Manufactured sand produced in quarries is often closer to construction sites, reducing the need for long-distance transportation. Producing sand locally allows quarries to help reduce transportation emissions.
Grech said transporting natural sand over significant distances can result in higher emissions due to fuel consumption.
Given this and companies are trying to
find ways to lower costs, it makes sense to
embrace sustainable materials, like high
quality, ‘engineered’ sand, and move
towards a circular economy.
Peduzzi, who coordinated the United Nations Environment Programme’s report on the sand shortage, has supported the push for such an economy.
“If we can get a grip on how to manage the most extracted solid material in the world, we can avert a crisis and move toward a circular economy,” he said.
“To achieve sustainable development, we need to drastically change the way we produce, build and consume products, infrastructures and service.”
The environmental benefits, lower carbon footprint, repeatable design quality, and circular economic potential make manufactured sand a viable and scalable solution.
By embracing manufactured sand, the construction industry across the value chain can build a more sustainable future.
As the construction industry sets its sights on achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, quarries that sell quality manufactured sand are essential to the vision. •
With its next generation of ground-engaging tools, supported by intelligent digital offerings, Bradken is driving the future of surface mining.
Bradken has evolved over the past 100 years to become a leading wear solutions provider to the global mining and resources market, delivering ground-engaging tools (GET), bucket and undercarriage solutions that equip customers to achieve their production objectives.
The company’s range includes mining buckets for excavators, face shovels and front-end loaders. Its buckets have long been known for their proven quality, reliability and performance.
The cast beam bucket, the latest in Bradken’s bucket range, takes that proven history of success and dials it up to 11.
“Buckets are traditionally fabricated and that inherently means you have structural welds in areas that are highly stressed and fatigue prone – particularly around the upper structure or beam of the bucket,” Bradken head of product and marketing, Simon Burgoyne, told Australian Mining.
“This results in a lot of bucket maintenance cost and asset downtime.
“We have leveraged our foundry expertise to design a new bucket that converts the entire beam into a casting. The cast structure gave us the freedom to design smoother and more organic transitions, placing steel where it’s needed to reduce stress throughout the beam. Importantly, the design eliminates welds from fatigue-prone areas and that, along with Bradken’s proprietary alloy, has produced a structure with significantly longer fatigue life that is more durable and reliable.”
Bradken is delivering an optimised future.
The result is a bucket that delivers a stronger, safer, and more productive solution than a fabricated counterpart.
“We’re projecting that the cast beam will last up to 2.5 times longer than a fabricated bucket,” Burgoyne said. “This gives the customer a reliable asset, less downtime repairing buckets, and better productivity as the shape of the bucket has been optimised for dig efficiency.”
The Zenith plate lip GET system is also new to Bradken’s range. Engineered to minimise dig energy and extend the wear life of its points, the Zenith design is reliable and intuitive to use.
“Zenith is a next-generation plate lip GET system from Bradken and has been engineered to suit excavators from 100-tonne up to the 250-tonne class,” Burgoyne said.
The Zenith plate lips currently come in standard, long and heavy-duty options, to suit all application requirements.
Beyond efficiency, Zenith is designed to keep workers safe.
“Once GET has been used for a long time, it can become fused to the bucket and requires tools like sledgehammers and oxy torches to remove it,” Burgoyne said.
“This exposes operators to all sorts of hazards, including burns, hammer strikes and dangerous metal shards.
“The industry has been trying to move away from using hammers with GET for a while now. A lot of vendors have been able to introduce locking systems that don’t require hammers to remove points, but very few have been able to produce a truly hammer-free GET system like Zenith.
“Zenith has been designed so that it doesn’t require a hammer on the lock or in the removal of any part from the lip. It stays on when you want it to stay on, and it’s easily removed when you want to take it off.”
In support of these innovations and building on its longstanding digital product, SmartLiner, used in fixed plant for asset management and condition monitoring, Bradken is further expanding its digital offerings to include a range of solutions that enable customers to get the most out of their GET.
Bradken’s GETVision solution provides a remote monitoring system that detects GET on mining buckets and alerts operators if they become lost, delivering an operational benefit that reduces downtime and costs related to delayed production.
“Through the use of a vision system and object detection algorithms, GETVision detects the loss of GET on a machine, which can be quite disruptive to production were it to fall into plant equipment,” Bradken principal product manager, digital, Tim Radbone told Australian Mining. “It’s a huge problem when an uncrushable bit of steel falls off and gets stuck inside a crusher, for example.”
GETVision alerts operators in the event of GET loss, helping mine sites avoid catastrophic and expensive disruptions.
Bradken Inspect is another digital tool the company has developed.
Bradken Inspect is a mobile app allowing operators to digitally capture wear-life data for GET, helping to efficiently coordinate change-out timing for maintenance scheduling and monitor wear trends for forecasting maintenance programs.
“GET wear-life data has historically been captured on paper which is easily lost and difficult to collate for any useful analysis or insights,” Radbone said.
“Bradken Inspect allows workers to capture that information digitally to provide sites with a more detailed level of understanding of their GET usage.”
Bradken Inspect can be used both online and offline to capture information and supply detailed reports. Report outcomes allow the operations to determine wear metrics relevant to conditions and maintenance requirements.
“Whether a site’s GET is lasting three months or they’re chewing through parts on a daily basis, Bradken Inspect can help customers understand GET wear rates and performance across their fleet,” Radbone said.
The latest additions to Bradken’s range of GET, along with the supporting digital tools, are helping to make operations more predictable, safer and efficient. From its traditional manufacturing origins to today’s mining solutions brand, Bradken is constantly pushing the envelope when it comes to surface mining technology.
Atlas Copco has launched a next-generation electric submersible dewatering pump, the WEDA D95, incorporating state-of-the-art Wear Deflector technology.
The robust and reliable pump delivers a best-in-class performance over a longer lifetime than comparable pumps in heavily abrasive environments such as mining, tunnelling and construction, and enables operators to improve their sustainability and productivity.
WEDA D95 has a power rating of 37–43 kilowatts (kW) and is the latest pump in the WEDA D drainage range to feature the innovative Wear Deflector technology designed to minimise wear and provide consistent performance over a longer operating life.
Features such as a high chrome wear resistant impeller combined with solid-redirecting auxiliary vanes contribute towards its performance. The pump also features re-adjustable hydraulics which allow the pump to be simply realigned to compensate for any wear, thus prolonging its life.
All these elements have a significant positive impact on the overall operational productivity, meaning users can achieve a lower total cost of ownership.
“There are often many suspended solids in harsh applications which can cause excessive abrasion and wear to the internal workings of the pump,” Atlas Copco Power and Flow product marketing manager – submersible pumps Bart Duijvelaar said.
“At Atlas Copco, we are driven by innovation, and so we have taken the fundamental design of the drainage pump back to the drawing board. We have optimised the hydraulic design using computational fluid dynamics and applied 21st century manufacturing techniques combined with decades of experience to produce this new long-lasting and reliable pump.”
The pump has also been built with maintenance and serviceability front of mind. Thanks to the clever design, users can also carry out inspection and maintenance on site themselves and reduce downtime and associated costs. For example, the mechanical seal is a unique stainless-steel single cartridge, rather than many separate components, and so it is easy to replace in one piece.
For Atlas Copco Power and Flow achieving a more sustainable future is crucial. Therefore, facilitating the repairability of its pumps has been at the forefront of the design to ensure less time-consuming maintenance and best-in-class service support. It gives a second life to these pumps with increased uptime.
WEDA D95 also features external oil inspection screws. Operators can easily access the screws to check the quality of the oil and the health status of the seal without having to dismantle the whole pump. This makes preventive maintenance easy so users can detect problems before they lead to failure.
Overall, with the ease of service, it is possible to readjust the pump to the original performance without changing many parts. The pump’s repairability prolongs the life of the pump, giving it a second life and contributing towards a more sustainable future.
Additionally, the pumps in the D range are available with various accessories including different types of discharge connections, pump rafts and zinc anodes to provide extra corrosion resistance.
The new WEDA D95 pumps are backed by Atlas Copco’s service team and supported by a wide network of local dealers and technicians worldwide with readily available parts to help users keep their operations up and running to improve productivity.
With state-of-the-art manufacturing and 3D modelling tools, Atlas Copco is addressing product performance and technical challenges at the design stage. The WEDA D95 submersible pump is the latest example of a well-crafted and thoughtfully designed pump range, with more models expected in the company’s portfolio in the coming years.
Keramos is located in Port Kennedy, Western Australia in the heart of the Western Australian mining industry. We have customers throughout all states of Australia and supply throughout the world to countries including New Zealand, Laos, Dominican Republic, Solomon Islands, Senegal, South Africa, Mali, Tanzania and Ghana.
Keramos acquires C-Tech Engineering, a metal fabrication business located in the industrial hub of Canning Vale, Western Australia. C-Tech will be fully integrated into Keramos, and we are excited to welcome the experience and expertise of the C-Tech team to Keramos.
Read about Keramos silicon carbide ceramic cyclone overflow pipes and how we can extend the wear life and increase the reliability of pipes in slurry wear applications.
Renascor Resources’ Siviour graphite project is located on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.
With graphite demand outstripping supply, the market is bracing for a 777,000-tonne per year deficit by 2030. But movement in the mining sector – both traditional and innovative – may be set to change this.
One of the key raw materials in the green energy transition is graphite, but while Australia is a key producer of other battery metals such as lithium, nickel and manganese, there are no active Australian graphite mining operations.
Graphite is used as an input for anodes – one of two electrodes that make up a lithium-ion battery, with cathodes – made up of metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt – the other electrode.
By 2030, demand for graphite is expected to hit four million tonnes (Mt) per year, roughly 75 per cent of which is for the lithium-ion battery market. Currently, the bulk majority of graphite comes from China.
The highest profile Australian-focused company in this sphere is Renascor Resources, which owns the Siviour battery anode material project in SA.
Siviour holds the second largest graphite reserve in the world, and the largest outside of Africa.
As recently as last week, the Renascor increased Siviour’s mineral resource by 25 per cent to an impressive 123.6Mt at 6.9 per cent total graphitic carbon (TGC), for 8.5Mt of contained graphite.
The company predicts the mine, when operational, to produce up to 150,000 tonnes per year for a 40-year life of mine.
“As the demand for graphite grows, long-life, high quality sources of new supply like Siviour are becoming increasingly important to the developing lithium-ion battery supply chain,” Renascor managing director David Christensen said.
In July this year, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mitsubishi Checmical Corporation for the potential sale of its graphite products from Siviour to the Japanese giant.
Founded in 2018, ASX-listed International Graphite was built on the premise that the industry would need more downstream processing capacity outside of China.
The company is developing a mine-to-market business model, whereby raw materials would be mined from its Springdale project in WA and fed into a downstream processing plant in the emerging renewable energy hub of Collie.
International Graphite similarly announced a significant increase to its graphite deposit at Springdale, which is the second largest in Australia behind Siviour.
The deposit grew from 15.3Mt to 49.3Mt at 6.5 per cent TCG.
Despite the 27 per cent increase, International Graphite managing director Andrew Worland said the company had only scratched the surface at Springdale.
“So far, exploration has been limited to approximately 10 per cent of the Springdale tenement areas. More than 80 per cent of the aeromagnetic anomalies on a portion of our tenure has yet to be tested,” Worland said.
Outside of Australia, interesting developments have been made.
New Zealand-based battery material company CarbonSpace recently secured an $18 million investment from a number of partners to commercialise production of what it calls ‘biographite’.
Biographite is produced from forestry and timber industry by-products, meaning a significant reduction in carbon emissions.
“Biographite has a carbon negative footprint, saving up to 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions per tonne of material compared to synthetic or mined graphite,” the company said.
“This investment represents a strong statement of support for sustainable sourcing of battery materials for global decarbonisation. With these partnerships, CarbonScape is another step closer to bringing biographite to market on a commercial scale.”
Renascor Resources’ Siviour graphite project is located on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.
With graphite demand outstripping supply, the market is bracing for a 777,000-tonne per year deficit by 2030. But movement in the mining sector – both traditional and innovative – may be set to change this.
One of the key raw materials in the green energy transition is graphite, but while Australia is a key producer of other battery metals such as lithium, nickel and manganese, there are no active Australian graphite mining operations.
Graphite is used as an input for anodes – one of two electrodes that make up a lithium-ion battery, with cathodes – made up of metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt – the other electrode.
By 2030, demand for graphite is expected to hit four million tonnes (Mt) per year, roughly 75 per cent of which is for the lithium-ion battery market. Currently, the bulk majority of graphite comes from China.
The highest profile Australian-focused company in this sphere is Renascor Resources, which owns the Siviour battery anode material project in SA.
Siviour holds the second largest graphite reserve in the world, and the largest outside of Africa.
As recently as last week, the Renascor increased Siviour’s mineral resource by 25 per cent to an impressive 123.6Mt at 6.9 per cent total graphitic carbon (TGC), for 8.5Mt of contained graphite.
The company predicts the mine, when operational, to produce up to 150,000 tonnes per year for a 40-year life of mine.
“As the demand for graphite grows, long-life, high quality sources of new supply like Siviour are becoming increasingly important to the developing lithium-ion battery supply chain,” Renascor managing director David Christensen said.
In July this year, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mitsubishi Checmical Corporation for the potential sale of its graphite products from Siviour to the Japanese giant.
Founded in 2018, ASX-listed International Graphite was built on the premise that the industry would need more downstream processing capacity outside of China.
The company is developing a mine-to-market business model, whereby raw materials would be mined from its Springdale project in WA and fed into a downstream processing plant in the emerging renewable energy hub of Collie.
International Graphite similarly announced a significant increase to its graphite deposit at Springdale, which is the second largest in Australia behind Siviour.
The deposit grew from 15.3Mt to 49.3Mt at 6.5 per cent TCG.
Despite the 27 per cent increase, International Graphite managing director Andrew Worland said the company had only scratched the surface at Springdale.
“So far, exploration has been limited to approximately 10 per cent of the Springdale tenement areas. More than 80 per cent of the aeromagnetic anomalies on a portion of our tenure has yet to be tested,” Worland said.
Outside of Australia, interesting developments have been made.
New Zealand-based battery material company CarbonSpace recently secured an $18 million investment from a number of partners to commercialise production of what it calls ‘biographite’.
Biographite is produced from forestry and timber industry by-products, meaning a significant reduction in carbon emissions.
“Biographite has a carbon negative footprint, saving up to 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions per tonne of material compared to synthetic or mined graphite,” the company said.
“This investment represents a strong statement of support for sustainable sourcing of battery materials for global decarbonisation. With these partnerships, CarbonScape is another step closer to bringing biographite to market on a commercial scale.”
Prometheus Materials has designed a zero-carbon concrete. Credit: Prometheus Materials’ website
Cement is well-known as one of the world’s widely consumed building materials, but an American company is changing the recipe with underwater ingredients.
Zero-carbon concrete is not new as an industry abroad, and Australia seeks to decarbonise operations and cement from its carbon emissions.
Prometheus Materials used microalgae to produce an alternative to traditional Portland cement. The company says the microalgae cement produces little-to-no CO2 and recycles 95 per cent of its water during production.
Alongside the carbon emissions benefits, the bio-cement has proven in recent tests to be incredibly absorptive for sound for noise reduction.
“Our latest ASTM testing results embody our commitment to innovative design,” president, chief executive, and co-founder of Prometheus Materials Loren Burnett said.
“We’ve developed a novel material that provides a zero-carbon alternative to traditional concrete while delivering additional performance benefits and applications. We’re proud to pave the way toward a more technologically advanced and environmentally responsible future for the construction industry.”
With significant investment from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Prometheus has created an initial pre-cast bio-concrete product line that includes masonry units, segmented modular blocks and acoustic panels, and pavers.
The company still faces barriers to being approved as part of local building codes but is confident that with education, more people will engage with bio-cement.
“They’re doing a $75 million rehab on that building [Hellems Arts & Sciences building], and we will be on the interior walls. They want to put our blocks on interior walls that are highly visible to traffic, with storyboards to tell the story that these blocks are our zero carbon alternative material blocks made out of algae, originally invented at the University of Colorado,” Burnett said.
