African Mining & Crushing has been helping to develop mining solutions all over Africa, from Sierra Leone to South Africa for 10 years.
Many of the solutions are considered unconventional but in practice have proved to be very effective for the clients from two perspectives: an initial investment perspective as well as the ability to run the operation at a guaranteed lower cost per tonne.
MD Trevor Garden speaks to Sascha Solomons.
This article first appeared in Mining Review Africa Issue 11 2018
“It was through developing these unconventional and lower, sustainable, cost per tonne solutions and then running them at a cost per tonne as AMC that the idea developed to start a new company,” starts Garden.
As a result Evolve Mining was established to market and deliver a concept which as its name suggests will help see the African mining sector evolve into a position of long-term sustainability and greater profitability.
The commodities that Evolve Mining and AMC are involved in vary from manganese, copper, gold, coal and lime, to construction aggregates.
The tph ranges from 2 tonnes per hour to 3 500 tph.
So far Evolve Mining has been involved in: exploration, mine design, design of crushing and screening circuits, mineral processing; optimisation and upgrading of current processes for improvement at a cost per tonne.
Many of these designs involve innovation in the mine design to incorporate in pit crushing, surface mining and in pit conveying to dramatically reduce risk, improve safety and reduce the cost per tonne of operating.
These innovations have knock-on benefits that flow into the crushing and screening circuits and the mineral processing circuits.
“We have focused on eliminating many frustrations experienced using conventional equipment designs. With extensive operating experience in Africa we are ideally positioned to help improve profitability with reliable equipment that is simple to operate and maintain and is also effective and efficient,” notes Garden.
Equipment to match a winning concept
Evolve Mining and its partners are constantly involved in R&D, designing, manufacturing and testing new innovations to help improve the effectiveness and efficiencies of mineral processing plant.
The central philosophy of the company’s designs is ‘lowest, sustainable, cost per tonne’.
Garden highlights that in alignment with the philosophy is innovation, simplicity and being Africa ready.
Some of the innovations Evolve is currently involved in for minerals processing include:
A new concept cone crusher
It incorporates a flywheel into the design of the bowl assembly. The design only uses 20% of the moving parts of a conventional cone crusher, uses 50% of the power to achieve up to 6:1 reduction ratio on hard and abrasive African geology. The design does not need any dangerous chemicals to change liners. A prototype has been built and is currently in test phase.
An innovative screen designs
This incorporates simpler vibrating technology for more complicated screen designs. This technology can be incorporated into inclined screens, horizontal and dewatering screens. The simplicity of the design allows an increase in power transferred to the material. The design allows for a reduction in capital costs versus conventional technology and in operating costs as the maintenance of the screen is dramatically simplified.
A diamond keeper
A design with the potential ability to replace DMS plant or pans in diamond processes and still have the ability to remove concentrate up to 1-2%. The benefit of this technology is it can be done at one-third of the capex costs and also have a dramatic effect on the operating costs per tonne.
Upgrading of ore
Together with the company’s partners Evolve has the ability to put together crushing and screening circuits that have the ability to upgrade ore. This technology (ore dependant) has been used to upgrade ore 300% by being able to differentiate between high grade and low grade. Many old “low-grade” stockpiles of ore can be commercially converted into cash assets utilizing the combination of our solutions.
Artisanal gold mining crushing trailer
Evolve has termed this trailer the New Mining trailer. This trailer utilises conventional jaw crusher technology with the new concept cone crusher technology. This trailer can crush a -90 mm feed to -2 mm material at 500 kg’s per hour or -10 mm at 4 tph. It utilises 2 litres of diesel per hour and can be towed behind a normal LDV (Toyota Hilux). A prototype has been developed and is being tested.
“New mining” plant
This plant has been designed to help “new miners” enter the mining market. It has been developed to produce 50 tph and has the ability to be scaled up to 100 tph feeding -400 mm product and producing a -24 mm. This incorporates a jaw crusher that does not need slings or cranes to unblock it. It also incorporates Evolve’s new screen design and the new concept cone crusher.
This plant has been manufactured and will be tested in the company’s own operations. As per the philosophy Evolve will put this plant through its paces to ensure that the design philosophy meets reality and that a customer can produce using this plant for the same cost per tonne as for a 150-180 tph plant.
Evolve Mining combines conventional technology with alternative, innovative mining and processing technology to provide solutions which the company believes are unique, cost-effective and should the client require AMC is willing to guarantee at a cost per tonne.
“Clients working together with Evolve and AMC are proof of our ability to assist and grow customers mining assets in a scalable way that generates profits with early cash flows, using limited resources and scale up operations as the profit and cash flows allow.
“The intended consequence of our LSCPT solutions is to provide our clients with more sustainable profits, great working relationships and lots of adventures in Africa” concludes Garden.
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