Hi xGenesis
The devil is in the detail as to this round of testing.
The intial testing was by Vale in 2008 trialling the IX system that the company in NSW is saying is proprietary.
This time they are trialling bypassing CCD's by using Compression filters straight after HPAL then going to iron removal, precipitaton, oxidisation via POX and SX.
This has not been done before, but at least they are not going down the path of calling it proprietary which turns the market off by basically saying new and untried.
It will be interesting to see how this goes as the slurry is very acidic and stinking hot. These filters are usually cloth based and the body carbon steel which require a good cleaning regime to keep efficiency up, how are they going to stop the acid eating the cloth and filter body. Also it is not stated how they intend to neutralise the filtered mud, the process flow chart shows initial neutralisation at iron removal stage, this is a prerequisite to disposal, and it would still need to go into a rubber/plastic lined area to stop possible contamination of groundwaters.
All this will be answered in EPA proposals which are not available yet.
But it is good they are going down the path of full demo plant to show and counter any of these problems before a FEED and final design commences.
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