The past couple of weeks have seen some significant steps forward with the commissioning activities of the Stage 1 flowsheet at the Test Plant in Perth:
Acid introduced for the first time – no leaks detected and vent system operating as designed
Water circulating through all modules
Operating supervisors attended an introduction/ orientation day
Plant engineers have been onsite for last two weeks for intensive hands-on training and commissioning work
Continuing commissioning of the Citect process control and monitoring systems
Commencement of an independent CSIRO safety systems review
On top of this excellent progress, this week the first ore charge was successfully fed into the Plant. While the sample from Indonesia is awaited this material is from Mindoro’s Agata deposit in the Philippines.
At the other end of the circuit the first slurry was presented to the belt filter.
DNi’s Technical Program Process Engineer, Dr Fiona McCarthy, said “Today’s achievements are a significant boost for the combined DNi, CSIRO and RMDSTEM team and the fruit of many months of planning work. We are so pleased to actually have some laterite ore in the Plant which takes our commissioning program to a whole new level, we can’t wait to get the sample from Indonesia. However, hot commissioning on ore, is scheduled to be a three month exercise which can commence in earnest when the Indonesian sample has been through sample preparation”
After incurring some delays with shipping the 200T sample from Indonesia to Perth the Export Permit was granted on 23rd November. The PT Direct Nickel Team are now working with the port authorities to have the material loaded into containers and the ship ready for sailing to the port of Fremantle. The expected departure from Jakarta is towards the end of next week with arrival in Fremantle mid December.
Construction of the Stage 2 portion of the flowsheet is on track to be ready by the time Stage 1 has been hot commissioned.
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