According to Phoenix Process Equipment, producers of construction aggregates, industrial sand, frac sand and minerals are confronted with changing business environments relating to materials specifications, production costs, the availabilities of reserves and water, and environmental regulations.
The economic management of wastewater and residual fines is essential to successful and profitable minerals processing operations. In the past, plants would typically deposit effluent wash plant slurry containing fine sand, silt and clay into a containment area or slurry pond.
Technological improvements in particle separation, water clarification, and fines dewatering offer economic benefits to processors such as eliminating slurry ponds, freeing up mineable reserves, and eliminating costly environmental liabilities.
For the past three decades, Phoenix has been dedicated to the development of the most efficient process technology specifically designed to increase efficiency in tailings dewatering and water management.
Phoenix offers a phased solution to fines dewatering for aggregate plants and other minerals processing facilities, consisting of liquid-solid separation followed by thickening, dewatering or filtration of the slurry, and recycling of the clarified water. Depending on the particle size distribution in the minerals processing plant’s effluent slurry and the desired objective of the processor, the solution can consist of one, two or three phases.
Because of this phased solution to tailings dewatering and water management, marketable fines are separated, thickened, dewatered, and made available for sale. Clarified effluent water is immediately recycled for reuse with minimum evaporative losses. Thickener underflow slurry is dewatered to a handleable, solid phase material which can be disposed, leading to the elimination of the slurry pond.
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