Bench Pilot Plant Testing
The following table summarizes some of the material testing steps required for Scoping Studies, Pre-Feasibility Studies, and Bankable Feasibility Studies.
|
|
Scoping Study |
Pre-Feasibility Study |
Bankable Feasibility Study |
| Mineral characterization | Preliminary | Final | |
| Bench-scale beneficiation | Preliminary | ||
| Pilot Plant Beneficiation | Produce rock for Phosacid tests | Process Optimization | |
| Phosphoric acid Pilot Plant | Chemical analysis Reactivity tests | Route selection (DH or HH), quality | Process optimization Basic Engineering Guarantees |
| Bench-scale fertilizer testing | Fertilizer grades | Fertilizer samples |
Bench-Scale Beneficiation Testing
Our lab, in conjunction with ArrMaz Custom Chemicals, is used for flexible small scale beneficiation testing. This includes wet and dry grinding, gravity separation, magnetic separation, electrostatic separation, solid-liquid separation, sizing, and flotation. The data obtained from batch scale tests, can be used to scale up to pilot plant testing and flowsheet design.
- Crushing
- Grinding (rod or ball mill)
- Reagent Conditioning
- Flotation
- Gravity Separation
- Sizing
- Magnetic Separation
- Desliming
Beneficiation Pilot Plant
We can develop flow sheets from batch scale laboratory data and use this information to design and perform continuous beneficiation pilot plant tests. The facilities that we utilize have extensive inventories of pilot plant equipment of differing size (capacity) which enables it to simulate most process flow sheets.
Pilot plant testing is used to develop engineering design criteria and process operating parameters, and is used to define process efficiencies typically for determining economic process feasibility. Furthermore, the pilot plant is often used to provide bulk samples for product evaluation in the marketplace. KEMWorks is skilled at scaling up from pilot plant studies to commercial plant design.
In addition, KEMWorks can subcontract some or all components of a beneficiation pilot plant test program to a partner lab under the supervision of KEMWorks.
Phosphoric Acid Pilot Plant
The purpose of the ArrMaz/KEMWorks Phosphoric Acid Pilot Plant is to determine the behavior of a phosphate rock under conditions typical of a industrial phosphoric acid plant. Because the chemical composition and mineralogy of phosphate rocks varies widely from deposit to deposit (and sometimes within a deposit) so will the process conditions and the results vary for different phosphate rocks.
The plant can be operated to simulate the three major process routes: dihydrate (DH), hemihydrate (HH) and Hemidihydrate (HDH).
The pilot plant that can process between 0.5 and 2 kg/h of phosphate rock is designed to provide the major data required to design an industrial plant. This will include:
- Reactor Volume
- Filtration Rate
- P2O5 recovery
- Sulfuric acid consumption
- Corrosion rates
- Defoamer requirements
- Acid analysis
- Sludge formation
- MAP, DAP, SSP, TSP and animal feeds (MCP and DCP) grade and physical characteristics.
Uranium Recovery
Several companies extracted uranium as yellow cake from phosphoric acid until the price dropped below the cost of production in the early 1990s.
Now uranium prices have rebounded and nuclear energy is considered by many one of the best alternatives to meet climate change targets and reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In conjunction with K-Technologies, KEMWorks offers the conventional solvent extraction (SX) process using DEPA-TOPO that became the standard in the 1980s. We have also developed two Advanced Technologies that offer significant reductions in capital and operating costs, and eliminates the disadvantages of the kerosene carrier used in the SX process.
K-Technologies operates a pilot plant near Lakeland where we can test your phosphoric acid and provide an estimate of capital and operating costs for any of these three technologies.