Managing Dust in Mineral Processing

One of the biggest issues in mineral processing facilities is combating the dusting that can take place as minerals are moved and processed. Dusting causes health and safety issues within the facility, so ensuring the material is contained while moving dusting material through the process is key.

Recently a mineral processing facility reached out to JVI to find a safe, efficient way of feeding a dusting material from multiple outlets of their cooler to an inlet box above their mill in the next stage of the process. Available space was a factor as there was a limited area available to position the feeders within the process. The JVI team worked closely with the facility to develop a custom solution to their exact requirements focusing on the multiple feeders, various run lengths, available space, and dust control. The proposed package included four custom vibratory electromechanical tube feeders with specific design characteristics to address the requirements given.

Dusting

Limiting the dusting of the material was a major requirement from the facility. To achieve this JVI decided to utilize electromechanical tube feeders. These feeders contain the material as it is fed to the next step in the process and were equipped with dust tight collars at both the inlet and outlet. To keep material from building to high in the tube a static down comer was incorporated at the inlet to ensure a stead material height within the tube.

Multiple Outlets

To address the four outlets at the bottom of the cooler, JVI decided to utilize four electromechanical tubes each designed to fit the specific runs from the outlets of the cooler to the inlet of the mill.

Available Space

The space available between the two different processes did not allow for all four of the tube feeders to employ a standard design with the electromechanical motors mounted to a saddle positioned underneath the tube. Two of the feeders would utilize the standard designed while the other two will incorporate the saddle and motors above the tube.

Additional benefits achieved through the JVI design include:

• Vibratory feeding enables gentler handling of the material, so the material going into the feeder is the same going out.
• Single mass design eliminates tuning and reduces maintenance costs.
• Variable frequency drive (VFD) was incorporated to give feed rate control.

The facility approved the package’s design and JVI began moving forward with the manufacturing process. Today the tube feeders are fully integrated into the mineral processing facility’s process line, feeding material, helping keep production flowing.