Teck Metals

PROJECT PROFILE

Teck metals contacted KBL in regards to having issues with their permanent presses onsite and operational issues within their plant, mainly to due to failures with ageing equipment. The site was then metallurgically out of balance – the zinc concentrate feed blend they rely on to make zinc production targets produces more residue than can be filtered using the equipment entitlement currently installed. This is due to compositional changes in the zinc feeds available worldwide – they are all getting dirtier, with more impurities. If they don’t filter the residue, then the throughput of the entire zinc circuit gets bottlenecked and they can’t treat the feed (or produce the zinc) that they are supposed to. The residue is an internal recycle between our zinc and lead circuits – the zinc circuit produces lead residue which is then treated in the lead smelter. Plans are in place to add new permanent filtering capacity within the complex but this is a slow process, given the constraints within an already busy refinery.

PROJECT CHALLENGES

KBL had been contracted to provide two(2) mobile filter press units, one (1) 53ft conveyor & one (1) 30ft conveyor to meet the clients’ needs filtering needs. An experienced team of supervisors were dispatched with specialty equipment that had been carefully maintained and inspected prior to mobilization. Given the tight constraints of the site the team were able to setup within an 8 hour shutdown period provided by the client. Operations currently run 24/7.

PROJECT SUCCESS

High percentage solids material (20-30%) is pressed into a stackable material along the EMN plant to continue sending lead residue to the leachate plant resulting in operational savings for Teck along with stackable material which is then sent to the smelter for further processing. On average, we are producing over 385t per day for the client