Installation, commissioning, operation and performance review of TowerMill at OceanaGold Haile Gold Mine, South Carolina

Palaniandy, Carr, Johns, Williams

Presented at the AusIMM Mill Operators Conference June 2021

ABSTRACT

Haile Gold Mine is an open pitgold mine located in the state of South Carolina, USA. The concentrator consists of a semi-autogenous mill–ball mill–pebble crusher (SABC) circuit, flash flotation, rougher flotation, concentrate regrindmills, leaching electrowinning and refinery. This paper focuses on the regrinding section.

The original regrind circuit consists of six units of stirred media detritor that receives a combined flash and rougher flotation concentrates Feed. The circuit could not cope with the coarser pyrite from the flash flotation concentrate stream that has resulted in a lower mass pull from the flash flotation and coarser product size distribution compared to the design.

In 2019, Haile Gold Mine modified the circuit by introducing two stages of regrinding.One unit of ETM1500(1300kW)TowerMill and an M10000(3000kW) IsaMill were installed for regrinding duties. This paper focuses on the TowerMill circuit. The TowerMill circuit was designed to reduce the particle size from 150μm to 22–42μm. The mill was successfully installed in five days and commissioned within six days in November 2018 and January 2019.

For the first three months, the TowerMill was operated in open circuit configuration.In April 2019, the TowerMill circuit was closed with a cluster of 10” hydrocyclones. The leach circuit’s feed was reduced from 23μm to 17μm when the TowerMill was brought online. A recent TowerMill circuit performance review indicated that the circuit performs within the design specifications to produce a circuit product of 22μm at a specific energy consumption of 16.4kWh/t. The first set of the tip and flight liners’wear rate was 0.1and 0.05g/kWh, respectively.

This paper discusses the installation, commissioning and operational experience of the TowerMill circuit plus its process performances

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank OceanaGold and Haile Gold Mine for giving their permission to publish this collaborative study’s outcomes. The authors would like to thank the Haile Gold metallurgist team for their assistance during the surveyand data collection.

AUTHORS

S Palaniandy1, D Carr2,J Johns3and N Williams4

1. Process Manager, Nippon EirichCo. Ltd., Willawong Qld4110. Email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

2. Chief Metallurgist OceanaGold Corporation, South Brisbane Qld4101.Email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

3. Processing Manager Haile Gold Mine, Kershaw South Carolina 29067USA.Email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

4. Metallurgist Haile Gold Mine, Kershaw South Carolina 29067USA. Email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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