Monto Minerals - Goondicum Mine & Dakiel Upgrade Plant EPCM
Monto Minerals Limited is an Australian industrial minerals mining, processing and marketing company dual-listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM). The company's prime asset is the 100% owned and managed Goondicum mine and Dakiel dry plant, located in Central Queensland, Australia, about 30 kilometres east of Monto.
R.J. Robbins & Associates were awarded the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) contract for the mining and refining operations as well as product stacking and rail loading facility. In turn R.J. Robbins & Associates contracted Industrial Control & Electrical to perform EPCM duties for the power system and process control and instrumentation aspects of the project.
The Goondicum plant comprised:
- Feed Preparation Plant including Water Cannon mining
- Concentrate Upgrade Plant (CUP) including Mineral drying/storage Compound
- Feldspar and Apatite Separation Plants
- Process Water including Pond Pumping, Thickener and Flocculent make-up and storage
The Dakiel plant comprised:
- Primary Cleaner Circuit
- Leaching Circuit
- Recleaner Circuit
- Process Water including Pond Pumping and Thickeners
- Reagent Handling and Preparation including Caustic Soda, Sulphuric Acid and Lime Neutralization Plant
- Rail Loading Facility
Electrical assets include an 11kV overhead and underground distribution system comprising 3 off 11kV SF6 distribution board and 4 off 11kV/433V transformers ranging from 500kVA to 1500kVA. In addition, 191 off direct on line, soft starter and variable speed drives ranging from 0.37kW to 185kW. Installed cable length is approximately 69 klms.
Instrumentation assets include radar and ultrasonic level, hydrostatic pressure, magnetic flow, neucleonic density, impact and belt weigh transmitters. Level, pressure and flow switches. The total instrument count is approximately 270 instruments.
Control System assets include three control rooms each comprising server based, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. In addition the system includes, four distributed programmable logic controllers connected by fibre optic, radio and wired ethernet backbones. The control system is uninterruptible power supply (UPS) backed to achieved ten minute supervision following loss of supply. The total control system IO count is approximately 2,000 IO.
The plant is now in production and shipping final products.