Russian centrifugal concentrators: will their market share grow?
Who knows, maybe in a few years Russian industrialists will thank the West for the announced sanctions, because the situation in 2022, like in 2014, launched a wave of import substitution. And, since the nuts have been tightened this time, we can expect that the countermeasures will be more effective. For example, interesting processes are taking place in the centrifugal concentrator market today: until recently, Russian factories only knew Canadian equipment, and now Russian samples are about to appear on the scene.
Photo: Service Technoprom LLC
Let's clarify right away: Russian CC's have existed up to the present, but their share in the gold mining industry has been very modest. According to Anton Korolev, Technical Director of Effective Technologies LLC, foreign equipment occupied 99% of the ZIF market.
The remaining percentage is accounted for by Russian centrifugal concentrators: Itomak, Mezon, CVKP and the PROC built on its basis. The maximum productivity of Russian devices reached a maximum of 20-40 t/h, which does not meet the requirements of industrial applications in large factories.
Vladislav Pelikh, Director of Strategic Development at Service Technoprom LLC, assigns a slightly larger share to Russian concentrators — about 5%, but this is in the ore segment: domestic machines were used much more actively in placer deposits. But, as you know, in modern industry, the main role is played by ore gold: it accounts for more than 75% of the total Russian production. This means that the main demand and fixed assets are located right here.
By and large, there were only two foreign suppliers in the centrifugal concentrator market: Knelson and Falcon. Several countries had copies of this locally made equipment, but they were inferior in quality and performance. But if a large ZIF chose a supplier, then the competition was between two companies, and usually the one that could make the best financial offer won.
Experts generally associate the development of centrifugal concentration technology in recent decades with the name of Byron Nelson, the inventor and creator of Knelson concentrators. In fact, the principle of forced separation of raw materials into heavy and light fractions, which underlies the operation of the concentrator, has been known for several centuries, so this enrichment technology is generally called one of the oldest. Nevertheless, centrifugal concentrators, as an established class of gravity concentrating equipment suitable for real industrial use, do not have such a long history — 30-40 years.
"At the same time, it's no secret that neither Byron Nelson (Knelson concentrators) nor Steve McAllister (Falcon concentrators) were the founders of the idea of centrifugal separation, but copied existing "bowl" separators and improved them thanks to their design talents and diligence," insists Anton Korolev.
In other words, the task of creating Russian centrifugal concentrators seems quite feasible.
By inheritance
Today, domestic manufacturers are not starting their work from scratch, to put it mildly. They inherited the experience of foreign manufacturers. This story is typical not only for centrifugal concentrators, but also for industrial equipment in general. When entering the Russian market, a foreign manufacturer necessarily acquired official representatives.
And Russian specialists have already selected the equipment, installed it at the facility, and serviced it. That is, whether the foreigners wanted it or not, they have formed competencies here, which the Russian experts intend to use.
"More than 10 years ago, I was at Knelson myself, then I worked at FLSmidth, at Metso. And I saw all the processes from the inside.: how supplies and engineering were built, how we received the first information from the fields, how the research took place, how all this developed into working projects for factories," says Vladislav Pelikh, adding that most of the employees of the former Irkutsk office of FLSmidth now make up the staff of Service Technoprom.
Initially, STP did not plan to replace anyone. The company appeared long before modern events and saw its task as the selection of equipment, the development of integrated solutions and the supply of products from domestic and foreign manufacturers. But gradually reverse engineering technologies appeared in the work, the Russian company began to produce analogues of components and parts for imported hubs and, step by step, approached the development of design documentation for full-fledged own equipment.
"From the very beginning, the company's activities have been related to the production and supply of components specifically for centrifugal concentrators. Among other things, since 2015 we have been one of the local sub—suppliers of FLSmidth in Russia, and some parts that were supplied under the FLSmidth brand were actually made at our industrial site," said Vladislav Pelikh.
And our other expert, Anton Korolev, worked for Falcon in the past, where he also acquired the necessary knowledge and experience.
Efftech also initially did not position itself as an import-substituting company. The company was created in the same logic — as a provider of integrated solutions. Efftech has its own production facility, employs more than 90 people, and the company sees its task as selecting the most effective solutions and providing it with related elements.
"When difficulties arose with supplies, users of centrifugal concentrators began to contact us for old times' sake with questions about whether it was realistic to bring equipment from abroad. We made inquiries and realized that Canada would not supply us with anything else. That is, individual units and elements could still be bought last spring, but a large batch is unrealistic.
First, we dealt with the issues of repair and restoration of existing equipment: we conducted 3D scanning, developed design documentation. And then we thought: why not make our own equipment?" said Anton Korolev.
Don't panic — everything will be fine
Or maybe the foreign suppliers will come back? In fact, this is a very real scenario. But by this time, competitors will definitely appear on the market.
Experts say that today the shock in the industry has already passed. In the first months, customers were increasingly waiting and hoping for parallel imports. But, says Anton Korolev, the use of bypass schemes led to a 3-4-fold increase in the cost of projects, so users had to postpone the task of purchasing new machines.
"At the moment, a year after the departure of Western companies, there are three main areas of development: These are parallel imports, which are proceeding with varying success; a reorientation to manufacturers from the Asian and Middle Eastern regions, primarily China and Turkey, — this process is quite active; and import substitution, the development of own production.
There are successes and problems everywhere. Our company's activities involve work in all three areas, but the strategic one is the process of producing our own centrifugal concentrators," says Vladislav Pelikh.
According to him, machines with a single capacity of 100-150 t/h and 200-400 t/h have become the most widespread in the domestic industry. Most often, we used hubs with periodic unloading, but models with continuous unloading, which are also present in the line of Canadian manufacturers, are almost not used in our country and are represented only by single models.
Relying on these data, STP has launched its own production, with the company planning to release the first units this year. These will be the analogues of the QS48 and QS30 — CC-STP120 and CC-STP75. All the necessary elements of the future CC-STP120 are already available in the company's workshop. In the spring, STP intends to complete the general assembly and launch factory tests. By December, the Russian manufacturer plans to prepare the concentrator for shipment to the factory for industrial testing. They will last approximately 6 months.
Vladislav Pelikh says that confidence in the success of the initiative is based on the experience of specialists gained while working with FLSmidth: the company is well acquainted with the practices of using centrifugal concentrators, knows the strengths and weaknesses of these machines, and even has access to some design documentation of Canadian solutions.
At the same time, Efftech is working on creating a prototype of its own centrifugal concentrator with a capacity of up to 150 t/h. According to the manufacturers' calculations, it will be ready in July 2023. And next up is a prototype of a central processing unit with a capacity of up to 400 t/h, which should appear by December of this year.
Photo: Efftech LLC
The company also acquired the necessary competencies in the production of wear parts for the Falcon i150/i350/SB1350/SB2500/SB5200 CC. Since Efftech was often contacted by users of such machines, prototypes were manufactured in the company's workshops, and a complete database of all wear parts was accumulated.
So domestic miners will not remain without centrifugal concentrators — competition may even form on the market. By the way, not only Russian, but also, most likely, Asian manufacturers will take part in the struggle for consumers. We have already said that in the current conditions, ties with suppliers from friendly countries are strengthening, which has not been observed before. According to Anton Korolev, until last year, only STL hubs were trying to enter the Russian market.
"They were radically different from their Canadian counterparts in terms of performance for the worse, which, of course, had a negative impact on both operation and recovery rates.
Now there are good Chinese copies of the old Knelson (CD series) with polyurethane cones with a capacity of up to 250 t/h. Therefore, given their cost, I am sure that they will find a buyer, and their presence in the Russian market will only increase," the specialist believes.
Modern CC
Vladislav Pelikh emphasizes that centrifugal concentrators as an element of gravity enrichment technology are an important part of the precious metal ore processing chain.: This is one of the most demanded processes for the extraction of fine free and sulfide-associated gold and platinum. These machines are especially widespread in Russia and Kazakhstan, which is obviously due to the large reserves of gold, which is available in free form.
"And even when working with ores where gravitationally recoverable gold is present in very small quantities, concentrators are increasingly finding their place and showing a good economic effect. This is due to the fact that CCS are easily discharged even into small spaces and have high unit productivity. In addition, Russia has developed a theoretical and practical base for their application, and our research institutes have scaling models," says Vladislav Pelikh.
At the same time, the expert notes that in recent years, centrifugal concentrators have come a long way, and, for example, if we compare Knelson equipment from 30 years ago with modern ones, then they will have only the principle of operation in common. Among the significant innovations, Mr. Pelich notes the central unloading system, which has reduced the time for stopping and flushing.
Modern hubs are equipped with an automated control system, which makes it possible to reduce the influence of the human factor and, as a result, increase the efficiency of the equipment.
The materials used to create the elements of centrifugal concentrators have also changed.
So, if previously stainless steel was used mainly for the production of the concentration cone, which Vladislav Pelikh called the "heart" of the machine, today polyurethane is used.
Anton Korolev says that the last significant changes to the hub design were made in 2011-2013: the solutions were aimed at improving mechanical reliability and facilitating hub maintenance. The drive system was replaced from the bearing type bearings to the cartridge, which significantly increased their service life.
The V-belt drive has been replaced with a high-efficiency gear-type chevron belt, and lining materials have been added to areas of increased wear to increase service life. A zonal approach was applied (or borrowed) for the Knelson work cones, after which they were divided into two parts: the lower and upper modules.
Since 2019, some imported manufacturers have begun work on optimizing the cone profile. The classical purpose of these works is to increase extraction rates.
"In recent years, the vector of evolution of the use of centrifugal concentrators has shifted towards reducing the size of the extracted gold, which is reflected both in the design features and in the location of centrifugal concentrators in the scheme of processing plants and stricter requirements for the preparation of feedstock," notes Mr. Korolev.
Young manufacturers who are entering the market today intend to take into account all these achievements of their predecessors.
Photo: Service Technoprom LLC
Beyond the Golden Circle
And one more point: we said above that centrifugal concentrators are used in ore and placer gold mining enterprises, but this is far from a complete list. Anton Korolev drew attention to the fact that in Russia, centrifugal concentrators, in addition to gold, are used to extract tin at the enterprises of PJSC Rusolovo and LLC Resources of Maly Khingan. In Norilsk, concentrators efficiently extract MPG. In Kazakhstan, there is a working example of their use for chromium extraction at the Kazchrome enterprise.
But that's not all. A promising area of application of CC is the processing of coal, mining, and metallurgical industry dumps. In this case, the concentrator can become an element of the technological complex.
"Concentrators can be used wherever there is a difference in the specific gravity of minerals of the useful component and the rock. In light of the relevance of the environmental component (recycling) on the agenda, a promising use case is the use of CC to extract metals from the ashes of incinerators.
Research has also been conducted on the possibility of using centrifugal concentrators to purify "light" minerals (coal, kaolin) from impurities of heavy minerals and quartz, but due to the high ratio of capital costs and payback periods (Capex VS PayBack), these technologies have not yet found industrial application," says Anton Korolev.
In such an image, on the center of the concentration in Russia and neighboring countries, according to all faith, remain high.
Text By Kira Istratova