Transforming the effectiveness of a HPGR circuit at Anglo Platinum Mogalakwena

Paper i proceeding, 2011

was one of the first three hard rock mineral processing applications to utilise a HPGR circuit in preference to a SAG milling circuit. This was driven by the extreme competence of the ore that had given rise to throughput issues on the original South plant. Despite more than adequate capacity and performance of the individual comminution units, the circuit has struggled to obtain full design capacity. A thorough review of the integrated performance of the circuit revealed a wide range of bottlenecks and underutilised parts of the circuit. Interestingly, the major opportunities lie in materials handling issues and mismatch of loads about the circuit. This paper presents the high-level outcomes and the associated opportunities, and is pertinent to all new HPGR circuit designs.