Mogalakwena North mining has upgraded to five new state-of-the-art oil separation facilities at the North mining workshops.
The project was completed without any incident and the mine recorded 51’238 hrs worked safely on the projects.
Mogalakwena Mine was required to improve their oily water separation to ensure that discharge standards are met and to thus start reusing water on site where possible.
Two 26m3/h Hydraspin systems each with a Spill recovery system was installed at North and South workshop areas treating all water before entering the PCD dams. New fuel facility, bulk Lube dispensing, LDV and wash bay areas also have Hydraspin system to ensure oil pollution is captured at source.
Meeting global standards in oil/water discharge limits is a challenge to all industries. Within the mining sector this challenge is increased by the necessity to use surfactants and solvent based degreasers. It is thus crucial to make use of powerful separation process such as the Hydraspin hydro cyclones that ensures low discharge.
The system will have a low life cycle cost in terms of maintenance and will be relatively simple to operate.
Discharge limits of less than 30ppm have been achieved on similar sites with hydro cyclones.
Global targets for mining process water are usually below 50ppm and below 30ppm for reuse and recycling of wash bay water.
The mine will use water-based detergents as far as possible to avoid emulsification of oil in water.
