Automatic plate press filter machine helps Chilean copper mining enterprises solve the problem of tailings dehydration

Customer background
A medium-sized copper mining enterprise located in Chile has the capacity to process 3,000 tons of raw ore per day. For a long time, the high moisture content of its tailings slurry has led to high transportation costs and a huge pressure on the tailings storage capacity.
Facing challenges
The original filtration equipment of this client was a manual lever-type model, which had low processing efficiency and the filter cake moisture content was over 28%, failing to meet the requirements for environmental discharge and water recycling reuse. At the same time, the frequent manual operations also brought safety hazards.
Solution

Our engineers have customized two sets of 870 automatic plate-loading box-type filter presses for the customers. Each unit has a filtration area of 200 square meters. The entire machine is controlled automatically by PLC and the filter plates and pipelines have been upgraded to corrosion-resistant materials in accordance with the weakly acidic characteristics of the copper ore slurry.
Operation results
After installation and commissioning of the equipment, it was continuously operated for 6 months. The data showed that the moisture content of the filter cake remained stable at 16% to 18%, which was 10 percentage points lower than that of the original equipment. The transportation cost per ton of tailings was reduced by approximately 22%. At the same time, the clarified clean water recovered was directly reused in the beneficiation process, with a daily recovery volume of about 800 tons. The automatic plate-lifting system compressed the single-cycle discharge time from 45 minutes to 18 minutes. The number of operators per shift was reduced from 4 to 1.
Customer feedback The production manager of the factory stated that the new equipment has significantly improved the efficiency of tailings disposal, resulting in drier filter cakes and safer storage. The PLC automatic plate-lowering function enables stable operation even during night shifts. They have planned to order three more units of the same model in another mining area.