Project Background: Dewatering Project for Tailings Slurry of a Mexican Mining Enterprise

The enterprise is primarily engaged in the flotation processing of lead-zinc ore, generating a large volume of tailings slurry during production. The original filtration equipment was a small plate-and-frame filter press with a filtration area of only 30 square meters. It operated semi-automatically, and the filter cake moisture content was as high as over 28%, resulting in high tailings transportation costs. Meanwhile, the equipment experienced frequent failures, with an average of two shutdowns per week, severely impacting production schedules.

Challenges

• Insufficient filtration area unable to meet the daily processing demand of 80 tons of tailings slurry

• High filter cake moisture content limiting payload capacity of transport vehicles

• Low efficiency of manual plate pulling for cake discharge, with high labor intensity for operators

• Frequent material leakage and short service life of filter cloths, leading to high replacement costs

Solution

The customer purchased one fully automatic XMZ80/870-30 recessed chamber filter press, with the following key technical configurations:

• Filtration area of 80 square meters, chamber volume of 1,200 liters – single-batch processing capacity increased nearly threefold

• 62 filter plates plus 2 head and end plates, plate dimensions 870×870 mm, filter cake thickness 30 mm

• 63 pieces of PP non-woven filter cloth with a filtration precision of 10 microns, significantly reducing solids content in filtrate

• Open flow discharge via plastic gutters, facilitating field inspection of each plate’s discharge condition

• Hydraulic pressing + automatic plate puller for fully automated cake discharge

• PLC control system, interlocked with feed pump and connected to pipeline pressure sensor – feed pressure stably maintained at 0.6 MPa

• Hydraulic station motor power 4 kW, cylinder diameter 200 mm, holding pressure 16–18 MPa, design pressure 22 MPa

• Safety features: emergency stop button on operator side + emergency stop pull cord; cylinder equipped with a 0–40 MPa electrical contact pressure gauge

Implementation Results

The equipment installation and commissioning took two weeks. Data from the first three months of operation are as follows:

Additionally, thanks to the lower filter cake moisture content, each transport vehicle can carry approximately 3.5 more tons of dry material per trip, resulting in an 18% reduction in monthly transportation costs. Customer feedback indicates that the equipment runs stably, the PLC control interface is simple and user-friendly, and the emergency stop pull cord design has been highly appreciated by field operators.