Projects

Boddington Gold Staged Oxygen Project

Client:

Newmont Boddington Gold

Location:

Boddington, Western Australia

Scope:

 Staged Oxygen Addition, Reduce Gold Losses by Increasing Dissolved Oxygen Level in Gold Leaching Circuits, transfer chutes upgrade

Period:

2017 -  2020

DRA was engaged to undertake the engineering for Newmont Boddington Gold’s (NBG) Staged Oxygen Addition Project, Boddington WA. The primary objectives of the project were to increase oxygen addition to the CST Leach and CIL circuits. To do this DRA Pacific collaborated with NBG and formed an integrated team to undertake this brownfields upgrade. The project execution involved capex preparation, detailed engineering design, scope of works definition and technical support.

The project included the following components:

  • Duplication of the CST Leach Feed piping
  • Addition of a CST Oxygen Shear Mixer and Feed Pump
  • Upgrading of CST Leach Residue feed to the CIL circuit
  • New oxygen piping and lances to CST Leach and CIL circuits
  • Additional liquid oxygen storage

 

2019 DRA was engaged to reduce the final tail gold losses in solids by 0.01 g/t, through:

  • Increasing oxygen addition to the challenging CST leach to satisfy the oxygen demand of the reground slurry, and to ensure sufficient dissolved oxygen (DO) levels for gold leaching down the CST leach train. CST leach feed had a much higher sulphide grade and finer grind than the material fed to CIL. This made the material fed to CST leach a much higher consumer of oxygen (per tonne of ore fed) than the CIL feed. The low DO level in CST leach also had a knock-on effect upon the larger CIL circuit
  • Increasing oxygen addition to the CIL circuits to ensure sufficient DO levels for gold leaching down the CIL trains
  • Designing a new LOX unloading and storage area and increase storage capacity to 100m3

 

After the successful completion of the first two projects DRA was engaged for Transfer Chutes Upgrades.

The scope of work for the upgrade of the two HPGR Transfer Chutes consisted of the following items:

  • High throughput and low height transfers
  • Rotable design for ease of change-out, minimising downtime and effort;
  • Improve current liner wear life performance
  • Improve belt presentation and tracking – chute components adjustable from outside chute whilst running
  • Existing area 3D scanned and as-built to de-risk installation
  • Collaboration between DRA (design, comm support) and G&S (fabrication, supply and installation)
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