Design cases for Russia’s largest mining and processing enterprises for copper ores

Abstract

The article covers the design and construction of advanced processing facilities for JSC Russian Copper Company (RCC), one of the leaders in the field of mining and processing of copper ores in Russia. JSC «Mekhanobr Engineering» has been directly involved in the respective work. In 2015–2020, RCC’s largest mining and processing plants of Mikheevskiy GOK and Tominskiy GOK were put into operation. Mikheevskiy GOK was built in the shortest possible time, however the initial performance monitoring revealed certain specific features of the ore, which required a number of process improvements. «Mekhanobr Engineering» experts updated the design documentation for concentrator No. 1 and the tailings facilities. The enterprise is currently in operation, producing copper concentrates with the copper grade of up to 25 wt. %. For concentrator No. 2 of Mikheevskiy GOK, the entire documentation set and all field construction supervision activities were developed and conducted by «Mekhanobr Engineering». The copper recovery and concentrate grade design targets were achieved immediately after the commissioning. The design work for Tominskiy GOK included a certain modification of the process and main process equipment of the concentrator. For example, tailings slurry thickening was added. In 2018, «Mekhanobr Engineering» experts proceeded with preparing design documentation for the concentrator of Malmyzhskiy GOK, one of RCC’s largest enterprises. This design features some of the most advanced and efficient equipment sets in the world.