Beaver Process Equipment

Early this year, the maintenance super at Carosue Dam called us to help solve an issue with his plant’s impingement box feed line piping. This area is known for being a high-wear zone in gold plants and he described it as “the main problem in the plant.” ⚠️

When we heard this, we thought we’d better take a closer look. 🔎

On the site visit, we could see why the spools were causing problems. Only lasting 2.5 weeks before leaks began, the maintenance crew were constantly bandaging the spools.

They’d tried rubber-lined pipe in the past without any success, then were using a cheap ceramic-lined steel pipe.

The two main problems were:
1. Rigid steel elbows – When hard, fast slurry impacted the elbow, it couldn’t absorb the impact. The ceramic liner was taking a beating.

2. Internal lining design – The ceramic liner had a built-in ‘rock ledge,’ basically ridges in the lining. As slurry hit the ridges, it became turbulent, and snapped pieces off the liner.

We recommended they redesign the line to better handle the fast, abrasive slurry.

Slurryflex CLX ceramic-lined mining hose was the ideal choice. Being made of rubber, mining hose absorbs and dissipates impact from particles when slurry changes direction on the bends, and it has a smooth internal liner.

They chose ceramic tiles embedded over a 45° arc for more durability where slurry impacts the hose wall the hardest.

For the straight spool, they opted for Abrasiguard polymer-lined pipe because its wear liner is smooth and durable to withstand the rough sliding ore.

The photo on the left shows the old spools leaking and heavily bandaged. On the right, the new Abrasiguard and Slurryflex piping system is installed.

We’re continuing to work with Carosue Dam to make other reliability improvements, and we look forward to seeing the results. 🔧

Say goodbye to fast-wearing HDPE overflows.

In 2022, the engineers at Newcrest Telfer gold mine gave us a call to see if we could help sort out fast wearing cyclone overflow piping.

They wondered if we could design something with less high-wear spots to handle the highly abrasive gold slurry.

We worked with them to design this one-piece 180° Slurryflex hose bend—custom built specifically for their plant.

This new 180° Slurryflex pre-formed mining hose bend means:
- No more HDPE welding
- More durable than HDPE
- Flexible and corrects pipe misalignment
- Absorbs mechanical impact/shock
- Easier to install as a single spool

Twelve months on, it’s outperformed HDPE and still going strong.

The team have now upgraded all the overflow piping with Slurryflex bends. It’s reduced maintenance costs and downtime at Telfer— and one less thing for the team to worry about.

Slowing down is sometimes the best way to speed up. That’s what this maintenance team did to fix fast wearing piping in their processing plant.

The senior maintenance supervisor at the Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum mine was getting tired of dealing with blowouts every three weeks on one of the plant’s slurry lines.

He and his team were frustrated at how much this was pulling them away from other, more pressing maintenance.

We had a look and identified two major problems:

1. Fast, free-falling slurry was hitting bottom of the bend and holing out the outer ridge of the spool. That was causing the blowouts.
2. The line snaked through a structural cross brace so there was a slight elevation where the pipe went over the brace (see scan image below). That was leading to blockages. The team cleared this through a flushing port but it was an almost daily battle to keep the slurry moving.

We recommended they refine the layout of the piping geometry.

It would do two things:

1. ‘Slow down’ the slurry. A longer, smoother bend radius reduces the speed and wear on the bends.
2. Moving the pipe below the cross brace removed the elevation (the blue piping in the image). It would slow down blockages forming and drastically reduce the need to flush the line.

The supervisor decided to go ahead with the new design in Slurryflex CLX ceramic lined hose to further beef up the wear resistance.

It’s a small change that’s paid off two-fold.

He’s improved the wear life of the new line by at least 4x.

Plus, he found can ‘speed up’ the line by enlarging the bore to push more through the line. It’s further improved productivity at the plant.

Less downtime + improved performance = happy supervisor

If you know what works, stick to it.✔️

That’s the strategy the engineering team have taken for the Robe Valley Sustaining (RVS) Tailings Storage Facility 8 at Mesa J.

They are dealing with some of the hardest, coarsest and thickest iron ore slurry in the world.

But they know what works.💡

In 2016, independent field testing by Rio Tinto identified Abrasiguard polyurethane-lined steel and ceramic-lined Slurryflex mining hose as the best choice for the tough application.

It’s why they selected it for the 7km Mesa A tailings pipeline.

And again for the 5km Mesa J pipeline.

Now, they’re using it for the 6.5km extension at Mesa J, set for commissioning in 2024.

It’s the same purpose-built specifications they used on their overland slurry pipeline. It's proven to stand up to the rigors of this extremely abrasive slurry. 💪

Our Brisbane piping team are now working hard to have it ready and on site ready for installation.

We’re proud to work with the team and see our Australian-made piping technology in this world-class tailings system. 🇦🇺🌏

The maintenance team at Sukari gold mine in Egypt are always looking for ways to make their process plant more efficient. We recently helped them solve a recurring problem along the first 70m of a tailings line.

When they got in touch with us, their HDPE tailings line kept blowing out at the elbows and weld joints. They wanted to extend wear life from months to years.

They considered a design that used ceramic-lined pipe in 1.5m lengths, but this would’ve meant installing 80 spools over 70m. We recommended a design using 6m lengths of slurry piping.

By using longer lengths, they reduced their inventory from 80 to 18 spools, while also saving on flanges, installation costs, and labour.

The new Abrasiguard spools were custom made in our Brisbane facility with a 20mm high-performance polymer liner. We designed it to handle traces of cyanide, copper sulphate, and other diluted chemicals in the gold slurry, so it won’t need to be replaced for many years to come.

We also manufactured flexible Slurryflex mining hose bends to allow for easy installation.

We’re proud to see the new piping working well and are glad to help the Sukari team create long-term value in their plant.