PROJECTS

Chemical & pharmaceutical

Fire Assaying

Location: WA Goldfields
Client: Red Pepper Mining

Fire assaying is a laboratory technique that uses a combination of intense heat produced by a furnace, together with dry reagents called fluxes, to isolate and measure the amount of a precious metal such as gold and silver in samples of ore.

One of the most effective fluxes is litharge, a mixture of various lead compounds, which can dissolve difficult-to-fuse metal oxides. However, in doing so it generates potentially dangerous fumes, from which the operator must be protected.

APCINFRA visited the client’s laboratory premises, and designed a safe and effective system to control these fumes, which had as a result of the process become co-mingled with pulverised rock dust. Based on an SRC8-2 side removal cartridge series collector, APCINFRA’s solution offered simple on-site maintenance and the ability to accommodate increased throughput during production boosts.

The client commented that APCINFRA’s design was far more effective than the previously installed system, yet operated at an overall lower cost of ownership.