Research and Development
Sedgman is continuing to research new technologies aimed at improving efficiency, throughput and economies of scale in coal mining, handling, preparation and transportation.
The Research and Development (R&D) team concentrate on developing innovative technologies for enhancing the performance and competitiveness of clients CHPPs and maintains a strong commitment to addressing environmental concerns associated with coal production and use.
The core activities of Sedgman’s R&D are directed at:
- Enhancing the efficiency, throughput and productivity in CHPPs by developing innovative process flow-sheets.
- Achieving, through innovative approaches to design and construction, completion of coal preparation infrastructure projects at low capital cost and in short construction timeframes.
- Identifying, through systematic investigations on operational CHPPs, improvements to productivity, process yield and fines recovery for the benefit of our clients.
- Increasing CHPP reliability and availability through introduction of new technologies that minimise unscheduled plant maintenance.
- Developing highly automated facilities for materials handling of coal and waste products.
- Identifying and assessing emerging technologies within the international mining industry for possible application to coal mining, processing and transportation.
Examples of recent and current R&D activities include:
- Developing a large-scale CHPP design based on modular plant design
- Developing unique flow-sheets and systems for the co-disposal of tailings over long distances while maximising the recovery of process water used in slurry pipelining
- Developing a remote plant control system to assist operators of CHPPs to increase productivity
- Developing efficiencies in the operation of individual CHPP process units, including improvements in flotation efficiency, increased cyclone performance, magnetite recovery, roller screen performance and operating capability of Jameson flotation cells.
- Developing an innovative engineering design for reclaiming coal from stockpiles. This unique concept minimises construction costs and the requirements for building material.
- Full scale plant trials of the new Reflux Classifier technology for processing fine coal. This has lead to a number of flowsheet and sequencing refinements to optimise circuit efficiency.
- Pilot scale trials of an alternative water cleaning system for an optimised gland water circuit This achieves both water efficiency and pump maintenance cost reductions. This builds on recent work with Sedgman Coal Operations focused on instrumentation and control of gland water points.
- Confirmation of large scale dense medium cyclone performance and capacity through the collation of significant volumes of plant audit data.