Ore sorting equipment is used in situations where a good amount of mixed ore is present; that being ore that does and does not contain valuable material. Ore sorting equipment will, due to its design, essentially ‘choose’ the ore of value and separate it from the ore that has no value before it even enters our plant. This allows you to process material rich in value quickly and efficiently, saving you both time and money. The benefits of upgrading your plant feed ahead of process are many:

• Higher head grade to downstream process.
• Potential for more mineral units to be fed into the process.
• Less tonnage to downstream process and therefore smaller, more specific plant.
• Higher process efficiency since the plant tails are not likely to increase in proportion to plant feed increase.
• The ability to target lower grade ore zones.

All well and good, but the benefits will only come through if the plant and the upgrading sections are designed and in sync to derive the maximum benefits of both. Likewise, the overall cost of the package will be at a minimum when it is properly designed.

APT have been producing highly efficient small process plants for many years and the modules already exist  to accepting higher grade feeds resulting from pre-sorting. In fact APT have for some time been marketing small high-grade plants designed for exactly these feeds. The inclusion of pre-sorting is therefore a natural and seamless addition to the APT lineup and we are ready and able to implement this solution immediately.

So much for the hardware. APT’s speciality begins well before this stage with amenability testing of your material. We are minerals processing engineers and understand the game well, we even operate our own testing facilities to ensure that everything aligns. This is extremely important because the decision whether to embrace an APT Pre-Sort plant depends upon the ore entirely, for example:

• What is the amenability to sorting, and via what sensor method (optical, x-ray, etc)?
• What size or size categories are necessary for liberation into discernable particles?
• What is the expected split to waste and is the waste discardable or does it require further crushing or separate processing?
• What is the grade of the sort concentrate, and how best is this processed?
• etc

Once these questions have been competently answered the focus switches to the economics – is it worth selecting a Pre-Sort plant? APT works through this analysis with you to make the benefits clear.

APT – always searching for a better way 

Contact us here or email us on info@aptprocessing.com for further information. We are always open to hearing any questions or concerns you may have.