Clean solution for Europe’s largest gold mine

Industries that handle fast-hardening mixing products which cause significant wear demand high throughput rates, but also – and in particular – quick, simple machine cleaning procedures. This also goes for Europe’s largest gold mine in northern Finland. Here, the mill tailings are mixed with cement before being pumped back into the cavities created by the excavation. The continuous mixer KM 4200 DW supplied by Lödige Process Technology is specially designed for these challenges.

In Lapland, Agnico Eagle Finland Oy operates Europe’s largest gold mine. The company, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., intends to extract over five tonnes of pure gold in the Kittilä mine in 2019 alone. It goes without saying that this process generates huge volumes of mill tailings. These tailings are then mixed with water and cement and pumped back into underground cavities created by the gold mining process.

The special challenge of this process: The mixture of mill tailings, water and cement hardens very quickly. However, many continuous mixers are full of areas in which materials can accumulate. Before now, removing these deposits was extremely time-consuming. For this reason, Agnico Eagle Finland Oy started to look for an efficient, long-lived solution for mixing mill tailings, which also had to be particularly easy to clean without any remaining residue.

Ploughshare mixer with application-specific design

Lödige Process Technology has been producing mixers for various applications for 80 years. Lödige invented the patented ploughshare shovel and introduced the centrifugal and fluidisation process to mixing technology, which the intensive mixer KM 4200 DW also uses.

To meet the requirements of Agnico Eagle Finland Oy, some adaptations were made to a horizontal ploughshare mixer of the type KM 4200 DW: The drum is designed with an axial division, facilitating hydraulic opening for high-maintenance work. This permits easy access to the entire mixing compartment, making it easy to clean. Due to the pasty to liquid consistency of the mixed materials, the greatest challenge was secure sealing of the machine. Lödige solved this problem by developing a new sealing system for pasty, sludge-like products. In addition, the Lödige mixer is characterised by low dwell times and high throughput rates, as a continuous intensive mixer KM 4200 DW permits throughput rates of 86 m³ per hour.

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