Thickeners and Clarifiers

DELKOR Paste Thickeners are designed to achieve the process requirements for slow settling slimes/fines material that exhibits high yield stress, which is referred to as ‘paste’. The use of paste thickeners addresses several environmental problems associated with mine tailings, including enhancing the life of tailings ponds, improving water recovery and facilitating tailings reclamation and re-vegetation. 

DELKOR has supplied paste thickeners up to 40 m in diameter.

DELKOR High Density Thickeners are for applications where high water recovery or high dense underflow is required but without the process and pumping issues associated with paste.

DELKOR has units in operation from 1 m to 99 m in diameter.

As one of the pioneers of high rate thickening, DELKOR has hundreds of units operating successfully around the world.

Where water quality and clarity are the deciding factors, the DELKOR Clarifier and DELKOR Pinned Bed Clarifier (PBC) achieve low total suspended solids (TSS) or clarities down to 20 ppm.

The self-diluting feed well uses the density difference between the inside and outside of the feed well to ensure optimum feed solids for higher settling.

This is the most efficient method of achieving the required dilution and involves using a mixer-pump to draw liquid up a draft tube and then inject it into the thickener feed. The feed dilution is controlled based on input feed solids.

This system is used in high yield stress and viscous/paste slurry applications. It reduces the yield stress of the slurry to improve pumpability, thus lowering the energy consumption of the discharge slurry pump. 

The feed box collects slurries from various entry streams and mixes them uniformly. This ensures that the slurry entering the thickener feed well is consistent in composition, which is essential for optimal thickening performance.

When dealing with multiple thickeners, the feed distribution box is used to evenly distribute the slurry to each thickener. This uniform distribution is critical to ensure that each thickener operates efficiently and effectively, without overloading or underfeeding any single unit.

APC enhances performance by optimizing set points and reducing variability, thereby increasing efficiency through automated multivariable control. It improves plant performance and, additionally, leverages advanced analytics and machine learning to utilize data effectively, which minimizes human error and enhances safety and reliability of equipment operations.

Thickener control is crucial to ensure optimum thickener operation to provide the required output parameters.

Automated thickener control ensures:

• Autonomous and fully automatic operation, driven from the control room and from on-site
• Virtual monitoring/network system with robust mass data transfer
• Automatic predictive maintenance and equipment health reporting
• Equipment performance monitoring
• Energy consumption control and optimization