When every hour counts, you constantly need to question your process. This is something that Newmont Golden Ridge Ltd did at their Akyem operation in Ghana.
Newmont is one of the world's leading gold producers, and an industry leader in safety and sustainability. The company was founded in Colorado in 1921 and has today approximately 28,000 employees and contractors in operations and advanced development projects on five continents in seven countries.
Newmont obtained the mining lease for their Akyem operation in Ghana in 2010 and began commercial production in 2013. At the same time, the gold price went down and it became important to ensure that production functioned optimally. The company wanted to minimize downtime and contacted Metso to discuss different lining solutions for their SAG mill. Metso saw great potential to make improvements by using Megaliner™ as it enables a quick and easy installation and removal of liners as well as a safer and less stressful environment for installation crews. It was also safety that together with shorter reline time became the key factors in Newmont's final decision.
Higher safety with less people inside the mill
Newmont puts great focus on safety with a believe that no job is worth doing in an unsafe way... None. Newmont's safety slogan is 'the right way, the safe way, everyday'. The choice of Megaliner™ fits well. Megaliner™ has an attachment system that allows liner bolts to be inserted and removed from the outside of the mill. Therefore no members of the installation crew need to be in the danger-zone of the liners while inserting or removing liner bolts.
"Having the bolts on the outside of the mill is brilliant. We should use the same concept wherever it is possible as it increases safety", says Chris Brits, Process Manager at Akyem, Newmont Ghana.
Installation time cut by 12 hours
Newmont has installed Megaliner™ on the shell of their SAG mill. The removal of the old steel lining and the installation of Megaliner™ was performed by Metso's service team.
"We are very pleased with the installation as it saved us more than 12 hours and no incidents occurred. Using Megaliner™ we had 50% less parts to install and the reline was completed in 24 hours compared to 36 hours that our steel lining installations used to take", says Chris Brits.
The goal is to reduce the number of annual shutdowns and at the same time significantly reduce the reline time. Metso has already cut installation time with 12 hours as well as reduced one annual 36 hour shutdown. Moreover, areas that will improve wear life and reline time even further have been identified. Newmont plans to expand the use of Megaliner™ to their ball mill at Akyem and to other Newmont operations.
We are proud of our 60+ years of experience in optimizing grinding mill liners and implementing best practices. Metso Outotec offers the market’s widest range of products and services to choose from.