Slurry knife gate valve manufacturers usually look into the application what the valve needs perform and how it should perform, while the selection of a valve is carried out.

Failed Knife Gate Valve

A valve failure can have devastating effects on the plant and can result in a reduction of the plant’s mechanical reliability, pose safety and environmental challenges also incurring high maintenance and repair costs.  Corrosive media which leaks can also cause extensive damage to other equipment in the plant, thus leading to a premature failure. In many process plants, contact with the process media can have a serious implications that can lead to severe personal injury and possibly death. 

Mill Circuit

When introducing the knife gate valves to the mill circuit it is important to note the shutdown procedure of the mill discharge pump and pipework design. One of the best design practice is to mount the valves in a sloping pipe to minimise time between pump shutdown and valve closure and also to avoid closing the valve against the settled down bed of the product.

Separation

These processes include hydro cyclones, classifiers and flotation processing of large volumes of slurry, classifying it based on different sizes and/or specific gravity. It is highly challenging to properly isolate the slurry produced.

Cyclone

This method is used to separate mineral ores based on their size. By this process, mineral ore is thoroughly separated into mediums of larger and smaller diameters. The Larger sizes are separated from the smaller. Here will continue in this process until becoming of a usable size.

Vacuum Press Filters

These filters are an essential step in the mining process to separate the water from the minerals. Mostly this is done mechanically, also thermal drying can be used.

Flotation Cell/Column Thickeners

The purpose of these is to separate particles in the slurry also it is used for separation of any two different particles since it operates by the surface chemistry of the particles. While in flotation, bubbles are introduced to bind the particles and bring the two to the surface. The addition of flotation agents effects the operation of these processes in better way.

Leaching

This process typically involves high wear applications coupled with highly corrosive fluid and often high temperatures and provides some of the most difficult operating conditions for valves. Following are to be considered when specifying a knife gate valve:

• Location of valve
• Media pressure
• Corrosiveness
• Media temperature
• Frequency of operation

Tailings and Slurry Transport

Chemical and Mechanical processes are often used in order to extract product required from the mine ore thus producing a stream of waste known as tailings. These mine tailings are produced from the mill in a slurry form. They are the materials which are left over after separating the valuable minerals from the unusable portion of an ore. Basically, they are made up of process effluents and ground rocks that are generated from a mine processing plant.

How to overcome Challenges?

One of the most challenging fact that is encountered in the mining process is particle settling which is due to a slow slurry velocity combined with a large particle size. These valves for mining may not be able to close because of solids settling at the bottom. If you can’t close the valve you can’t isolate the pump further complicating the process. We Vtrok being one of the leading knife gate valve suppliers in India addresses this problem with our very own solutions by means of design and planning that are capable of handling harshest of conditions where our knife gate valves are being used. Contact us for best solutions for your needs.