Bateman Engineering Projects has supplied a modular sampling plant for the Grib diamond deposit, located in the Arkhangelsk region of north-western Russia.

The contract, which was awarded by OAO Arkhangelskgeoldobycha, a subsidiary of Russian oil and gas company OAO Lukoil, entails the supply of a 5-t/h run-of-mine front-end module, a skid-mounted 5-t/h dense-media separation (DMS) module and a containerised X-ray recovery plant.

The front end of the plant, which receives the feed of kimberlitic drill chips from a drill rig, comprises a receiving bin, a scrubber, sizing screens and a Hydroclean for the removal of excess clay. The Hydroclean has been included in the flow sheet as it has been estimated that clay could constitute up to 90% of a sample.

Primary and secondary-crushing facilities are also incorporated.

The 5-t/h DMS module is a standard modular plant designed and supplied by Bateman Engineering Projects. It will process diamond-bearing gravel ranging from –15 mm to 0,5 mm.

The recovery plant has been designed with a capacity to treat 1 t/h of concentrate, but, for this application, will treat about 0,5 t/h. It consists of two ModRup X-ray machines designed and supplied by DebTech, part of the De Beers group, and allows for drying of the concentrate, followed by weighing, sizing and manual canning of the diamonds in a glove box. A drop safe, from where the cans are collected, is incorporated in the plant. The recovery plant is containerised in four Hi Cube 12-m shipping containers.

Allowance has also been made for both the DMS and recovery plant tailings to be bagged and drummed for storage for later reprocessing if required.

The contracts, which were placed through Bateman Engineering Projects’ Commonwealth of Independent States business unit, located in Moscow, cover the supply, manufacture, erection supervision and commissioning of the front-end, DMS and recovery plants.

Bateman Engineering Projects has supplied a number of modular plants to the Russian Federation, with several other contracts currently in progress, including a 60-t/h modular DMS plant for engineering company JSC Nizhne-Lenskoye, in the Republic of Sakha, and two 100-t/h modular DMS modules, for Almazy Anabara, to be deployed on two mining sites in the province of Yakutia, in Siberia. These units are the largest-capacity modular units supplied to Russia to date and are the second order from this client for the supply of DMS units, the previous order being for a 50-t/h module.

The units were shipped by sea to St Petersburg and Vladivostok respectively, for onward delivery to site. The shipment comprised 22-m × 12-m shipping containers, including 2-m × 6-m containers housing the individual plant motor- control centres. Units will be shipped individually to save time in order to meet the Russian ice-road requirements. The trip from St Petersburg by rail to the railhead at Berkakit is 7 375 km. Here the containers will be offloaded onto road trucks for transport on the ice road to the mine site near the town of Saskylakh, a distance of 2 300 km.

Both units are supplied with integrated steel spillage sumps, which eliminate complicated civil works on site.

Bateman Engineering Projects’ modular plant technology is particularly suited to projects in remote and challenging regions, such as the Grib diamond field, which is located 115 km north-east of the city of Arkhangelsk, and Almazy Anabara’s Yakutia sites. The modular process plants are pretested at the factory, and the plant is then dismantled, packed and transported, in modular form, by road, rail, ship and even aircraft, to the remote mining site, where it can easily be brought into reliable production with a minimum of effort.