Experience
Our experience
Our process engineering team delivers development solutions across the mining and minerals processing sector. We manage projects end to end, from initial concept and laboratory test work through pilot investigations, engineering design, plant startup and ongoing operational support, and we work on both conventional and novel extraction routes.
Capability areas
We structure our process work around the common project phases that clients need support through.
Plant commissioning, operations and process optimisation
Front-end engineering, feasibility and trade-off studies
Data evaluation, statistical analysis and modelling, including metallurgical accounting, mass and energy balances, and kinetic modelling
Metallurgical test work programmes
Plant and process flowsheet development
Pilot and demonstration plant design
Project evaluation and management
Facilitation of audits and workshops: risk reviews, HAZID, HAZOP, CHAZOP, safety and sustainability in design, value optimisation
From test work through to operations
Carrying a process design team through from early test work to plant startup and beyond means the understanding built up during development stays inside the project. We invest in that continuity because it typically removes a significant source of commissioning risk compared with handing work between different consultants at each phase.
What this work involves
Extracting and processing minerals is a sequence of physical steps, and the economics of the whole operation are usually set by two or three of them. Process engineering is the discipline of finding which ones, testing them properly, and designing the plant around the answer rather than around the flowsheet somebody drew first.
We carry projects from concept and laboratory test work through pilot investigation, flowsheet development and engineering design into plant startup and operational support. That covers metallurgical test programmes, mass and energy balances, metallurgical accounting and kinetic modelling, front-end and feasibility studies, and the trade-off work that decides between conventional and novel extraction routes.
Metallurgical test work programmes and data evaluation
Plant and process flowsheet development
Front-end engineering, feasibility and trade-off studies
Mass and energy balances, metallurgical accounting, kinetic modelling
Pilot and demonstration plant design
Commissioning, operations support and process optimisation
Risk reviews and facilitated workshops, including HAZID and HAZOP
How we approach it
The understanding built up during test work is worth more than the report it produced, and it is mostly held by the people who did it. Keeping the same process team on a project from early test work through to plant startup keeps that understanding inside the job instead of handing it across at each phase boundary, which is where commissioning problems are usually created. It also means the assumptions behind a design can still be interrogated when the plant is running and the numbers do not match.
How this work is delivered
LDE provides quarry and aggregate engineering across New Zealand from all ten of our offices, including geotechnical assessment of quarry sites, hydrogeological assessment and consenting for quarry operations, and slope and pit stability. The projects listed below are process engineering for the mining and minerals industry, delivered by our group partner Wallbridge Gilbert Aztec (WGA) in Australia. If your enquiry is about a New Zealand quarry, talk to your nearest LDE office.
