Quick results at Metso Minerals test centre

Metso Minerals unique Research and Test Centre in the United States is helping many mining companies obtain quick and accurate results.

One of the companies to benefit is Australian-based QERL, an energy development firm attempting to develop a commercial-scale shale oil production facility.

Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock that contains oil in the form of a chemical compound called kerogen. A thermal process, known as 'retorting', is used to extract this compound from the shale. During retorting, the shale is heated to 500 degrees when the kerogen forms hydrocarbon vapor, which is then condensed into oil.

The challenge is, that unlike traditional oil refineries, shale oil production facilities are not off-the-shelf solutions. In fact, while there are a number of demonstration facilities around the world, there are no large commercial-scale facilities in existence. As a first step, QERL must investigate each piece of equipment needed in this process and evaluate it for its applicability and efficiency in a commercial production setting.

QERL principal mechanical engineer Chris Anderson says a key part of extracting oil from the shale is crushing and screening. 'In order to extract the maximum amount of oil from the shale, the material must be crushed to certain specifications ' cubicle particles, good size distribution and minimal fines."

QERL has already tested a sizer type crusher but wanted to try other varieties. New high performance cone crushers are often used in aggregate applications to produce cubicle particles for certain asphalt mixes. QERL thought these might be another viable option and wanted to test them.

The problem most companies face when trying out crushing equipment for a new process technology is the enormous time and resource commitment needed to completely test the equipment with the material to be processed. Typically, when a crusher is brought on site, electrical power needs to be installed and a qualified operator located. Then, after running the test, the finished material has to be taken off-site for analysis. If variables for the operation of the crusher need to be changed, these could take several hours or even days to reconfigure. And trying a different style of crusher could take weeks or even months.

Rather than invest these resources of time and money, QERL shipped 18 tonnes of three different types of its oil shale to Metso Minerals' crushing and screening test facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. In a very short time, QERL was able to run nearly three dozen tests with different settings and configurations.

The research and test centre is the only one of its kind in the world. The fully automated indoor facility is configured for lab testing and full-scale pilot testing of the company's cone crushers, horizontal shaft impactors and jaw crushers. Customers can test their own material on an HP 100 Cone Crusher, an NP1007 impactor, a C80 jaw crusher, a Barmac B3000 Duopactor and an GP200S cone crusher, all normal production machines.

The full-scale crushing plant allows for a customized circuit design for each individual customer. Data on product distribution, tonnage and power requirements can be collected for the customer's specific ore or rock. In addition, material can be removed from the process stream at any stage and stored on-site for additional testing at a later time. This allows preparation of large batches of material that can be split for multiple secondary and tertiary crushing configurations.

Over the course of three days, QERL was able to gather information that would have been exceedingly difficult to learn through more traditional test methods. 'While we still need to analyze the scientific data, we were able to achieve visual results very, very quickly in the test facility,' Chris Anderson says.