The Los Bronces copper mine counts on the Komet Trigon 112 for copper leach mining. It plays an important role when it comes to extracting valuable minerals: After all, the big volume gun is the only one on the market that can compete with the chemicals necessary for washing out the metals.
Challenges in Leach Mining
The copper ore bearing rock in the mines is either excavated or blasted out, and piled on a membrane to form gigantic hills. They can be several kilometers long, and are usually heaped up in six to seven terraces. In order to separate the copper from the rocks, it is washed out in a time-consuming process, and collected by the membrane. “This is where our big volume gun, the Komet Trigon 112, comes in. The heaped hills have to be sprinkled with a special chemical for about 90 days in order to extract the copper ore. However, this requires using liquids that strongly impair a sprinkler’s life,” says Hugo Drechsel, our CSO. This is why a big volume gun made of special materials is needed in order to be resistant to the chemicals used in copper leach mining.
Resilient Design for Leach Mining
In order to solve this problem, the Komet engineers have developed the Trigon 112, a high-tech big volume gun which is the only one on the market to withstand the challenges of copper leach mining. “The Trigon 112 is largely made of a technical polymer, and a highly resistant stainless steel. When designing the Trigon, the utmost goal was to reduce wear during operation,” Hugo states proudly. In addition, the big volume gun is suitable not only for the terraced areas, but also for the steep slopes of the rock hills. Due to the high safety risk, it is forbidden to walk on these hills. “Without such a suitable sprinkler, steep slopes would not be degradable at all,” so the CSO. Today, the Komet Trigon 112 is not only used for copper mining. It also withstands the challenging conditions of mining gold.
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