Design of facilities supporting the mining and mineral processing industry has been a staple of NELSON’S business since its inception.
NELSON has worked since 1945 designing sulphur mining operations, handling, treatment and storage. The culmination of these projects was the design of facilities for Main Pass 299 Sulphur Mine, commissioned in 1992. This was an offshore, bridge-connected array of five major platforms and one remote platform, all in 200 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico. The various systems included: steam generation; mine water generation; high pressure air; and sulphur production, handling, storage and offloading systems; drilling systems, including drilling rigs, mud systems and cementing systems; utility systems, including water, air, fire protection, fuel gas, diesel, and waste treatment; electrical power generation with steam turbine, gas turbine and diesel engine driven generators; a distributed control system (DCS) for process control and remote data; combustible and toxic gas detection and alarm; and subsea facilities delivering high pressure air and 13.8 KV electrical power to the remote platform.
Since 1986, NELSON has been involved in every major expansion of what has become the world’s largest copper and gold mining operation, located in Papua Indonesia. Mining support facilities have included belt conveyor systems with capacities of up to 6,500 metric tons per hour conveying material weighting up to 150 pounds per cubic foot, with belt widths up to 84 inches. Millsite throughput has been increased from 12K dry metric tons per day to over 240K DMTPD. Processing designs have been engineered for reclaim, crushing, SAG and ball mill grinding, rougher, cleaner and column cell flotation; concentrate thickening and pumping; tailings treatment, concentrate pipelines, drying, vacuum/pressure drying and storage and ship loading facilities. Along with these systems, NELSON has designed power generation, transmission and distribution systems to support the process expansions. Recently, NELSON has become involved with the ore flow system development planning and implementation for the newest underground mine systems in the work area.
Supported by the decades of experience gained in the Indonesian mine expansions, NELSON is now expanding its practice to other hard rock mines and ore benefication facilities in the western United States and abroad.
