OREANDA-NEWS. North-West Phosphorous Company is moving forward with its project to construct an integrated mining and processing facility at the Oleny Ruchey apatite-nepheline field. The mineral-processing facility is the most important part of the project, and the facility’s effectiveness will depend on the ore pre-treatment engineering methods and processing equipment currently under selection. Last week, preliminary construction proposals were discussed at the office of NWPC’s facility project engineer, the St. Petersburg-based CJSC Mekhanobr (Institute of Mineral Processing).

According to NWPC Director General Sergey Fedorov, the meeting was very informative and made significant progress. Viktor Beloborodov, laboratory head at the Kola Research Centre’s Mining Institute, presented a report on the preparation of design regulations. Mekhanobr engineers have prepared five alternative schemes for ore breaking and reduction; proposed using domestically produced or imported equipment; analysed the capacity of various types of mills and the overall capacity required for ore pre-treatment; and calculated the number of flotation sections, as well as water, power and fuel consumption. The engineers presented an estimate of the capital investments and enrichment prime cost for each proposal.

Once a proposal is selected after thorough examination, Mekhanobr will proceed with the facility engineering.

On the same day, NWPC’s Fedorov met with the management of JSC Lengiprotrans to discuss the feasibility study for the exploration and design of a railway line to connect the mining and mineral-processing complex with the main route.

Next day, Fedorov continued his work at the Acron site, meeting with CJSC SZMA, the company that has offered a proposal to provide all necessary services to create an integrated management system for the new facility. Fedorov also met with experts designing the scheme for separating rare-earth metals from phosphate rock. The project is being developed jointly by NWPC, Acron, the All-Russian Research Institute of Chemical Technology, and the Chemistry Institute at the Kola Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.