Major contract for Ma’aden’s phosphate project

TOMRA Sorting Mining has secured a contract to supply a sensor-based sorting system consisting of nine sorters for the greenfield plant at Umm Wu’al, Saudia Arabia. The plant is part of the Waad Al Shamal phosphate project, a joint venture between Saudi Arabian Mining Company Ma’aden (which owns 60 %), The Mosaic Company (25 %) and Saudi petrochemical giant SABIC (15 %). TOMRA Sorting Mining’s contract partner is the Chinese engineering, procurement and construction provider, Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering Corporation (HQCEC).

The plant is scheduled to be operational at the beginning of 2016 and will be capable of processing 13.5 million tons of raw material per year. TOMRA Sorting Mining’s COM series machines are general purpose belt sorters covering applications with inhomogeneous feed or critical moisture content. The XRT (X-ray transmission) technology enables materials to be recognized and separated based on their average specific atomic density. This makes it possible to obtain a high purity level in sorted materials irrespectively of size, moisture or contamination.

When installed at Umm Wu’al, the systems will sort more than 70 % of the run-of-mine material by removing flint stones from the phosphate in order to reduce the silicon content. By this removal of waste material the downstream process can be significantly downsized. The advantages gained will include a smaller plant footprint and considerably reduced consumption of energy, water and chemicals per ton of final product. TOMRA Sorting Mining’s COM Series XRT sorter have an operation width of 2.4 m.

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