Manufacturing valuable sand fractions
Today, Dansand A/S extracts and produces over 500 000 t of refined silica sand in more than 20 different blends every year, supplying the construction sector, various types of industries, sports facilities, playgrounds and the DIY markets. After more than 5 decades of operation, Dansand A/S, owned by PKB Holdings and Sibelco, one of the world’s largest suppliers of minerals, has now reached ground water level at its pit in Addit.
The company has historically extracted material using wheel loaders but a new approach is now required, says Claus Arve, technical manager at Dansand A/S. “This has been our primary means for extracting sand, however now that we have reached ground water level we need to transition to dredging to ensure we can continue extraction activities. This presents a new set of challenges for our operation and it’s for this reason we’ve partnered with the team at CDE to engineer an efficient, high accuracy solution that can recover valuable fractions of very fine dredged sand from large volumes of water.”
CDE business development manager Allan Esmann says while similar technologies are successfully operating in other regions, the dredge-fed wash plant will be the first of its kind commissioned by CDE in Europe. “As Dansand A/S commences dredging, it becomes necessary to separate dredged sand from ground water before it can be cleaned of lignite and silt or clay fraction then correctly sized. Central to achieving this will be our EvoWash ultra-fines recovery system with optimised hydrocyclone technology which is proven to recover every valuable grain and eliminate the loss of quality fines. What makes this particular system unique is the custom cyclone composition needed to ensure Dansand A/S continues to manufacture its very large product suite without compromising on quality of various end products.” The plant will be operational in early 2024.
