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Wallingford, CT – June 8, 2010: CiDRA Minerals Processing announced today that Barrick Peru has selected the CiDRA SONARtrac system for a critical chemical reagent line within their Lagunas Norte gold mine. The mine is located on the Alto Chicama property of north-central Peru and lies on the western flank of the Peruvian Andes at an elevation of 4,000 to 4,260 meters above sea level. The Lagunas Norte mine is an open-pit, crush, valley-fill leach operation. Barrick Gold Corporation is the world leader in the gold production with a portfolio of 26 operating mines. Barrick has an unwavering commitment to safe and responsible mining.
CiDRA’s non-invasive SONARtrac system will measure flow on a collector discharge line running from the filter presses to the barren solution tank. An invasive meter would require Barrick to stop the line and change the meter, incurring considerable cost and time as it may take a day or more to stop a line and drain it in preparation for opening the line for service. The installation of the SONARtrac meter also saved time and money as it did not require the use of a crane, regardless of the large meter size.
CiDRA’s SONARtrac flow monitoring technology is a new class of industrial flowmeter, utilizing measurement principles that are distinct from all other flowmeter technologies operating in the mining industry. It is particularly well suited for chemical reagent lines, like those within the Lagunas Norte mine, as the non-invasive meter holds inherent safety and environmental benefits.
Those benefits also support Barrick’s choice to use this latest technology best practices as part of its commitment to environmental and worker safety. The non-intrusive system makes no contact with the flowing product and can be removed and reinstalled without stopping the flow. It is able to operate on pipes with and without internal linings, and is completely insensitive to internal pressure, thus making it easy to install in the most desirable locations for flow measurements.
Because the SONARtrac system is non-intrusive and does not contact the flowing product, there is no corrosive wear or problems due to scaling on the pipe inner surface. With slurry flows, there is no abrasive wear that can degrade performance and shorten the product life. The combination of these unique features was important to Barrick’s selection of the SONARtrac technology for their critical chemical reagent line.
Additional information about CiDRA can be found at www.cidra.com.
