Handling Of High Temperature Laterite Nickel Slurry

Feeding laterite nickel slurry into high pressure acid­leach (HPAL) autoclaves in an aggressive environment with slurries heated up to 200°C requires a special pump design. For decades the GEHO piston diaphragm pumps have been used for autoclave feeding at gold ore pressure oxidation plants with slurries up to l 77°C. Lessons learned from these installations have been instrumental in designing second generation feed pumps for processing laterite nickel with operating temperatures of 200°C and a flow rate of 400 m3/h. The Australian nickel industry is using momentarily 8 GEHO positive displacement piston diaphragm pumps. For this application six GEHO ZPM 900 "dropleg" pumps have been supplied to the Murrin Murrin project and two to Bulong.