Crusher and Storage

Operations

Crusher and Storage

The material removed from the mine is hauled to the crusher in high-tonnage trucks to be fed into the conical or primary crusher.

The objective of this primary crushing phase is to reduce the size of the rocks extracted from the mine to an average diameter of 15 centimeters, which is small enough to be fed into the mills for further processing.

The equipment is complemented by a metal detector equipped with a magnetic separator, a hydraulic fracturing machine to break oversized rocks that cannot enter the mouth of the crusher, and a dust suppression system.

The capacity of the crusher plant is 2,200 tons per hour.

All material crushed in the primary crusher is sent to the processing plant via a 1,700 meter-long conveyor belt, with a transportation capacity of 2,300 tons per hour.

The material is dropped from a height of 43 meters, forming a big cone known as the stockpile, where the crushed material is stored.

The stockpile is covered with a metallic dome to prevent dust contamination to the outside and has water sprayers designed to sprinkle the material so as to diminish inner dust generation as the material is dropped. The stockpiled material is subsequently loaded through three chutes onto another shorter conveyor belt, which feeds the material into the plant’s milling section.