Partition Enterprises provides specialized products and services to the global mining and mineral processing industries. The Australia-based company focuses on developing client solutions that ensure accuracy to increase productivity and profitability in mineral processing and dense medium separation (DMS), a process where mined materials are separated by density into useful components and waste materials.
With a range of high-quality density and luminescent tracers, Partition Enterprises has developed a global reputation for its tracer-based DMS performance tools, used across a variety of mineral applications. Company Founder Chris Wood is an expert in the field, contributing to Australian and international standards for density tracer testing.
The challenge
In mining and mineral extraction, every ounce of material can be valuable. That’s why companies like Partition Enterprises exist — to help mining
companies maximize capture of the correct product and increase profits.
However, traditional tests to measure the effectiveness of DMS processes require as many as eight employees to spend an hour each introducing tracers into the processing stream, manually retrieving them post-process and plotting the results. Mining operations are lean with many sites operating under tight staffing constraints. In addition, manual tracer retrieval presents health and safety risks, and laboratory results may not be available for up to two months.
With the support of a large customer, Partition Enterprises began working on a product to highly automate the DMS testing process, requiring just one
worker and delivering real-time results that would allow companies to fine-tune extraction processes quickly to optimize yield. The company needed a reliable supplier of RFID tags and readers that could adapt to the unique needs of the materials processing industry.
Solution
Responding to client requests for a more straightforward, faster and less resource-intensive method to conduct DMS testing, Partition Enterprises developed a prototype for field demonstrations that incorporated the HID HDX E-rod RFID tag.
“We wanted a supplier with good customer support, ability to customize ferrite rods (used in the DMS process) and ongoing product support and updates,”
said Ray Wood, manager at Partition Enterprises. “We were also looking for robustness, size, quality, readability at distance, price point and customer service, all of which HID delivered.”
To meet the exacting technical requirements of Partition Enterprises, HID developed a customized RFID tag with an impressive read range which also
fits within an 8-millimeter cube. These RFID tags are embedded in cubic tracers of specific density. Multiple of these Tracers of varying densities are then used as consumables to assess separation efficiency of DMS systems.
“The tags met our strict quality requirements, and their performance is the best we have encountered for its type and small size,” Wood said. “This was critical to the product’s success.”
Wood added that early involvement from a client champion proved crucial to the successful development and adoption of CurvePRO, the commercial name for the product. It requires just one worker and 30 minutes to perform a DMS test. Results are delivered immediately, allowing operators to quickly adjust processing densities to maximize yield.
Results
During the prototype and early commercialization stages, Partition Enterprises performed more than 250 audits with clients at major Australian coal producers.
The results showed an average yield gain of 6% for individual mine sites and an average profit increase of AUD 10.7 million annually per site.
Since the rollout of CurvePRO, Partition Enterprises has 25 clients on annual leases with renewal rates of nearly 100%, which Wood calls “an amazing endorsement of the product.”
Clients also rave about the product. “CurvePRO has enabled real-time performance data capture at Meandu Mine, replacing the long wait for traditional
washability results,” said Rocco Prochilo, operations supervisor and metallurgist at BUMA Australia. “By simultaneously capturing performance across all circuits, it provides valuable insight into circuit operation and enables timely adjustments that have resulted in increased yield. It’s a practical tool that adds real value.”
Partition Enterprises also released MatchPRO, a companion product that extends the utility of CurvePRO by helping fine-tune the dividing line (cut point)
between the densities of useful materials and waste. A single operator can determine the cut points of up to eight different material densities within one
hour. During the first month of test work at five Australian coal mines, MatchPRO identified potential yield improvement of up to AUD 100 million a year.
