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The reasons behind going cyclone feed Falcon recently completed a paper on the reasons why installing their SB technology on cyclone feed is becoming the preferred and accepted option. When they say cyclone feed they do not mean connecting the machine to one of cyclone feed flanges on the cyclone cluster, but rather taking a bleed-off on the under side of the cluster feed line. The reason behind this is that many cluster or cyclone feed lines are inclined allowing the particles to separate out as they travel up the pipeline. This pre-concentration effect is what is used to maximize gold production through a Falcon gravity circuit. Considering the following standard milling circuit with Falcons installed on cyclone feed:
The tailing from the Falcon reports back to the mill discharge sump. In order to describe this process and give complete understanding, consider a coarse sized rock containing a piece of gold being fed to the mill. It passes through the mill, broken and the gold is liberated. If it comes out of the mill and is pumped to a cyclone cluster it has a very limited probability, if the concentrator is on cyclone underflow, of reporting to the designated cyclone that is feeding the concentrator. If however, the Falcon is installed on a bleed stream taken from the underside of the cyclone feed pipeline the piece of gold would move towards the bottom of the feed pipe, and has a very high probability of reporting the Falcon. A huge benefit of the pre-concentrated cyclone feed line bleed, is that a gold circulating load builds up around the Falcon. Where if the machine were on cyclone underflow the gold has a low probability of reporting to the correct cyclone feeding the Falcon, and if it does not, it is fed back to the mill and reground - gold circulating load builds up around the mill. This process was proven by Elvington Gold Mine in Zimbabwe. Some of the companies that have adopted the process and currently changing their circuits over to cyclone feed are: C.V.R.D - Fazenda Brasilliero Gold Plant - Brazil and Harmony Gold Canada - Bissett Gold Mine. The complete cyclone feed paper and results
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