Oxygen Generation Plant For Gold Leaching

On-site oxygen generation required

The gold mine is located in a very remote desert area in the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, approximately 440 km southwest of Riyadh. Located at 22° 17'N and 43° 17'E, 980 m above sea level, it is approximately 380 km west-northwest of the provincial capital of Mecca. Due to the location, oxygen cannot be supplied by trucking liquid oxygen and local cryogenic tanks, so the required oxygen must be produced on-site through an air separation process.

Oxygen Production Process

Given the required nominal oxygen production capacity of 2.5 tonnes/day, NEWTEK has applied its proprietary Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process to separate oxygen from other air gases by flowing compressed ambient air through a bed of Zeolite Molecular Sieve (ZMS). The zeolite applied is a crystalline, highly porous material with a strong electrostatic field on its inner surface. Due to the property of nitrogen being more polar than oxygen, charge induced dipoles are formed when nitrogen is close to the exposed cations of the zeolite crystals, so that nitrogen molecules in the compressed air will be attracted to the zeolite crystals, while oxygen molecules will be able to pass through unrestricted.

The PSA process will be carried out in two adsorption vessels filled with ZMS, which will be alternately charged with clean compressed air to obtain a continuous flow of oxygen. The flow direction of the ZMS bed in each adsorption vessel is from bottom to top, but the air supply will be interrupted before the top of the ZMS bed reaches a balanced load to prevent nitrogen breakthrough. Subsequently, after the pressure between the two adsorption vessels is equalized, the ZMS bed of the closed adsorption vessel will be regenerated (desorbed) by pressure reduction (decompression), which is achieved by venting the bottom of the adsorption vessel to the atmosphere. The process is then repeated cyclically. The oxygen content of the gas produced by the PSA process is 95% vol., and the remainder is mainly composed of argon. However, the capacity of the PSA oxygen plant is calibrated according to purity to guarantee a flow rate with the required oxygen content (= pure oxygen) in order to provide sufficient oxygen mass flow for the downstream leaching process.

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