Clean TeQ has engaged ARMS Reliability to predict the availability and capacity of its Syerston Project in New South Wales before the mine gets the final green light for construction.
The Syerston Project, owned by Clean TeQ, is one of the highest grade and largest nickel and cobalt deposits outside of Africa; and one of the largest and highest-grade scandium deposits in the world. Nickel and cobalt fuel the fast-growing lithium-ion battery industry; while scandium is a vital ingredient for lightweight aluminium alloys, ideal for transport applications.
The nickel and cobalt sulphate, and by-product scandium, will be extracted from ore using Clean TeQ's Clean-iX® technology.
Clean TeQ is currently finalizing a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) and transitioning into the Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) Phase of the project. As part of this, ARMS Reliability is performing a RAM analysis which will help to further understand plant capability and constraints and to test design scenarios. Clean TeQ is designing a highly automated plant that will minimize the need for direct interactions between the operations and maintenance workforce, and the process, with benefits in both safety and a lower operating cost. This goal requires great understanding of the operation during the design phase and reliability is one of the tools employed for this purpose.
The key objectives of the RAMS analysis is to accurately predict mean availability and capacity of the system; and to rank plant availability and capacity bottlenecks by order of importance. The data obtained will enable Clean TeQ to review system design, redundancy and maintenance outage intervals.
There are two phases in the analysis. Phase One will focus on developing a model for the Ore Feed and Pressure Acid Leach (PAL) circuit areas to understand the capability of the modelling tool and complexity in developing models. Phase Two will extend the model to the entire plant.
"We're happy to help Clean TeQ on their mission to ensure superior quality, continuous improvement and positive economic outcomes. This RAM analysis certainly ticks all of these boxes by identifying the availability, reliability, maintainability and impact on safety of all assets," said David Turner, Engineering Manager, ARMS Reliability.
To expedite the study, ARMS Reliability will draw upon its extensive library of equipment reliability parameters relevant to the project.
