The Bozshakol Copper project is a greenfield development located in the north-east of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and is poised to become a major copper operation within Central Asia, serving a large market with high consumer demand. It has an anticipated mine life of 40 years.
Ausenco was engaged to provide detailed design and procurement services for this copper processing plant and associated facilities capable of processing 25 Mt/y of sulphide based copper ore.
Our scope included:
- Development of definitive MTOs to facilitate establishment of a lump sum contract between client and project owners
- Cold weather plant design services for a location that can reach temperatures of -40°C. Components of this include:
- Calculation of snow-load conditions
- Enclosure of plant equipment in buildings with Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) to ensure equipment can function correctly
- Detailed design of processing plant and associated infrastructure
- Procurement services for process plant equipment and ancillaries
- Development of plant 3D model.
The operational processing plant will receive Run of Mine (ROM) ore from a primary crushing station located 3km away by means of an overland conveyor. The ore goes through a milling and pebble crushing circuit before it is converted to a slurry. The overflow slurry from the cyclone packs are split into two streams for the recovery of copper and molybdenum through a series of flotation cells. The concentrate from the flotation cells is pumped into separate thickeners. The underflow from these thickeners is then passed into filter storage tanks. The solid copper concentrate material is reclaimed from a stockpile and loaded into 60 tonne wagons for dispatch to offsite smelters.
The design documentation for the project was supplied to the client in English and Russian languages with all translations performed by Ausenco’s in-house translation team.
The concentrator design for Bozshakol has been successfully applied to the Aktogay Copper Project, also in the Republic of Kazakhstan, which helped fast track that project and save the client considerable man-hours and costs.