Increased uptime and wear life
The technology-driven Jindal SAW employs about 69,970 people across the globe. They are part of the EUR 16.9billion O.P. Jindal Group, one of India’s leading industrial houses which is ranked as a leading indigenous steel producer and exporter.
JSL has a plant at Bhilwara in Rajasthan, an area with rich magnetite deposits. The deposits are rich in quantity but low on quality and have only 30-grade iron ore content. But, thanks to JSL’s beneficiation process, the plant manages to supply good quality pellets of approximately 65-grade to its customers.
The project shook hands with Metso in 2013 when the latter was selected as a partner to provide crushers, vibrating feeders, screens and slurry pumps. The fleet included Metso Nordberg® C140™ primary jaw crusher, Metso Nordberg® GP300S™ secondary cone crusher, Metso Nordberg® HP4™ tertiary cone crusher (4 off) and Metso HM200 pumps along with vibrating feeders and screens.
Increased wear life of components
In JSL case, the ore mined from the magnetite iron deposit is crushed into small fractions i.e. 0-6 mm and sent to the grinding circuit for the iron ore beneficiation. The ball mill discharge leads to large amounts of slurry during the beneficiation process. The project rightly opted for the Metso slurry pumps which were installed to efficiently handle the slurry.
The performance of Metso slurry pumps far exceeded that of its competitors. Measures were taken to further enhance the productivity. Initially, the pumps supplied were HM200 model which wore out in two months due to the presence of silica. An analysis determined that the metal casing was wearing excessively on the pumps due to the high silica content in the slurry, which was approximately 10% as compared to the usual 5%. Given the situation, Metso decided to replace the metal casing of the slurry pumps with a rubber lined pump which enhanced the life of the pump extensively, saving the JSL huge costs.
Angshuman Bandyopadhyay, Deputy General Manager at the Beneficiation plant at Jindal SAW Ltd., says: “As per instructions, the Metso team provided a solution for handling the slurry that was becoming problematic for us. In addition, the team also presented us with various options which helped us in encountering some initial wear problems arising from the nature of our slurry. However, Metso installed the HR pump with rubber liners which increased the wear life tremendously.”