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MODERN MINING
October 2015
MINING News
ASX-listed Kimberley Diamonds Ltd (KDL)
has announced that its Botswana sub-
sidiary, Lerala Diamond Mines Limited,
recently held a site ‘blessing ceremony’
with the local community at the Lerala
diamond mine. The ceremony was held
at the request of the local community and
was aimed at mobilising the community to
provide its support and best wishes for the
success of the mine.
KDL is in the process of re-establishing
Lerala, located in Botswana close to the
Martins Drift border post with South Africa.
The process plant is currently undergoing
a major refurbishment and re-engineering,
prior to recommissioning.
Approximately 400 people attended
the blessing ceremony, which was led
by Lerala’s Chief Moroka. Also in atten-
dance were his 16 sub-chiefs, several
pastors and chairpersons from the Village
Development Community. Several mem-
bers of KDL’s leadership team were also
present, including Noel Halgreen, KDL’s
Managing Director.
KDL has also provided an update on
its preparation for the resumption of min-
ing operations at Lerala. The mine has five
diamond bearing kimberlite pipes to be
mined, K2, K3, K4, K5 and K6. Mining is
currently scheduled to start early in 2016
in the K3 pit. During the time Lerala was
on care and maintenance, the K3 pit was
allowed to fill with groundwater and act as
a water storage facility. With the planned
commencement of mining activities in
Community turns out in support of diamond mine
Members of the local Lerala community, visiting pastors and KDL senior management at the blessing ceremony
held on site recently (photo: KDL).
the K3 pit, a dewatering exercise began
in February 2015 to pump all water from
the K3 pit out to the K6 pit, where it will
be stored until potentially required for pro-
cessing operations.
Pumping has been ongoing for the
past seven months and water is now suf-
ficiently cleared so that mining operations
can commence as soon as required.
With the water cleared from the K3
pit, this has facilitated better access and
enabled a detailed geotechnical mapping
exercise to be undertaken in this pit by a
consulting geotechnical engineer, who
will confirm the slope stability parameters
to provide for updated open-pit designs.
Geotechnical mapping was conducted
in the K2 and K5 pits, which are scheduled
to be mined early in the mining schedule
at Lerala. The preliminary geotechnical
assessment results suggest that there is
scope for improving the design param-
eters and reducing pit stripping ratios,
which KDL anticipates will reduce overall
mining costs.
Once the preliminary report with rec-
ommended slope design parameters for
each pit is received from the geotechnical
consultant, KDL plans to undertake a min-
ing optimisation exercise.
According to KDL, all aspects of the
Lerala project are progressing very well to
date and remain on schedule. KDL believes
that if this progress can be maintained and
barring any unforeseen delays, this will see
the project well prepared for re-commis-
sioning early in 2016.
Clean energy power plant at Waterval opened
Anglo American Platinum, together with
Vuselela Energy and H1 Holdings, recently
officially opened a clean energy power
plant, Eternity Power, at its Waterval
Smelting Complex in Rustenburg.
The project was made possible by the
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
providing a R30-million grant as part of
its Infrastructure Development Support
which leverages investments to the South
African economy by providing infrastruc-
ture critical to industrial development. The
incentive programme is part of the Critical
Infrastructure Programme (CIP).
The Eternity Power Thermal Harvesting™
project was commissioned in June 2015
and developed by Vuselela Energy in col-
laboration with Anglo American Platinum
at a total project cost of R150 million.
This ground-breaking initiative uses
waste heat from the Anglo Converter Plant
(ACP) convertor cooling circuit to evaporate
an organic liquid and drive an expansion
turbine. The plant has an installed capacity
of 5 MW of which 4,3 MW is available to the
grid, reducing Anglo American Platinum’s
capacity bought from Eskom. The amount
of power generated also results in a reduc-
tion of the smelter’s carbon footprint and a
more efficient use of energy.
Jacques Malan, Director at Eternity
Power and Vuselela Energy, said: “The set
of technologies used at the Eternity Power
clean energy plant had not previously been
used in a smelter environment and a sig-
nificant amount of novel work was done to
design the integration of the technology
into the smelter complex and to establish
the technical feasibility of the process.
“These patents were developed spe-
cifically for the purpose of capturing and
harnessing waste thermal energies from
metallurgical and chemical processes for
the purpose of power generation and
are likely also patentable worldwide. The
result is that the Eternity Power Thermal
Harvesting™ power plant is the first of its
kind in the world in terms of being con-
nected to a convertor at a metallurgical
smelter.”