Mining company Iluka Resources is saving $235,000 a year after making energy efficiency and waste management improvements at its mineral sands processing plant in the Victorian town of Hamilton, under the auspices of EPA Victoria's Environment and Resource Efficiency Plans (EREP) program.
EREP mandates action on energy, water and waste efficiency measures that have a three-year or less payback.
Iluka had monitored its annual energy, water and waste use for some time prior to joining the mandatory EREP program, environmental specialist, Jacinta Herrmann told CE Daily.
"EREP gave us the impetus to take that a step further and start looking at where we were using these resources and what we could do to reduce that consumption," she said.
She said the environment team first gathered together a set of baseline data and met with a wide cross-section of staff from the laboratory, processing plant and administration side of the company to brainstorm possible ways to save energy and water and cut waste.
"We sat down and looked at each of those ideas to get a bit of a feel for how easy they were going to be to implement and what the payoff was going to be," she said.
"When we identified the ones that were the biggest pay-off actions, we sat down and did a more rigorous analysis of those ideas to work out whether they were going to be good projects to implement."
EREP analysis revealed inefficiencies
Herrmann said production and processing of mineral sands at Hamilton is very resource intensive.
"We're selling in bulk, unlike a lot of mine sites which sell smaller amounts, like the metalliferous mines," she said.
"There's a lot of cartage, a lot of bulk mining and bulk earthworks, so it all adds up, it's also a wet process largely to separate out sand."
She said that prior to joining EREP, the company was under the impression that the Hamilton plant, opened in 2007, was already operating efficiently.
Iluka had invested $1 million in a local sewerage treatment plant in 2003 through a joint venture with the State Government and Wannon Water, meaning only reclaimed water was used in the plant's mineral processing.
But when staff sat down and went through all the different processes separately and looked at their resource consumption in detail "we were still able to find quite a range of significant savings even though it was a new and efficient plant," she said.
Power factor correction delivers $149,000 saving
Herrmann said power factor correction delivered the most significant saving.
The company's electricians fine-tuned the plant's energy consumption to cut usage by 7884 GJ per year, a $149,000 annual saving.
"Optimising the operation of the filterbelt - which removes water from minerals before the drying process - is estimated to save around $64,000 annually," she added.
Iluka has also changed laboratory processes which formerly discarded samples of minerals.
By directing these minerals back into the processing line, the company expects to save 68 tonnes of solid waste annually and gain additional sales of around $15,000.
'Staff engagement is key'
Herrmann said the environment team's role in the EREP program has been that of facilitators.
"We have a general knowledge of what happens inside the plant, but when it comes to technically assessing ideas and how well they will work we really need the engagement from the chemists and the engineers and the metallurgists," she said.
"They know how the plant works inside out, and they're also the people who are implementing these actions on the ground," she said.
