Selecting the right mining hose for the job can be confusing. In this article, we cover nine common types of mining hose and their typical applications to help you make the right choice for your site—and there’s a handy reference guide at the end.
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We discuss:
Hard-wall Suction Hose
Soft-wall discharge hose
Pre-formed bend hose
Super flexible mining hose
Eccentric/concentric reducer hose
Y-piece mining hose
Hard-wall Dredge Hose with floats
Self-floating dredge hose
Trunnion or ladder hose
Hard-wall suction hose is a flexible, straight length rubber mining hose. It has a high-tensile steel wire helix to ensure the hose isn’t sucked flat in vacuum applications. The hose also has a polyester fabric reinforcement to handle high internal pressures.
This type of hose is often used for the pumping and transfer of abrasive slurry under pressure or vacuum. That includes mineral processing, high pressure tailings pipelines, gravel transfer, dewatering, and general material handling.
The hose has excellent tear resistance and tensile strength properties. It also has high abrasion resistance properties and typically operates in temperatures ranging from -30°C to +75°C. There are also different liner options such as synthetic rubber (for high temperature or acidic slurry) or ceramic tiles (for severe service).
Hard wall suction hose has a minimum bend radius of 6-8D. For a more flexible option, consider a pre-formed bend or a super flexible mining hose.
Soft-wall discharge hose (also known as ‘lay flat’ type hose) is like hard-wall mining hose but for discharge applications only.
The main design difference between the two is that soft-wall hose doesn’t have a rigid wire helix. Instead of this, it has a spring wire reinforcing layer. This makes the hose more flexible when not under pressure, so it’s easier to move from location to location.
It is often used to transport slurry, water, sand, and gravel in mineral processing plants on discharge and tailings lines. It is also suitable for chemical, acid, and hydrocarbon transfer.
Despite the flexibility of soft-wall hose, it has a minimum bend radius of 10D, so it’s best for installation on straight or sweeping bends.
If you need a hose with a specific angle or bend radius of less than 5D, then pre-formed bend hose is the way to go. It has the same properties as conventional mining hose but is manufactured as a pre-formed bend to your specified angle and radius.
Depending on factors like the hose diameter and materials, it can be manufactured with bends down to a minimum bend radius of 1D. This allows for greater design freedom when arranging complex pipe layouts. To further improve wear life, the wear liner on the elbow’s outer arc can be made at least 50% thicker than the wear liner on the inner arc.
Pre-formed bends are most commonly used in abrasive applications in mineral processing plants, tailings pipelines, dredging, and dewatering.
Super flexible mining hose is a specially designed hard-wall mining hose with a smaller minimum bend radius than conventional hose. Depending on factors like the material and nominal diameter, the hose has a bend radius of 4–7D.
You can use it in similar applications to hard-wall and soft-wall mining hose. It’s best suited for tight or complex geometry or where there’s significant pipe misalignment or movement.
Reducer hose is a short-length mining hose with different sized end diameters. Typically, you would use it in slurry pump set-ups to connect larger diameter pipelines to smaller diameter pumps.
The hose is available in two types: eccentric and concentric. Eccentric-type reducers are contoured so their end diameters are on different axes. Concentric hose ends are on the same axis.
Reducer hose is customisable to meet most specifications including size, flange, and liner type.
Shaped like a ‘Y’, Y-piece mining hose connects one pipeline to two other pipelines to simplify the system by reducing the total number of hoses. It has some flexibility but is usually manufactured as a straight-line pipe.
Y-piece hose is often used with a suction pump to divert material into two different hoses, or to combine material from two hoses into one. You can use it with most abrasive materials, such as abrasive slurries, sand, and gravel.
Hard-wall dredge hose is specially designed for dredging applications. It can handle highly abrasive dredging fluids and has increased reinforcing against external punctures, cutting, or abrasions.
Its hard-wall construction makes it ideal for suction applications. For dredging, you can use it with poly floats (floats that fit to your hose’s outside diameter) to prevent snagging and other hazards. The floats are an optional extra and are fitted separately.
Unlike hard-wall dredge hose, self-floating dredge hose has built-in high-density foam. This makes it an ideal choice for most dredging applications as it doesn’t need additional floats.
It can be reinforced with wire for suction applications or soft-walled for discharge. The soft-wall design is more flexible and helps prevent flexural stresses, such as kinking when hoses are located close to the dredge unit.
Instead of a helix-shaped wire like other suction hoses, trunnion (or ladder) hose has steel rings. This gives it maximum flexibility under vacuum conditions and caters for high loads upon flexing.
Trunnion hose is commonly used for cutter dredging as it can handle highly abrasive fluids, such as freshly cut dredged fluid with undissolved sediment. The extra reinforcement also gives added resistance to external cuts and abrasions.
Trunnion hose is suitable for discharge applications as well.
There are lots of options when selecting mining hose for your site’s requirements. You have the choice of a variety of specifications such as wear liners, reinforcements, size, application, and connection types.
If you aren’t sure which mining hose to select for your application, give us a call. We’ll help you choose the right option and ensure it’s the right hose for the job.
A dredge is the principal piece of equipment used in the dredging method and, essentially, a dredge is a boat containing specialized mining and materials handling components. Accordingly, a dredge requires a body of water in which to operate. In many cases, this is a natural body of water such as a river or a lake, but in others, it is a manmade pond or small lake. Of course, the only reason for floating a dredge is to recover something of value at the bottom of this body of water. We need to add one more condition, and that is: the material of value on the bottom must be unconsolidated, such as sand and gravel, or it must be very soft. Simplistically, the dredge is designed to lift these materials of interest from the bottom up into the dredge. Shortly, we will look at how the payload is moved in a little more detail, but for now, let’s talk for a moment about the kinds of materials that are typically recovered with this method, dredging or dredge mining.
The bottom of rivers, lakes, and harbors is often a good source of gravel. Gravel can be used sometimes in concrete as well as for a variety of other purposes such as architectural and landscaping purposes. Dredging to remove this material has the additional benefit of deepening the channel or harbor, and sometimes that is the primary purpose of dredging, and the recovery of minerals is a secondary benefit… the “icing on the cake,” so to speak!
Glaciers once covered a significant portion of the Earth’s surface, and the movement of these glaciers created extensive unconsolidated deposits of materials containing not only sand and gravel, but gold, tin, diamonds, and other heavy minerals. These alluvial deposits created by glaciation, are also known as placers. I mention this here because you will sometimes hear or read about placer mining or alluvial mining. Although these terms may be used interchangeably with dredging or dredge mining, you can’t assume that to be true in all cases. As we will see, hydraulic mining may be used in these deposits as well. Regardless, if we have a body of water covering a placer deposit, we will consider strongly using dredge to recover the minerals of interest.
Moreover, if we have such a deposit that is not underwater, but is in an area that could be easily flooded, we will consider making our own lake and then using a dredge to recover the bottom materials. If the deposit is in an area with a very shallow water table, we may simply have to remove several feet of overburden, e.g., vegetation and soil, and the excavated area will fill with water on its own. Then, we can float the dredge and mine the deposit. There are other circumstances where we could create a manmade lake to mine the deposit, but it a complicated process, because we cannot take any action that could have an adverse environmental impact.
Let’s talk a bit more about the dredge itself. A dredge is defined by the way in which it recovers the ore from the bottom. The four types are bucket-wheel, ladder, clamshell, and suction. The choice will depend on the depth of the deposit below the surface of the water and the degree of consolidation of the deposit. The size of the dredge will depend on the desired production rate and the characteristics of the body of water, e.g., depth and extent. Let’s start by looking at a picture of a dredge.
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Figure 7.4.1: Bucket wheel dredge
Source: Alibaba
This is a large dredge, and specifically, it is a bucket-wheel dredge. You can see the bucket wheel on the left side of the picture. The bucket wheel rotates, digging into the soft material at the bottom. The dug or “mined’ material is then transfer onto the dredge. Typically, some sort of a gravity separation is employed to segregate the material of interest from the silt, mud, and other detritus of no interest. The latter is then immediately returned to the water.
The bucket-ladder dredge is probably the most common type of dredge, as it is the most flexible method for dredging under varying conditions. The excavation equipment consists of an endless chain of open buckets that travel around a truss or “ladder.” The lower end of the ladder rests on the mine face—that is, the bottom of the water where excavation takes place—and the top end is located near the center of the dredge. The chain of buckets passes around the upper end of the ladder at a drive sprocket and loops downward to an idler sprocket at the bottom. The filled buckets, supported by rollers, are pulled up the ladder and dump their load into a hopper that feeds the separation plant on the dredge. After the valuable material has been removed, the waste is dumped off the back end of the dredge. Here is a picture of a bucket-ladder dredge, which gives a clear front view of the bucket ladder.
Figure 7.4.2: Ladder dredge
Source: DredgePoint
Here is a view of a bucket-ladder dredge used to mine phosphate.
Figure 7.4.3: Bucket-ladder dredge
Credit: K. Hutton, © Penn State University, is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
And here is that same dredge in a photo taken from a distance.
Figure 7.4.4: Note the slurry pipe running to the bank
Credit: K. Hutton, © Penn State University, is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Finally, here a view from the operator's cab of that dredge. Notice the computer displays providing not only video images of different parts of the dredge but also sensor data that the operator can use to better control the operation of the dredge.
Figure 7.4.5: From the operator's cabin
Credit: K. Hutton, © Penn State University, is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The clamshell dredge, unlike the previous two, employs a batch rather than continuous process. This type of dredge utilizes a clamshell bucket that is dropped to the bottom, scoops a bucket of material, and is hoisted back to the dredge where the bucket is dumped. This dredge can operate in deeper water than other systems and handles large material, e.g., larger rocks, well. A typical cycle time would be on the order of one minute, depending on the depth of the water. You understand the drawback of batch or discontinuous systems, and consequently, this style of dredge would only be used when its unique strengths are necessary. A typical clamshell dredge is shown here. Note the ability of this style dredge to place its payload on the dredge or on a nearby barge or structure.
Figure 7.4.6: Subsea clamshell dredge
Source: IP SubSea.com
The fourth type of dredge is a hydraulic dredge. Imagine a big vacuum cleaner with a long hose – the hose is dropped to the bottom, the “vacuum” is turned on, and the material is literally sucked up the hose and captured on the dredge. Basic physics limits the amount of “lift” that can be achieved. However, the amount of lift can be supplemented with a high-pressure spray around the suction nozzle – essentially a push-pull system. This is known as hydrojet assistance. This style of dredge is suited to digging relatively small-sized and loose material such as sand and gravel, marine shell deposits, mill tailings, and unconsolidated overburden. Hydraulic dredging has also been applied to the mining of deposits containing diamonds, tin, tungsten, niobium-tantalum, titanium, and monazite. This figure diagrammatically illustrates the use of a suction dredge. Note that the use of a hydraulic pipeline to move material off the dredge is often associated with the use of this type of dredge.
This picture shows a very small suction dredge, which might be used to clear a tailings pond, for example.
1.) What is the nature of the material that needs to be dredged? Different dredges are designed to handle various materials, such as sand, clay, silt, or rock. Determining the nature of the material can help you choose a dredge with the appropriate capabilities.
2.) What is the depth and width of the area that needs to be dredged? The size of the dredge you need will depend on the size of the area that needs to be dredged. Larger dredges may be more expensive, but they can also be more efficient if you have a large area to dredge.
3.) What is the distance the dredged material needs to be transported? The distance the dredged material needs to be hauled will affect the size and power of the dredge you need. Longer lengths may require a larger or more powerful dredge to ensure the material can be transported efficiently.
4.) What is the available power source? Different dredges may require other power sources, such as electricity, diesel, or hydraulic power. You will need to consider the power source available on your project site to determine the most suitable dredge.
5.) What is the budget for the project? The cost of the dredge will be an essential factor in your decision. Determine your budget for the project and look for a dredge that meets your needs within that budget.
6.) What are the environmental concerns for the project? Dredging projects can negatively impact the environment by disrupting aquatic habitats or releasing pollutants into the water. Careful planning and mitigation measures can help minimize these impacts.
You can help determine the best hydraulic dredge for your project by answering these questions and considering these factors.
Willard Says……
Dredge Size
When assessing a dredge one of the first questions that comes to mind is, “What size is it?” Some answer with the diameter of the suction pipe or the pump suction inlet diameter. Others will say it is the diameter of the pump discharge port.
Which answer is correct?
A typical dredge might have a pump with a 12” (discharge) x 14” (suction) x 40” (impeller diameter) and therefore could be called either a 12” dredge or a 14” dredge.
Dredges may have pump ports that are the same size, however, it is more common for the suction port to be one pipe size larger that the discharge port. Bigger is usually more impressive so sizing a dredge in reference to its pump inlet port would seem natural.
Below are two pump curves. These curves project the performance of two standard Metso dredge pumps, one a 12” x 14” pump and the other a 14” x 16” pump. Both pumps have 40” diameter impellers.
Note that the two sets of curves are identical; they project identical performance for the two pumps despite the difference in their port sizes. (Ignore the lines labeled “38” VTD”, they refer to a 38” diameter impeller). A dredge, outfitted with the larger pump, could be labeled as being a 16” (suction port size) dredge while in fact possessing no more capacity to move solids than a “smaller” dredge labeled as a 12” (discharge port size) dredge. How can that be?
The reason the two different sized pumps are projected to have the same performance is because they have the same impeller. Dredge pump impeller diameter is seldom considered when assessing the worth of a dredge even though it is the working heart of a centrifugal pump and has a large effect on dredge performance.
Also ignored is the fact that most of the energy consumed by a dredge is expended to overcome resistance to flow in the discharge pipe. The inside diameter of the discharge pipe largely determines how much and how far solids can be pumped as well as how much energy must be spent to accomplish the task. The dredge pump must be capable of maintaining flow in the selected pipe.
Referring to the pump curves once more you will note that the numbers across the bottom list flow rates in terms of thousands of gallons per minute. Both pumps are rated to perform best at flows in the “sweet spot” between 5,000 and 7,000 gallons per minute. Operating in this area the pumps can develop high head (pressure) and run with good efficiency. In general both pumps will do a fair job of producing with a 10” pipe, a good job with a 12”, an excellent job with a 14” pipe and a poor job with 16” pipe. All pipe sizes reference the inside diameter.
The problem with using 16” pipe is that neither of these pumps can create enough flow (gpm) to maintain sufficient velocity in such a large pipe.
These pump curves tell us that maximum performance of either of these pumps will require about 550 horsepower to turn the pump at 600 rpm, develop a head of 200 feet and move water at the rate of 8,000 gallons per minute. Dredge size does not indicate how much power is available to drive the pump or how fast it can be turned although both factors are very important. The curves also indicate that attempts to boost dredge performance by grossly increasing the power available to the pump are wasted. Centrifugal pumps can utilize only a limited amount of power.
It would not be wise to base expectations of performance on a dredge’s “size”.
Any projection as to how a particular dredge will perform depends on the capability of its pump (as described by its pump curve), available horsepower and the inside diameter of the discharge pipe that will be connected to the pump.
The one number that comes closest to describing the performance potential of a dredge is the discharge pipe inside diameter in inches.
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