San Francisco Paper - Metallurgical Practice in the Witwatersrand District, South Africa (additional Discussion)

A. L. BlomFIeld, Denver, Col. (communication to the Secretary.*) — Mr. Caldecott says on p. 67: "The Dorr thickener shown, while a useful device when crushing with cyanide solution for removing surplus solution from slime pulp prior to air-lift agitation or vacuum filtration, is not adapted to effect as complete a separation of water from settled slime as the ordinary intermittent settlement and decantation." This statement might have passed muster in this country several years ago when. the Dorr thickener was a new device, but its use in hundreds of mills in the United States has demonstrated that as thick a product is being discharged from it as was obtained from the intermittent settling which it has supplanted. • It is interesting to note that recent investigation, especially the work of 11. 6. Coe and G. H. Cleveilger,' in the March Bulletin of the Institute, under the title: Laboratory Method for Determining the Capacities of Slime Settling Tanks, has developed the general theory of settlement and explains the results obtained in practice. Just as free settlement is a function of surface area, so thickening after the zone of free settlement is passed is a function of time. The time required is obtained by the capacity or volume provided in the settler for this thickening zone. Each pulp is a problem in itself, both in regard to free settlement and to time required to reach a commercially finished thickness. Some pulps require 48 hr. and more to reach a density of 40 per cent. solids; others no coarser to the screen test reach a density of 65 per cent.' solids in a fraction of that time. In thickening any pulp a point is reached where the increase in density is so slow as to be commercially unprofitable. When any part of the pulp has reached this point it should pass on for treatment—its place in the thickener should be occupied by pulp which has not yet reached the commercial limit. By doing this the whole volume of the settling tank is kept in active use. Thus the continuous thickener keeps the whole tank at work to its commercial limit, while the intermittent settler has much of its volume occupied at times by pulp which is either quite finished thickening or at least thickened past the commercial point. The mechanical efficiency of the continuous thickener can be the only argument for limiting this statement. In my own experience I have never