Temporary cooling keeps mine at full capacity with reduced water use

A mine had a cooling tower with fill media that was failing. The lead time on replacement parts was up to 12 weeks and as the performance was deteriorating rapidly, they needed a solution much faster than this.

The winter conditions and upcoming holiday period made it even more difficult for replacement equipment to be delivered and installed at the mine.

However, it was critical to restore cooling performance as soon as possible to keep the mine running and avoid a complete shutdown, which would have resulted in significant financial losses.

Within 2 days of the initial call an Aggreko expert was on-site to evaluate the setup. The scale of the problem was quickly understood, and this was identified as a specialty project for Aggreko Cooling Tower Solutions (ACTS).

Our cooling specialists designed a solution whereby 5 AG-10 (1000 ton) cooling towers would be installed. This would allow the mine to take the faulty cooling tower offline for repairs without any reduction in productivity. Aggreko’s cooling towers were up and running within just 10 days, ensuring that the mine could continue operating at full capacity even if the replacement parts took more than 12 weeks to arrive.

By installing a temporary cooling solution so quickly, Aggreko ensured that the mine did not have to halt any operations.

Despite the winter conditions and holiday period, we had engineers working through the night to design the solution and get the equipment to the site as soon as possible.

Ultimately this resulted in avoiding potential losses running into hundreds of thousands of dollars if the cooling tower failure had led to a partial or complete shutdown of the mine.