eDART dual valves and poppet samplers continue to offer exceptional level control at Northam’s Booysendal plant near Lydenburg, Mpumalanga. 
 
eDART Slurry Valves Director, Richard Rule commented “When Booysendal was originally built in 2010, we supplied dual dart valves and poppet samplers, and continue to be involved in the commissioning and after-sales support to Booysendal who have sourced additional samplers from us over the years. Our dart valves have kept the level error to less than 2.5% over an eight hour period at this plant. This is a great and important achievement as level control is vital in order to maintain the required ‘grade’ of the concentrate”.
 
“External dart valves were initially chosen for flotation level control to concentrate the metal from ore, and they currently have 27 flotation machines each fitted with a dual dart valve. It can be argued that this is the most important valve on a concentrator as it is the last controlling element that determines if the metal reports to the concentrator or is lost to the tails”.
 
“Booysendal have commented that our dart valves offer the best level control they have experienced on a plant” commented Rule. “We do not just sell our product and walk away. We offer a considered assessment of valve requirements to our customers, and throughout the first year of operation, after our original installation at Booysendal, we assisted in the optimisation and fine tuning of the plant to ensure that the best possible performance was obtained from our valves”.
 
Driven by the need for improved efficiency and throughput, good concentrators continually evolve. Samplers play an important and useful role in the monitoring system required to direct this evolution. “The Booysendal plant in particular has been very proactive in using our samplers and analysis to improve their processes. I believe eDART’s valve technology played a role in Northam’s improved results at their Booysendal plant due to their superior quality” said Rule.
 
Brian Whitehead, Plant Superintendent: Technical at Booysendal added “Through the proper sizing of valves, we have been able to increase our feed rate to the plant without any major control issues on the valves”.
 
Together with Afrivalve, part of the eDART Group, eDART were responsible for servicing and maintenance of equipment at the Booysendal plant which included all the calibration and servicing of their valves to maintain optimised operational efficiency. Other control loop elements also had to be correctly selected, calibrated and tuned in order to ensure peak plant performance.
 
eDART are specialists in the design and manufacture of slurry equipment and offer external and internal dual/single dart valves, as well as pinch, dosing and slurry valves; pneumatic actuators, instrumentation, samplers, flow analysis technology and related accessories.