First Uranium Corporation in Stilfontein, North West Province, South Africa has been investing in the reclamation of old gold slime dumps to extract and process gold and uranium, a process that requires performing a number of chemical operations to extract either gold or uranium. The facility must be high-capacity in order make the plant viable for the investors.
Identifying goals
First Uranium selected Collaborated Engineering Design Office Ltd. (CEDO) for the piping design of the entire uranium portion of the Chemwes gold and uranium project. CEDO was responsible for the modeling of the plant equipment, pipe routing and for clash detection. Because CEDO had extensive design and engineering experience, ranging from petrochemical facilities to mining process plants, this experience proved valuable for the task. MDM Engineering managed this 200 million project with its extremely tight timeline.
With a plant capacity is approximately 8,300 tonnes p.a. (around 950 t/h), the uranium piping totaled approximately 16 kilometers in length, with 350 pieces of equipment and around 500 pipelines ranging from DN25 to DN350 (1” to 14”) diameter. Piping materials used included carbon steel, stainless steel, HDPE (High Density Polyethylene), Polypro and rubber lined materials. These piping materials were used for slurry, acid, potable water, fire water, steam, instrumentation air and other purposes.
Overcoming challenges
Because of CEDO’s past successes with Octave products, and its commitment to the fast-track design on the project, the company chose Forte 3DWorx for the plant piping design and Aspect Pipe Stress for pipe stress analysis.
“We produced over 1,500 piping isometric drawings and generated over 80 piping drawings that included nozzle positions, pump foundations and other data,” said Boro Radovanovic, CEDO’s production and marketing manager. “If we came across any clashes, we would inform the client immediately and assist them in correcting the mistakes, which allowed us to supply accurate drawings quickly and with minimal changes.”
Realizing results
“Forte 3DWorx allowed us to provide accurate bills of material, automatically generate piping isometric drawings and produce 2D arrangements from the 3D model,” Radovanovic said. “The client was able to review everything in real time through our 3D walkthroughs, which meant they could easily diagnose and rectify complicated processes by combining all disciplines in the plant model.”
Aspect Pipe Stress and Forte 3DWorx allowed CEDO to deliver the client’s exact requirements while minimizing expensive site modifications. This saved the client significant time and money, as did eliminating unnecessary pipe runs. “We completed the entire job in less than nine months with just a few people assigned to the project,” said Radovanovic. “And, we kept the client’s project on track the entire time.”
