In December, Kador completed the first of three hydrocyclone batteries for Rio Tinto Aluminium’s $1.8 billion Yarwun Stage 2 alumina refinery expansion project near Gladstone. The project will more than double annual production, increasing annual alumina output from 1.4 million tonnes to 3.4 million tonnes by 2011.
The hydrocyclone batteries are each 6m wide and 5m high and will be installed in the Hydrate Classification section of the refinery. They each contain 24 cyclones and take liquor slurry from the precipitation tanks through a central distributor and separate it into product (hydrate) slurry and fine seed slurry.
Kador’s scope of work included full shop trial assembly of the batteries, and hydrostatic testing of the internal piping systems.
Kador has good experience in the fabrication of the complex shapes used to make the hydrocyclone battery tanks and tundishes, having made the batteries for the initial stage of the Yarwun refinery, in 2003.
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