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San Rafael Mining Unit
Situated in Puno, at an altitude between 4500 and 5200 m.o.s.l., in the Eastern Mountain Chain of the Andes of Peru, the San Rafael Mine is the principal tin producer of the country, and one of the most important in the world. The methods of subterranean exploitation employed consist of the provisional warehousing and sublevel knockdown with a capacity of 2700 tons/day extraction, with grades that average 5% of tin.
In the Concentrator Plant, adjoining the mine is where the crushing, triturating, milling and concentration of the produced material are carried out. The mineral is fed to a circuit of gravimetric concentration in jigs, where 50% of tin is recovered. The remaining material is milled to a grade of higher fineness and re-milled to a 100 micron mesh size, before it is put under floatation, with which it’s obtained a total recovery of 90%. The concentrates with an average grade of 60% tin are sent to Pisco.
Presently, the mine and the concentrator plant have reached a capacity of minerals extraction and processing of 2700 metric tons/day. This level of production is complemented with the operation of our metallurgical smelting and refinery unit of tin, currently with a capacity pf 40,000 Metric Tons/year of refined tin.
Smelting & Refinery
Located in Pisco, in the department of Ica, it is the most modern metallurgical plant in the country, where the concentrate is processed with a technology of submerged bath, resulting in a final product of 99.95% purity. In the refinery the remaining metallic impurities are separated in a sequential form, and the raw material is treated at high temperatures producing up to 40,000 tons of high purity tin per year.
In the sub-products plant, located in the same unit, material with high content of tin that cannot be treated by smelting, is processed. Treatment of iron, copper, arsenic-antimony residues is carried out. Also treatment of second welds is performed to obtain products like refined tin and alloys of tin-lead, tin-antimony and tin-copper. |
