Metso Minerals will supply a fluid bed dryer as a turn key project to Codelco, the Chilean national mining company. The value of the order is EUR 10 million. The contract includes also engineering, supply, installation and start-up. The dryer is planned to start-up in the second quarter of 2004.
Fluid bed dryers are used in drying copper concentrate. During the process, the moisture content drops from 10 per cent to 0.2 per cent. To melt dried concentrate further it is fed to converter reactor.
Codelco is the world's largest copper producer. In 2000, the company's output reached 1.6 million metric tons of copper, which represented approximately 16 per cent of all copper produced in the western world. The company is fully owned by the State of Chile and contributes an average of 18 per cent of the country's exports and some 4 per cent of the gross domestic product. Codelco is organized in five divisions. The fluid bed dryer will be supplied to the El Teniente division. Earlier this year Metso Minerals supplied another fluid bed dryer to Codelco's Salvador division.
Metso Corporation is a global supplier of process industry machinery and systems, as well as know-how and aftermarket and services. The corporation's core businesses are fiber and paper technology (Metso Paper), rock and mineral processing (Metso Minerals) and automation and control technology (Metso Automation). In 2002, the net sales of Metso Corporation were EUR 4.7 billion and the personnel totaled approximately 28,500. Metso Corporation is listed on the Helsinki and New York Stock Exchanges.