18 • ROCK products • May 2016 www.rockproducts.com
A
sprawling 160-acre quarry in York,
Pa., is home to one of the world's
largest reserves of dolomite used in
refractory and dolomitic products
for lime, steel and cement. Magnesita
Refractories has operated this mine
since 1950 and processes more than
60,000 metric tons per month of this
important mineral, composed of calci-
um magnesium carbonate.
When the aggregate is extracted
in raw form, it contains numerous
amounts of ferrous and nonferrous
metal fragments, enough to shut down
expensive crushing equipment and
cause innumerable downtime situ-
ations. The solution for Magnesita
was to install an Eriez Model SE-7520
Self-Cleaning Suspended Electromag-
net for tramp iron removal, and an
Eriez Model 1250 E-1 Metal Detector
for additional ferrous and non-ferrous
metal removal, providing an effective
"double-team" contaminant removal
process, according to John Dixon, Mag-
nesita project engineer.
Product technicians from Eriez and
from its local area sales representative
agency, PennQuip Inc., in tandem with
a design and engineering team from
Kemper Equipment, helped Magnesita
select, install and test the equipment
over a period of six months. The result
is that Magnesita has produced higher
quality materials by achieving greater
ferrous and non-ferrous metal remov-
al than with previous equipment the
company used.
Magnesita, a Brazilian company, op-
erates 28 industrial and mining units,
16 of them in Brazil, three in Germany,
three in China, two in France, one each
in Belgium, Taiwan, Argentina and the
United States. Total refractory pro-
duction capacity is more than 1.4 mil-
lion tpy. Magnesita is the third largest
producer of refractory products in the
world and a leader in integrated solu-
tions with refractory products.
The York facility is particularly import-
ant because of the large, high-quality
dolomite reserves extracted from that
quarry. In fact, Magnesita maintains an
Magnetic Magic
Magnesita Refractories Solves its Tramp Metal Problem.
By Mark S. Kuhar
THE MAGIC OF MAGNETS