Passive SONAR flow monitoring technology, developed by CiDRA and utilized for over 20 years even in world’s most extreme environments and challenging process applications, is the newest flow measurement technology since the introduction of the vortex, Coriolis, and ultrasonic flow meters in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Passive SONAR flow technology is especially well-suited for the erosive and corrosive slurry flows in the mineral processing industry. The flow meter installs and measures from outside of the process pipe and therefore does not contact the process media. This enables unchanged measurement performance and reliability in highly aggressive slurries and fluids and in practice eliminates the maintenance and process downtime costs associated with traditional slurry flow measurement technologies such as the electromagnetic flow meters in these applications. In addition to flow velocity the meter measures the volume occupied by bubbles in the flow. Based on that errors caused by bubbles on density measurement can be corrected to achieve higher accuracy in mass balances. The measurement also acts as real time information on situations where air is causing process runnability problems and so enables immediate corrective actions by operators. Further SONARtrac provides real time information on flow model and its stability and the pump operational stability; both useful information to optimally run the processes.

SONARtrac combined with CiDRA CYCLONEtrac PST, the real time particle size measurement from overflow of every cyclone in the battery provides tools for significant improvements in grinding controls. Customers have reached up to 10% increases in process line net metal production.