The Year in Infrastructure 2008 - (Page 64) InnovatIon In Metals and MInIng – WInneR Hatch Associates Limited Pueblo Viejo Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic the Pueblo viejo project in the Dominican republic calls for designing and building facilities to extract gold from ore and process it at a throughput rate of 24,000 tons per day. The project will create 3,500 jobs and significant revenue for the Dominican economy. Hatch’s involvement in the $2.7 billion project was to create the first chemical process step in the extraction of gold from refractory sulfide ores. The gold extraction process oxidizes the sulfides with high-purity oxygen at 230°C and an atmospheric pressure of 40 to liberate submicron-sized gold. The process occurs in four massive pressure vessels called autoclaves that are protected by a lead membrane and an acid-resistant brick lining. Each vessel has a capacity of more than 600 cubic meters and a gross operating weight of 2,300 tons. Gas dispersion is done by seven agitators per vessel. Each vessel processes approximately 6,000 tons of ore feed per day and extracts 200,000 to 250,000 ounces of gold per year. When completed, these vessels will be the largest refractory-lined autoclaves in the world. The region’s rugged terrain made available space for this facility tight, demanding the most compact layout possible while providing maintenance access and safe operation. PlantSpace and other Bentley products allowed all disciplines to share design information on a real-time basis. Using a 3D environment, the team developed the layout, general arrangements, and isometric drawings by extraction; imported terrain maps, structural steel, and concrete models; and produced integrated models for design reviews, presentations, and clash detection that saved more than 2 percent of construction costs in field rework. The central data storage allowed fast, accurate and up-to-date information transfer between disciplines within the company. Without using these Bentley-enabled capabilities, this complex project would have taken longer to execute and would have required additional staff for coordination, checking, and supervision. bE AwARd wINNER ALSO NOMINATED IN SpEcIAL cATEgOry: cOMMuNIcATINg ThrOugh VISuALIzATION SpEc EcIAL cATE u uNIc ugh V uALIz ALIzATION WinnEr 64
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