Lamellar thickener

Overview
Whether your goal is maximising solids recovery or minimising water waste—or both—FLSmidth offers a range of thickeners and clarifiers engineered to optimise solid-liquid separation, reduce total cost of ownership, increase uptime and maximise productivity.

Key benefits

• Optimised underflow density for solid-liquid separation to meet required density, clarity and rate
• Exceptional overflow clarity enabling enhanced water recovery and reuse
• Opportunities to enhance performance by retrofitting feedwells and feed dilution systems

Product families and types

• High‑rate thickeners (high throughput relative to conventional machines)
• Standard thickeners (bridge-supported high-rate designs up to typical diameters)
• Traction thickeners (concrete tank installations with traction/tractor drive at tank perimeter)
• Bridge‑supported and column‑supported thickeners (bridge drives for tanks up to ~50 m; column drives practical up to ~135 m)
• Deep Cone™ thickeners (deep tank design for near-pumpable paste underflows and paste consistency)
• High‑density thickeners (add depth and torque to improve underflow densities)
• E‑Cat® rakeless ultra high‑rate clarifiers/thickeners (rakeless design combining clarification and thickening in a compact footprint)
• Inclined‑plate clarifiers (increased settling area, reduced footprint; Delta‑Stak® style packs)
• Reactor‑Clarifier™ solids‑contact units (optimal flocculation, solids contact, precipitation)

High‑rate thickeners – key points
High‑rate thickeners deliver substantially higher throughput than conventional machines of similar size. Critical elements for high capacity include feedwell design and feed slurry dilution method. The E‑Volute™ feedwell provides CFD‑optimised energy dissipation and solids distribution; E‑DUC® and P‑DUC feed dilution systems maximise flocculation efficiency and settling rates.

Add‑ons and performance upgrades

• E‑Volute™ feedwell: advanced involute design to evenly distribute feed and minimise flocculant shearing
• P‑DUC and E‑DUC feed dilution systems: pumped or engineered dilution to maintain optimal dilution under varying flows and solids concentrations
• Inner spiral rake blades and spiral rake arm assemblies: reduce energy consumption, minimise downtime and enhance water recovery
• Retrofit opportunities including feed system retrofits, new mechanisms and new drives

Maintenance, upgrades and services
Thickeners and clarifiers are long‑lived assets; FLSmidth provides product review and improvement, lifecycle analysis, equipment and process audits, testing, repairs and refurbishments, upgrades, OEM parts and retrofit solutions to restore or improve integrity, reliability and productivity.

Applications and sustainability
Clarifiers and thickeners play a central role in water recovery, reuse and recycling in mining operations. Solutions range from space‑efficient Delta‑Stak and E‑Cat designs to high‑capacity bridge and column thickeners, and are applicable across dewatering, tailings management and water stewardship use cases.

Technical features / specifications

• Product families: High‑rate thickeners, Standard thickeners, High‑density thickeners, Deep Cone™, Traction thickeners, E‑Cat® rakeless clarifiers
• Feedwell technologies: E‑Volute™ (patent‑pending involute), E‑DUC®, P‑DUC (feed dilution options)
• Clarifier variants: conventional clarifiers, inclined‑plate (Delta‑Stak®), Reactor‑Clarifier™ solids contact units
• Typical structural designs: bridge‑supported (suitable up to ~50 m diameter), column‑supported (practical up to ~135 m diameter), concrete tanks for traction thickeners
• Performance notes: high‑rate thickeners can provide roughly an order‑of‑magnitude higher throughput than conventional machines of similar diameter; Deep Cone™ maximises underflow pulp concentration to near pumpability limits
• Retrofitable options: feedwell retrofits, feed dilution systems, rake/blade upgrades, drive replacements and full mechanism replacements