Agua de Mar Desalination Plant, Spence Growth Option (SGO) project, BHP Spence Mining

In 2005, the construction of the Spence Mining Company began and two years later it started production, consolidating itself over time as a relevant deposit in BHP’s investment portfolio.

In August 2017, BHP approved the Spence Growth Option (SGO) project, with an estimated investment of US$2.46 million, which was aligned with the mining company’s corporate strategy of having large, long-lived and low-cost operations.

With this, the site took a big step thanks to the construction of the SGO project, which allows Spence to project itself in the long term through the treatment of hypogene minerals through a concentrator plant, which operates in conjunction with the current FullSal mixed mineral leaching process.

Overall, the project comprised a new 95,000 tpd concentrator plant, extending the life of the Spence mine by more than 50 years, and the commissioning of the desalination plant.

The desalination plant, which considers the use of seawater for 100% of the mining process, uses reverse osmosis technology and has an approximate capacity of 1,000 l/s of water and required 154 km of water piping from the plant to the mine operation.

Pares&Alvarez developed basic and detailed engineering in instrumentation and control, electrical, civil-structural, mechanical and piping, among others, architectural design, 3D technology, procurement and on-site engineering.