Piloting and Scale-Up of the Voisey's Bay Nickel Refinery

Inco (now Vale) developed a novel hydrometallurgical process for the recovery of nickel, copper and cobalt values from a sulphidic ore discovered in Voisey’s Bay, Labrador.  The process was developed in the laboratory, then scaled up in two steps:  an integrated mini-pilot plant, and a demonstration scale plant of 100 times the throughput.  Zeton had a role in design and construction for each of the two scale-up steps.  The commercial facility, 100 times the throughput of the demonstration facility, has been operating commercially since 2015.  Some of the unique challenges of mining-related process development are discussed, along with some of the key learnings from each step of scale-up.