BQE Water presented at the Conference of Metallurgy & Materials 2026 (COM) in Calgary, August 17–20, on the commissioning and ramp-up of SART and Selen-IX plants.
The presentation, Commissioning and Ramp-up of SART and Selen-IX: Key Ingredients to Achieving McNulty Series 1 or Better, was co-authored by David Kratochvil and Amin Imani of BQE Water, Chris Fleming of SGS Lakefield and Haijiang Yang of Shandong Gold Group.
The McNulty curves are widely used by industry to estimate how long a new hydrometallurgical plant will take to reach design capacity. Novel processes are generally expected to ramp up more slowly. The presentation shows that recently commissioned SART and Selen-IX plants ramped up faster than the Series 1 curve, the best-case benchmark, despite highly variable plant feed.
The authors identify the project execution model as a key factor. On these projects, one team was accountable from laboratory testing through engineering, commissioning and operation, with operations fees tied to plant performance.
Read the summary and download the abstract and presentation
Presented at the Conference of Metallurgy & Materials 2026 (COM) in Calgary, August 17–20. Visit the COM 2026-2027 website
