Ben Murphy

From memory this paper talks about excessive frother dosage in Jameson cells and gives some options;

Crisafulli, P. and James, T. 2008, “Secondary Flotation at Stratford CHPP – A Mechanical Cell Processing Jameson Cell Tailings”, Proc. of the Twelfth Australian Coal 

Hi Geoff,

Its an interesting question. I think some of the previous comments below are fair enough (albiet a little cynical). I'm going to answer you in two different ways.

A performance guarentee is a form of insurance, it means the supplier is willing to share some of your risk. I'll ask you this, when you typically get insurance (house, car life etc) is it free? So if you are going to ask for a performance guarentee I think first you have to consider what it is worth to you and what are you willing to give? I think if you are willing to work collaboratively with a supplier and come to an agreement that meets both your needs it will be a rewarding process for both. If you want the lowest cost and them to take your risk then I think you might be in for a shock (or they are going to write the tolerances so tightly that you will) never prove anything. Also consider that when there is a third party in the process it makes it even harder for a supplier to insure the whole process as they are also 'trusting' the third party to ensure that the outcome is successful. For example a piece of enquipment may not work to spec if the engineering company designs the plant wrong around it.

Secondly on suppliers and claims. The best way I think is firstly ask for references. Sometimes this doesn't always work as many times in this industry due to end users not being willing to supply information this isn't possible. This kind of thing holds the industry back but it is a reality. 

At the end of the day I'd suggest working with the vendors to quantify their claimed benefits (ideally with references) so the comparison can be done and an informed decision can be made if it is even worth asking for a guarentee.

Ben