Cycad Process® was originally developed by a team of engineers lead by Frank Crundwell to accelerate the efficiency of CM Solutions’s in-house consultancy business and is now available on licence.

Cycad Process

Cycad Process® is a cutting-edge easy-to-use simulation package for metallurgical engineers allowing them to design or optimize their operations. Outputs are high-quality process flow diagrams, mass and energy balances, and specialized reports. World leaders in copper, gold, cobalt, lithium, vanadium, nickel and the platinum group metals have benefitted over the last 20 years from the tailored solutions offered through this simulation programme.

About Cycad Process

Cycad Process® combines process simulation with sophisticated drawing capabilities to produce detailed engineering diagrams and reports.

Cycad Process® is used to design:

  • Hydrometallurgical,
  • Pyrometallurgical, and
  • Minerals processing flowsheets.

Draw the process flow diagram or process block diagram, enter feed definitions, and process parameters, and calculate the mass and energy balance.

Cycad Process® has been used on major design projects involving hundreds of pieces of equipment and process streams.

Designed for Productivity

Cycad Process® is structured so that you can easily draw the flowsheet, enter the required data, calculate the mass and energy balance, and compare results with those obtained previously. You produce process flow diagrams and the mass balance in the same step.

Cycad Process® provides a logical and intuitive way for you to draw the flow sheet and to enter the operating data. You draw the flowsheet in the page viewer by dragging and dropping icons of the process equipment from a process library onto the page. Process streams link equipment, and data is entered in the property viewer.

The calculation engine optimises the calculation sequence using a state-of-the-art optimization algorithm. Results are presented in spreadsheets, which can be exported directly to Excel, graphs and diagrams.

    Deliverables

    Whether your clients are internal or external customers, they want the following deliverables:

    • Process flow diagrams (or block flow diagrams) that detail the major equipment employed;
    • A report on the mass flows and temperatures in the process streams;
    • A report on the values used in determining the mass and energy flows, that is, the process design criteria;
    • A report on the products and reagents; and,
    • A report on the major equipment used.

    The outputs from the Cycad Process® are matched with these deliverables for your clients.

    Selection of CycadProcess® projects by metals

    Copper

    • Solvent extraction electrowinning Prefeasibility, feasibility, construction and operation – Zambia
    • Leaching, solvent extraction electrowinning – Design – DRC
    • Roasting plant modelling – Zambia and DRC
    • Tailings reprocessing – UK company

    Titanium

    • High-grade titanium project
    • Dump reclamation project

    Platinum

    • Base metal refinery – design and operation support, South Africa
    • Precious metal refinery – ruthenium distillation, South Africa
    • Precious metal refinery – novel process development, South Africa
    • Precious metal refinery – prefeasibility – UK
    • Flotation modelling – South Africa 

    Iron

    • Pigment-grade iron oxide plant

    Gold

    • Carbon-in-pulp plant – operational support
    • Gold refinery – waste stream recovery
    • Gold pressure leaching modelling

    Cobalt

    • Iron precipitation improvement study, DRC
    • Leaching upgrade study, DRC
    • Cobalt precipitation study, DRC
    • Battery-grade cobalt refinery

    Vanadium

    • Feasibility design 

    Nickel

    • Battery-grade nickel sulphate plant
    • Nickel pressure leaching
    • Nickel laterite process design

    Antimony

    • Novel antimony process

    Zinc

    • Hydrometallurgical operation
    • Lead-zinc flotation – design for plant upgrade and refurbishment

    Lithium

    • Lithium
    • Spent lithium-ion battery (LiB) recycling

    Selection of Projects by discipline that have used CycadProcess®

    A selection of projects that have been executed by the Cycad Process® team for clients.

    Minerals processing

    Effectively and intuitively model particle-size distributions using the PSD manager.

    Cycad Process® has been used to design or model a large variety of mineral processing plants:

    • Crushing and screen plants
    • Milling plants
    • Magnetic separation plants
    • Flotation plants

    Hydrometallurgical

    Cycad Process® has been used to design or model a large variety of hydrometallurgical plants:

    • Base metal refineries in PGM industry
    • PGM refinery unit operations
    • Leaching plants
    • Pressure leaching plants
    • Bacterial leaching plants
    • Heap leaching operations
    • Concentrate leaching plants
    • Crystallization plants

    Pyrometallurgical

    Cycad Process has been used to model:

    • Fluidized bed roaster plant
    • Rotary kiln operations
    • Sulphuric acid plants