Fragmentation is a major feature of International Mining’s September issue. Split Engineering has been offering solutions in this field since 1997. As the company says, “beginning with the rock mass all the way through mill recycle there are opportunities to analyse and optimise the process with respect to coarse particle size, both in the real time process and for long term management. Measurement and simulation tools are essential for mine-to-mill initiatives or other process studies, and fragmentation size is a key metric that cross-cuts the entire process, as mining is all about size reduction to liberate the mineral.”
Split Engineering began as a company intent on measuring the fragmentation size to the highest integrity possible to enable control. However, over the years it has taken a holistic approach to fragmentation and has offered more tools to assist planning the inputs into the resultant fragmentation and has offered more simulation tools to help clients understand how the fragmentation size affects the entire process efficiency. Measuring fragmentation is a great step to better process management, but the next higher-level goal is an enlightened understanding of the preceding steps that produced the resultant fragmentation. “Learn from the past results and feed this knowledge forward to better planning and execution.
“Blast simulation tools such as JKSimBlast can provide fragmentation prediction that can be compared to the real world measurement from digital image analysis tools, such as Split-Desktop and Split-Online, thus closing the loop and leading to better blast plans. Data from other tools such as drilling monitors (Thunderbird Mining Systems) and rock mass characterisation software (Split-FX), can add more information to the analysis and to the simulations.
Similarly, continuous conveyor belt fragmentation measurements in the comminution plant can provide an instantaneous tool for process control. Split Engineering tells its customers, “If you can see it we can probably measure it.
“When planning the integration of fragmentation measurement instrumentation, position your camera monitoring station in a location where you can effect a process control change based upon the particle size information you receive. For example, the primary crusher product is a good location to measure, since you are able to control the size that the crusher is producing with slight adjustments to the crusher ensuring that the downstream comminution circuit is receiving a consistent product to help reduce variability in the process. In addition to the continuous particle size analysis, the database of belt material size can be used for simulations (JKSimMet) and for further process analysis to help increase process efficiencies and throughput.”