Tag Archives: Kansanshi

Metso wins major flotation cell order from First Quantum for Kansanshi S3 expansion

Canada-based First Quantum Minerals (FQM) has placed an additional order with Metso for the delivery of minerals processing equipment to its Kansanshi copper mine S3 expansion.

Metso’s scope of delivery includes apron feeders, Nordberg® MP800™ cone crushers, TankCell® e630 and TankCell® e300 mechanical flotation cells, high-intensity Concorde Cell™ units, ColumnCell™ units, HRT thickeners and a clarifier.

Most of the separation equipment are part of Metso’s Planet Positive offering.

Last year, Metso was awarded an order for two Premier™ grinding mills, with a total installed power of 50 MW, including Metso Megaliner™ and metallic mill linings for the expansion.

The First Quantum Minerals Ltd Board of Directors signed off on the S3 Expansion last year, bankrolling a project that could see Kansanshi’s life pushed out to 2044. Once the expansion is completed, copper production from Kansanshi is expected to average approximately 250,000 t/y for the remaining life of mine.

Metso says the value of the order exceeds €20 million ($21. 8 million).

Antti Rinne, Vice President, Flotation at Metso, said: “Kansanshi’s flotation flowsheet combines the well-proven, energy efficient TankCell flotation cells with the new Concorde Cell, unlocking the potential for further improved flotation performance. Concorde Cell high-intensity, forced-air pneumatic flotation cells allow operations to enhance fine and ultrafine particle selectivity.”

First Quantum improves Kansanshi mine reliability with Accelovant fibre-optic sensors

Kansanshi Mining, a First Quantum-owned company located in Zambia, is leveraging Accelovant’s fibre-optic sensors to solve its arcing and electronics failure and signaling issues at the major copper mine.

Kansanshi operates one of the world’s largest and most productive copper mining and smelting sites. The smelting operations use wet electrostatic precipitators (ESP) to clean sulphur dioxide gas by removing acid mist (aerosols) and dust particles that can result in a toxic concentrated sulphuric acid effluent. While ESPs are considered one of the most effective process scrubbers in this application, process temperature control has long been an impediment to more extensive use. Control of the ESP requires temperature measurement technology that can withstand simultaneously high voltage, high temperature range, and high electromagnetic fields.

In application, the wet ESP utilises high-voltage electromagnetic fields to attract or impel different molecules in a gas stream to affect separation and collection. It has one field consisting of discharge electrodes in the centre of tubular collecting electrodes. The gas is ionised by the corona discharge of the discharge electrodes. The particles contained in the gas are charged and migrate under the influence of the electrostatic field to the grounded electrodes.

In the case of the Kansanshi copper smelter, the sulphur dioxide gas from the smelter is moved through the wet ESP plants to separate the acid mist and dust from the gas stream. The acid mist is highly corrosive and, if not removed from the gas, it is capable of damaging downstream equipment such as gas blowers and ductwork.

To operate correctly and prevent damage to the electrical and ceramic components of the wet ESP, it must be heated to a consistent temperature between 325-340°C. Operating in this range will prevent condensation of the mist. If condensation occurs, it substantially increases the risk of short circuiting that can lead to poor unit performance.

Historically the ESPs employed conventional in-stream thermocouples and/or Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTD), both highly susceptible to electrical noise. When employed, these sensors were unreliable and represented a flashover risk due to the high voltage environment.

Pieter Oosthuizen, Control Instrumentation Superintendent, and Bodrick Mumba, Superintendent Operations Sulphuric Acid Plant, both work to maintain consistent and reliable operation of the smelting plant and ESPs. The ESPs operate around the clock in paired sets, processing a constant stream of smelter gas.

According to Mumba, if one ESP is operating outside of the proper temperature range, the volume of smelter gas has to be reduced by cutting down concentrate treatment in the primary smelting furnace until the unit is returned to proper operating status.

“If the temperature drops below the setpoint there is great risk of acid misting and condensing on the ceramic insulators in the ESP,” Mumba said. “If the ceramics are damaged, potential downtime to repair would certainly reduce throughput and output of the plant.”

Maintaining proper temperature control in an extremely harsh environment

In a harsh operating environment surrounding the wet ESPs (high voltage, electrical noise and high temperature), monitoring and managing precise temperature levels through the use of in-stream sensors was a difficult and highly unpredictable exercise. The ESP units supplied by Metso Outotec are designed to allow the use of multiple different sensors that conform to a standardised form factor, enabling the operator to install the most effective sensor for the use case.

“The ESP units operate with a typical 45 kV charge atcurrents in the 500-600 milliamp range,” Oosthuizen said. “In this kind of environment, there is tremendous electromagnetic noise and induced currents in anything that is conductive or that utilises electronics. This includes the thermocouples and RTDs that are typically employed to monitor high temperatures in industrial settings. We tried many different device types, but in all cases the electronics would burn out and fail due to the stray electromagnetic fields.”

Oosthuizen noted that in the smelting plant environment, both RTD and thermocouple devices were subject to high-voltage flashovers which can damage them, or, at a minimum, disrupt the transmitted electrical signals from the sensor to its controller. Such plant conditions contribute to high sensor failure rates, and difficulty in maintaining signals essentially prevented automated control.

An Accelovant fibre-optic sensor

Operating under manual control was more costly, and meant operators had to make regular temperature readings and adjust operational parameters to maintain the proper range. In a complex operating environment with many variables, making these adjustments manually was an ongoing process that consumed substantial personnel time and cost.

The high failure rate of sensors and inability to utilise automated controls were limiting factors in maintaining the reliable and consistent operation of the ESPs and of the productivity of the entire plant. In their search for a workable solution, Mumba and Oosthuizen learned that fibre-optic temperature sensors were widely employed in harsh environments due to their immunity to electrical noise.

“As we researched fibre-optic sensors, it became clear that the inherent immunity to electrical noise could solve our arcing and electronics failure and signaling issues, but we also needed to address the high-temperature operating conditions,” Oosthuizen said. “While operating specifications for most fiber-optic sensor suppliers on the market did extend up to the 325-340° C range, our requirements were toward the top end of the recommended range, so we were a bit apprehensive about product in-service longevity. That’s when we discovered a Canadian supplier that specialised in high temperature fibre-optic sensors.”

The team found a new class of fibre-optic sensors from Canadian manufacturer Accelovant that seemed to address both of the key issues they were trying to solve.

A new class of fibre-optic sensors

Fibre-optic sensors use only the energy of light to measure temperature. Because they contain no electrical function, they are immune to the adverse electromagnetic affects inherent in conventional sensors such as thermocouples and RTDs. While currently employed widely in industrial applications, they are generally limited to 250˚C. Above that temperature, the organophosphorus compounds used to generate the temperature measurement optical signal will begin to fail.

“Accelovant specialises in high temperature fiber optic sensors,” Michael Goldstein, CEO for Accelovant, said. “We went back to the basics of material science and invented a patented ceramic-like optical material to create a new class of fibre-optic temperature sensors that could withstand much higher temperatures and offer longer service life at temperatures exceeding 450°C.”

In April 2022, Accelovant fibre-optic sensors were installed in one of the matched pairs of ESPs operating in the plant. Shortly after installation, Oosthuizen was ready to experiment with utilising the automated controls available in the plant management software.

“We knew that, in theory, the fibre-optic sensors would outperform the electronic sensors, but wanted to be certain that it was also the case in practice,” he said. “After several months of observation and testing, we converted to operating the temperature controls on those two ESP to automatic – for the first time in more than eight years of operation.“

Accelovant fibre-optic sensors delivered the high-temperature longevity and electromagnetic immunity necessary to provide reliable and consistent temperature monitoring and control within the wet ESP copper smelting operations at Kansanshi, the company said.

Oosthuizen reports that after 11 months in service, the Accelovant fibre-optic sensors were performing as demanded and enabled full automated control of the ESPs. “In the years that the ESPs have been in operation, we have never been able to operate without a sensor failing for such a lengthy period,” he noted.

The stability of the Accelovant sensors has finally allowed for automated management of stream temperatures and eliminated some of the operational challenges at the plant.

Mumba added: “The Accelovant sensors have increased our efficiencies by eliminating manual temperature adjustment – a process that could take multiple iterations to achieve the desired results. They provide reliability that allows us to concentrate our time on other matters.”

NextOre’s in-pit sorting advances continue with development of mining truck sensor

NextOre and its magnetic resonance (MR) technology have made another advance in the ore sorting and material classification game with the development of a new “open geometry” sensor that could enable mines to scan mining truck loads.

The company, in the last year, has surpassed previous throughput highs using its on-conveyor belt solutions, accelerated the decision-making process associated with material sorting viability with its mobile bulk sorter and made strides to branch out into the in-pit sorting space via the development of these open geometry sensors.

NextOre’s MR technology is the culmination of decades of research and development by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), with the division spun out from the organisation in 2017. Since then, NextOre has gone on to demonstrate the technology’s viability across the globe.

NextOre’s MR analysers were first fitted on conveyor belts, yet interest in solutions for in-pit equipment predates the company’s inception.

“A significant portion of the time when CSIRO would show people the technology, they were working on for fitting on a conveyor belt, many would ask: ‘could you possibly put it around a truck somehow?’,” Chris Beal, CEO of NextOre, told IM.

After workshopping many ideas and developing increasingly large prototypes – commencing at the start with an antenna made up from a copper loop and a couple of capacitors – two in-pit solutions leveraging CSIRO’s open-geometry sensor have come to the fore.

The first – a 3-m-wide sensor – underwent static and dynamic tests using chalcopyrite copper ore grade samples in a material feeder setup in 2022, in Australia.

This test work, observed by several major mining companies, laid the groundwork for a bigger installation – a 7-m-wide ruggedised antenna that weighs about 5 t. This can be positioned over a haul truck and manoeuvred using a crane supplied by Eilbeck and guidance systems developed for NextOre by CSIRO and the University of Technology Sydney.

The advantage of MR in a truck load scanning scenario, just as with a conveyor, is the ability to make accurate, whole-of-sample grade measurements at high speeds. Yet, to operate effectively, this system requires significant amounts of power.

“The truck system we are building is between 120 kW and 200 kW,” Beal said. “For people in the radio frequency space, power of that magnitude is hard to comprehend; they’re used to dealing with solutions to power mobile phones.”

For reference, a NextOre on-conveyor system rated up to 5,000 t/h has around 30 kW of installed power. And conveyor systems above 5,000 t/h have 60 kW of installed power.

The idea is that this new MR truck sensor station would be positioned at an ex-pit scanning station to the side of the main haul road at a site and trucks will be directed to ore or waste as a result. The test rig constructed in NextOre’s facility has been built to suit the truck class of the initial customer, which is a major copper mine using 180-t-class and 140-t-class haul trucks.

The first prototype has now been built (as can be seen by the photo) and is awaiting of shipment to the mine where a one-year trial is set to commence.

While pursuing this development, NextOre has also been increasing the scale of its conveyor-based installations.

Around nine months ago, IM reported on a 2,800 t/h MR ore sorting installation at First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi copper mine in Zambia, which had just shifted from sensing to sorting with the commissioning of diversion hardware.

Now the company has an ore sensing installation up and running in Chile that has a capacity of 6,500 t/h – a little over 50% higher than the highest sensing rate (4,300 t/h) previously demonstrated by the company at Newcrest’s Cadia East mine in New South Wales, Australia.

Beal said the unit has been up and running since December, with the copper-focused client very happy with the results.

For those companies looking to test the waters of ore sorting and sensing, another big development coming out of NextOre in recent years has been the construction of a mobile bulk sorter.

Able to sort 100-400 t/h of material on a 900-mm-width conveyor belt while running at 0.3-1 m/s, these units – one of which has been operated in Australia – is able to compress the timeline normally associated with making a business case for ore sorting.

“As people can now hire such a machine, they are finding it either resolves a gap in proving out the technology or it can be used to solve urgent issues by providing an alternative source of process feed from historical dumps,” Beal said. “They want to bring a unit to site and, after an initial configuration period, get immediate results at what is a significant scale.”

Such testing has already taken place at Aeris Resources’ Tritton copper operations in New South Wales, where the unit took material on the first surface stockpile taken from an underground mine.

While this initial trial did not deliver the rejection rate anticipated by Aeris – due largely to rehandling of the material and, therefore, a reduction in ore heterogeneity ahead of feeding the conveyor – Aeris remains enthusiastic about the technology and Beal is expecting this unit to be redeployed shortly.

“We now know thanks to results from Kansanshi, Carmen Copper Corp/CD Processing, this new Chilean site and Cozamin (owned by Capstone Copper) that this in-situ grade variability can be preserved, and that mixing impacts directly on sorting performance,” Beal said. “Even so, we have seen really good heterogeneity persist in spite of the unavoidable levels of mixing inherent in mining.”

He concluded: “People want this type of equipment not in a year’s time, but next month. Capitalising the business to put more mobile units out in the world is a priority.”

Metso Outotec to deliver world’s largest Premier grinding mills to Kansanshi copper mine

First Quantum Minerals (FQM) has awarded an order to Metso Outotec for two very large horizontal grinding mills for the company’s copper mine expansion at Kansanshi in Zambia.

Metso Outotec’s delivery includes two Planet Positive Premier™ grinding mills with a total installed power of 50 MW – the largest Premier grinding mills Metso Outotec has delivered to date.

To meet the need for efficient and fast replacement of the lining systems, as well as ensuring a long wear life, the ball mill will be equipped with the Metso Outotec Megaliner™ and the SAG mill will be equipped with Metso Outotec metallic mill lining and a high-performance discharge system, it explained.

FQM’s Kansanshi mine, located near Solwezi in the North-western Province of Zambia, is among the largest copper mines in the world and the largest in Africa.

First Quantum Minerals is currently working on its further expansion (the Kansanshi S3 Expansion), which includes a standalone 25 Mt/y processing plant that will increase copper production substantially.

Once the expansion is completed, copper production from Kansanshi is expected to average approximately 250,000 t/y for the remaining life of mine to 2044.

The Premier horizontal grinding mills are customisable solutions built on state-of-the-art grinding mill technology, process expertise, and design capability, Metso Outotec says. The Premier horizontal grinding mills are engineered to “excel and create vast possibilities” for customers and applications.

Earlier this week, Metso Outotec was awarded what it says was a major contract for the delivery of sustainable crushing, screening and grinding technologies to a greenfield iron ore project in South America.

NextOre, First Quantum fully commission ‘world’s largest bulk ore sorting system’

A 2,800 t/h MRA ore sorting installation at First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi copper mine in Zambia is now fully commissioned and using diversion hardware, Chris Beal, CEO of NextOre, told RFC Ambrian and Stonegate Capital Partners’ Copper Pathway to 2030 webinar on Tuesday.

Presenting alongside speakers from RFC Ambrian, Oroco Resource Corp and First Quantum Minerals, Beal revealed that the diversion process on what he said was the highest capacity bulk ore sorting operation in the world had now commenced, some 16-17 months after the magnetic resonance (MR) based system was installed and testing commenced.

“After a one year sensing-only trial, Kansanshi has now gone forward and commissioned and tested diverting hardware in May that has allowed them to fully transform into an inline bulk sorting system,” he said.

“With the validation of that having just gone by, this now represents the highest capacity sorting plant in the world.”

NextOre was originally formed in 2017 as a joint venture between CSIRO, RFC Ambrian and Worley, with its MR technology representing a leap forward in mineral sensing that, it said, provides accurate, whole-of-sample grade measurements.

Demonstrated at mining rates of 4,300 t/h, per conveyor belt, the technology comes with no material preparation requirement and provides grade estimates in seconds, NextOre claims. This helps deliver run of mine grade readings in seconds, providing “complete transparency” for tracking downstream processing and allowing operations to selectively reject waste material.

The installation at Kansanshi is positioned on the sulphide circuit’s 2,800 t/h primary crushed conveyor belt, with the system taking precise measurements every four seconds for tonnages in the region of 2.5 t to a precision of +/- 0.028%.

“Magnetic resonance technology, in particular, is very well suited to high throughput grade measurement – it is measuring all of the material that is going through,” Beal explained. “And these sensors like to be filled with more material.

“We hope to go larger from here. And we, in fact, have projects ongoing to do that.”

This wasn’t the only reveal Beal provided during the webinar, with the other announcement slightly smaller in scale, yet no less significant.

Seeking to address the lower end of the bulk ore sorting market, the company has come up with a mobile bulk sorting plant that is powered by MR sensors.

This solution, coming with a capacity of up to 400 t/h, has now found its way to Aeris Resources’ Murrawombie mine in New South Wales, Australia, where it is being used for a trial.

At Murrawombie, the setup sees an excavator feed a mobile crusher, with the crushed material then passed to the mobile ore sorting installation (the conveyor, the sensor, the diverter and supporting equipment). The system, according to Beal, provides bulk ore sorting results in a cost- and time-efficient manner.

It has been designed to suit small mines and those seeking to monetise historical dumps, or to provide a rapid test method for bulk sorting to support a potentially much larger bulk sorting plant, Beal explained.

The fully-diesel setup is destined for copper operations globally and potentially some iron ore mines, he added.

First Quantum board signs off development of Kansanshi S3 Expansion, Enterprise nickel project

The First Quantum Minerals Ltd Board of Directors has signed off on the S3 Expansion at the Kansanshi mine and the Enterprise nickel project, both in Zambia.

The approval will lead to work on both projects starting immediately, with the company re-commencing detailed engineering works for the S3 Expansion to determine purchase orders for key long-lead items, including the SAG mill, ball mill and in-pit crushing station; and a mining contractor being mobilised for the Enterprise nickel project in order to commence pre-stripping of the pit in June 2022.

This could see Kansanshi’s life pushed out to 2044 with the introduction of new electrical loading and drilling equipment along with the extension of the current electric trolley assist infrastructure, with Enterprise contributing some 30,000 t/y of nickel concentrate in upcoming years.

“First Quantum has been working constructively with the Government of Zambia’s New Dawn administration as part of their efforts to reform the mining sector, attract investment and increase Zambia’s copper production,” Tristan Pascall, Chief Executive Officer, said. “The approval of the projects reflects First Quantum’s increased confidence in the investment climate in Zambia.”

The S3 Expansion and the Enterprise nickel project are a key part of the company’s brownfield growth strategy, according to Pascall.

“The Kansanshi mine has been a cornerstone asset for First Quantum for 15 years and the S3 Expansion will expand production and extend the mine life for another two decades,” he said. “The low-cost, high-grade Enterprise nickel project is well placed to supply the rapidly growing electric vehicle battery sector.

“The approval of these two projects is an important milestone for the company’s path towards responsible production growth of the metals needed for the global green energy transition.”

The approval of the projects follows the efforts of the New Dawn administration to enhance both the investment climate for mining and to seek commitments from the mining sector to contribute to the national economy and to corporate social responsibility, First Quantum says. These initiatives will help establish a platform for more stable, durable and responsible mining in Zambia.

The Government of Zambia’s commitments address the ease of doing business in Zambia, covering areas such as expediting immigration procedures in exchange for commitments for local employment levels, competitive pricing of power transmission and power procurement from independent sources which in turn will support renewable energy projects, and measures to ensure the ease of importing and exporting goods.

The approvals follow the re-introduction of the deductibility of mineral royalties for corporate income tax assessment purposes that became effective in January. This measure realigned Zambia with international best practice, according to First Quantum. The government’s commitment to improve the predictability of the mining fiscal regime also provides the certainty needed to support large capital investments in Zambia.

“Furthermore, First Quantum and the government have successfully resolved all points of contention that have been stumbling blocks to progress on the S3 Expansion and Enterprise nickel project,” it said. “This includes reaching agreement in respect to the outstanding value-added tax receivable sum and an approach for repayment based on offsets against future mining taxes and royalties.”

The S3 Expansion is expected to transition the current selective high-grade, medium-scale operation to a medium-grade, larger-scale mining operation that will be more appropriate for the higher proportion of primary, lower-grade sulphide ores at depth, First Quantum said. As outlined in the NI 43-101 Technical Report filed in September 2020, the S3 Expansion, when completed, will comprise of a standalone 25 Mt/y processing plant with a new larger mining fleet that will increase Kansanshi’s total annual throughput to 53 Mt/y.

Once the expansion is completed, copper production from Kansanshi is expected to average approximately 250,000 t/y for the remaining life of mine to 2044.

A significant portion of the initial construction works for the S3 Expansion have been previously undertaken with much of the civil and structural work on-site completed, First Quantum said. The remaining work includes completion of the remaining engineering design works, procurement and installation of equipment, electrics, controls and infrastructure. The S3 processing train will comprise of a 28 MW SAG mill and a 22 MW ball mill. The open-pit mine will be expanded to increase the supply of sulphide ore from the Main Pit and extend into the South East Dome deposit. The expanded mining fleet will use similar ultra-class equipment as First Quantum’s other key mines and will benefit from new electrical loading and drilling equipment along with the extension of the current electric trolley assist infrastructure, First Quantum said.

In parallel with the expansion of the mine and processing facilities, the company plans to increase the throughput capacity of the Kansanshi smelter from 1.38 Mt/y to 1.65 Mt/y of concentrate. This will enable the smelter to produce over 400,000 t/y of copper anode.

The total capital expenditures associated with the S3 Expansion is expected to be $1.25 billion, which includes $900 million on the S3 plant and mine fleet and $350 million for pre-stripping of the South East Dome pit. Approximately $800 million of this spending is included in the company’s current three-year guidance released on January 17, 2022, with the balance falling beyond the guidance period. First production from the S3 Expansion is expected in 2025.

The Enterprise nickel sulphide deposit is located 12 km northwest of the Sentinel copper mine. As outlined in the NI 43-101 Technical Report, filed in March 2020, proven and probable reserves at Enterprise total 34.7 Mt of ore at 0.99% Ni.

The Enterprise nickel project will consist of a single, main open pit and one extension to the southwest. It will use the existing 4 Mt/y nickel circuit that was previously built as part of the original Sentinel processing complex. The main workstream to bring the project online will be the pre-strip of waste. The development timeline for Enterprise is expected to be approximately 12 months. At full production, Enterprise is expected to produce an average of 30,000 t/y of nickel in high-grade concentrate.

The total capital expenditures associated with the Enterprise nickel project is expected to be approximately $100 million. Pre-stripping of the Enterprise pit of $60 million is included in the three-year guidance provided earlier this year along with $40 million related to infrastructure and plant commissioning. Expected first nickel production of 5,000-10,000 t of nickel in 2023 is included in the company’s three-year guidance.

NextOre’s magnetic resonance tech up and running at First Quantum’s Kansanshi

Australia-based NextOre is onto another ore sorting assignment with its magnetic resonance (MR) sensing technology, this time in Zambia at First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi copper mine.

NextOre was originally formed in 2017 as a joint venture between CSIRO, RFC Ambrian and Worley, with its MR technology representing a leap forward in mineral sensing that provides accurate, whole-of-sample grade measurements, it says.

Demonstrated at mining rates of 4,300 t/h, per conveyor belt, the technology comes with no material preparation requirement and provides grade estimates in seconds, NextOre claims. This helps deliver run of mine grade readings in seconds, providing “complete transparency” for tracking downstream processing and allowing operations to selectively reject waste material.

Having initially successfully tested its magnetic resonance analysers (MRAs) at Newcrest’s Cadia East mine in New South Wales, Australia, the company has gone onto test and trial the innovation across the Americas and Asia.

More recently, it set up camp in Africa at First Quantum Minerals’ Kansanshi copper mine where it is hoping to show off the benefits of the technology in a trial.

The MRA in question was installed in January on the sulphide circuit’s 2,800 t/h primary crushed conveyor at Kansanshi, with the installation carried out with remote assistance due to COVID-19 restrictions on site.

Anthony Mukutuma, General Manager at First Quantum’s Kansanshi Mine in the Northwestern Province of Zambia, said the operation was exploring the use of MRAs for online ore grade analysis and subsequent possible sorting to mitigate the impacts of mining a complex vein-type orebody with highly variating grades.

“The installation on the 2,800 t/h conveyor is a trial to test the efficacy of the technology and consider engineering options for physical sorting of ore prior to milling,” he told IM.

Chris Beal, NextOre CEO, echoed Mukutuma’s words on grade variation, saying daily average grades at Kansanshi were on par with what the company might see in a bulk underground mine, but when NextOre looked at each individual measurement – with each four seconds representing about 2.5 t – it was seeing some “higher grades worthy of further investigation”.

“The local geology gives it excellent characteristics for the application of very fast measurements for bulk ore sorting,” he told IM.

Mukutuma said the initial aim of the trial – to validate the accuracy and precision of the MRA scanner – was progressing to plan.

“The next phase of the project is to determine options for the MRA scanner to add value to the overall front end of processing,” he said.

Beal was keen to point out that the MRA scanner setup at Kansanshi was not that much different to the others NextOre had operating – with the analyser still measuring copper in the chalcopyrite mineral phase – but the remote installation process was very different.

“Despite being carried out remotely, this installation went smoother than even some where we had a significant on-site presence,” he said. “A great deal of that smoothness can be attributed to the high competency of the Kansanshi team. Of course, our own team, including the sensing and sorting team at CSIRO, put in a huge effort to quickly pivot from the standard installation process, and also deserve a great deal of credit.”

Beal said the Kansanshi team were supplied with all the conventional technical details one would expect – mechanical drawings, assembly drawings, comprehensive commissioning instructions and animations showing assembly.

To complement that, the NextOre team made use of both the in-built remote diagnostic systems standard in each MRA and several remote scientific instruments, plus a Trimble XR10 HoloLens “mixed-reality solution” that, according to Trimble, helps workers visualise 3D data on project sites.

“The NextOre and CSIRO teams were on-line on video calls with the Kansanshi teams each day supervising the installation, monitoring the outputs of the analyser and providing supervision in real time,” Beal said. He said the Kansanshi team had the unit installed comfortably within the planned 12-hour shutdown window.

By the second week of February the analyser had more than 90% availability, Beal said in early April.

He concluded on the Kansanshi installation: “There is no question that we will use the remote systems developed during this project in each project going ahead, but, when it is at all possible, we will always have NextOre representatives on site during the installation process. This installation went very smoothly but we cannot always count on that being the case. And there are other benefits to having someone on site that you just cannot get without being there.

“That said, in the future, we expect that a relatively higher proportion of support and supervision can be done through these remote systems. More than anything, this will allow us to more quickly respond to events on site and to keep the equipment working reliably.”