Tag Archives: mineral processing

B&E International to help miners consolidate supply chains amid COVID-19

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As mining companies cut back in efforts to remain viable under COVID-19’s demanding conditions, crushing and screening specialist B&E International is proposing a bold new approach to streamline mines’ supply chains.

According to Ken Basson, Director of Plant and Engineering at B&E International, mining suppliers and service providers need to be proactive in helping mines find sustainable solutions to the current challenges.

“COVID-19 will undoubtedly reduce demand for certain commodities, and, with geopolitical uncertainty, we are likely to see increased commodity price volatility,” Basson says. “This is leading most mining companies – especially juniors – to try to strengthen their balance sheets.”

To do this, there are inevitable cuts in capital expenditure and even operating expenditure. He says the time has come for mining suppliers to streamline the delivery of their services and products, and even to assume more of the day-to-day risk facing mining operations.

“At a time when mines are demanding even higher efficiencies and more plant uptime due to tough trading conditions, the post-COVID environment is expected to present a number of logistical and supply chain constraints,” he said. “To cut through this double-whammy, suppliers need to be helping to consolidate supply chain networks. This is the only way of minimising procurement expenses while limiting process plant outages due to critical spares being unavailable in time.”

A range of other imperatives also need to be addressed at the same time, he says. These include the growing demand for mines to support in-country job creation and local skills development, as well as local manufacturing and procurement. This means less reliance on costly expatriate skills, whose movement around Africa may, in any event, be restricted by COVID-related regulations.

“To streamline the supply chain, B&E International is forming strategic partnerships with key suppliers, to integrate their respective service offerings with ours,” he says. “This gives the mine the advantage of dealing with fewer supplier interfaces. We also take over the responsibility of ensuring that our partners – and their products – perform to expectation.”

He highlights that B&E International – with a 40-year legacy in contract crushing, screening and mineral processing services – has expertise across the process supply chain. With experience across commodities including coal, copper, diamonds, gold, iron ore, manganese and aggregates, the company engineers cost effective solutions in various conditions around Africa, he added.

As one of the few companies in South Africa that both builds and operates its own equipment, B&E International is extending its level of vertical integration through this collaboration with strategic partners.

“Not only do we design, manufacture and install complete processing plants across various commodity sectors, but we also operate and finance these facilities,” Basson says. “This places us in a unique position to partner with mines to reduce their capex, opex and risk.”

The company offers a build, own, operate and transfer model of plant procurement, ensuring a mining company of its planned throughput while also fixing the exact cost of that production, he says.

As part of its market offering, it already conducts optimisation and debottlenecking studies for mineral process plant operators. It also provides plant maintenance contracts, in which it will operate and maintain a customer’s process plant on a toll basis, charging a fixed rate per tonne. Other current services include plant audits, optimisation studies, dust extraction, sampling and breaker systems for oversize run of mine treatment.

“A vertically integrated service offering to mines holds great value for both greenfield and brownfield sites,” Basson says. “As important is our experience in developing local skills wherever we operate – with both formal and hands-on training.”

He highlights that this approach empowers the customer to retain their future options in how they will operate their plants, depending on their internal success and broader economic conditions.

TOMRA makes recovery promise to diamond miners

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TOMRA is offering diamond mining customers a guaranteed diamond recovery of greater than 98% with the use of its sensor-based ore sorting technology.

The company is making this guarantee alongside a promise of 100% detection in the specified range, irrespective of luminescence profile or coating.

As the company says, maximising diamond recovery while optimising costs is the top priority for every diamond producer.

“With TOMRA’s holistic approach and cutting-edge technologies, both can be achieved to deliver outstanding results,” it said, adding that its X-ray Transmission (XRT) diamond recovery technology has helped recover some of the largest and rarest gemstones in history.

TOMRA says it approaches every project as a partnership with the customer to deliver a complete solution that meets their operational and business requirements.

This begins with a detailed analysis of the customer’s requirements and operational needs.

TOMRA – Operations Hub Johannesburg

Working collaboratively, it assists in developing a tailor-made flowsheet redesign that combines its XRT technology with its Near Infrared (NIR) and Laser solutions as needed. This collaborative approach continues throughout the project, with testing at its Test Center in Germany and, on-site, as required, through to installation and beyond.

More recently, this approach has been enhanced with the development of a remote testing option.

“The complete solution can also include the web-based TOMRA Insight platform that turns all the sorters into connected devices for monitoring and tracking the system’s performance,” the company said.

Once the system is fully operational, TOMRA offers its Service Level Agreement to ensure its solution continues to deliver the desired results.

“The tailored agreement can include on-site presence as required, seven days a week product support, application engineer visits, tiered urgency support, targeted site response, training, as well as spare and wear parts coverage to ensure maximum uptime and protect the customer’s investment,” the company said.

Advanced technologies adding value

TOMRA’s XRT technology recognises and separates material based on its specific atomic density. It uses a cutting-edge X-ray camera with DUOLINE® sensor technology to measure spectral absorption information.

TOMRA’s proprietary high-speed X-ray processing unit uses the data to produce a detailed “density image” of the material. The result is a high level of purity in sorting materials, irrespective of size, the degree of moisture or surface pollution present, TOMRA says. This makes TOMRA’s XRT high-capacity sorters effective in the recovery of free, liberated diamonds at high feed rates up to 300 t/h.

TOMRA’s NIR sorters recognise and separate kimberlite and waste rock based on their chemical composition. This technology is useful in upgrading lower grade run of mine and stockpiles, producing a kimberlite concentrate for further processing, the company says.

Marie-Claude Hallé had first-hand experience of how TOMRA’s solutions can add value to diamond mining operations when she held the role as Marketing Operations Manager for diamond exploration and producing company, Stornoway Diamonds.

“You have to really envision that TOMRA has actually changed the game in terms rough diamond recovered around the world and allowed producers to access large exceptional quality goods that perhaps in the past would be crushed to pieces,” Hallé said.

Customised solutions for kimberlite, lamproite and alluvial applications

With its customised approach, TOMRA says it can deliver on its promise of guaranteed results both in hard-rock kimberlite/lamproite and alluvial deposits – each of which presents their specific challenges.

In kimberlite, the challenge is to recover “needle in a haystack” diamonds, which requires controlled crushing of kimberlite ore to avoid damaging or breaking the diamonds, the company says.

“High waste dilution impacts the crushing energy needed and further increases diamond breakage risk,” TOMRA says. “Utilising TOMRA NIR technologies, we can remove non-diamond bearing material, not only improving the crushing profile of the ore, but also increasing the value of each tonne of ore processed. TOMRA NIR waste sorting technology can make diluted marginal kimberlite deposits economic.”

Additionally, complex, energy- and water-intensive kimberlite liberation processes, and the cost of transportation for crushing and processing, are challenges facing modern diamond miners today.

“TOMRA’s XRT and NIR technologies, which offer extremely high concentration factors, allow the production of hand sortable, ultra-high grade concentrates in as little as two stages compared to up to seven in traditional methods,” the company claims.

The challenge of economically mining low-grade alluvial deposits is due to their typically lower grade and the sporadic nature of the deposits.

The high recovery performance of TOMRA’s XRT technology enables single-stage or double-stage diamond recovery, offering a drastically lower operating cost and capital investment so that mining marginal deposits becomes economically viable, according to TOMRA.

“Another advantage of TOMRA’s XRT solution is that it can operate as a dry process, which dramatically reduces its environmental impact and operational complexity,” it says. “Besides, it opens the door to new opportunities, making it possible to mine deposits in arid areas where water access is minimal.”

TOMRA XRT machines have proved effective in alluvial operations, the company says.

One such case is that of the Lulo mine in Angola, operated by Lucapa Diamonds, where TOMRA XRT technology is used to process material between 18 and 55 mm in size and allows the recovery of diamonds of up to 1,100 ct – and where it has recovered Angola’s second-biggest diamond on record, a 227 ct stone in 2017.

Stephen Wetherall, Lucapa Diamonds Managing Director at the time of the recovery, said: “The recovery of the 227 ct diamond using the new XRT circuit justifies our investment in TOMRA’s large diamond recovery technology, which has more than paid for itself with the recovery of this one stone alone.”

Optimised flowsheet

TOMRA is in the unique position of being able to offer diamond operations a full XRT recovery flow sheet to 2 mm that delivers concentration factors up to 1 million with a much-reduced number of concentration stages, it says.

Geoffrey Madderson, Diamond Segment Manager for TOMRA Sorting Mining, explains: “TOMRA XRT technology replaces multiple stages of diamond concentration by virtue of its ability to concentrate diamonds to a hand sortable product after only a single step. This concentration factor allows for the removal of multiple recovery steps, drastically reducing both the capital investment and operational costs to recover diamonds.”

Geoffrey Madderson, Diamond Segment Manager for TOMRA Sorting Mining

TOMRA’s XRT technology can replace traditional methods such as dense media separation (DMS), wet magnetic separation and XRL final recovery with single-stage solutions for +8 mm and double-pass for -8 mm +4 mm particles, it claims.

“TOMRA’s solution eliminates up to seven concentration stages, dramatically reducing the complexity of the supporting plant and infrastructure,” the company says. “This results in significantly lower power and water consumption, which not only reduces costs, but also the environmental impact of the recovery process.”

An additional benefit of TOMRA’s solution is that it is a fully automated process, so there is no manual handling during pre-concentration and recovery, which has positive implications on security and eliminates human error, resulting in greater accuracy, the company says.

Recoveries

TOMRA’s sorters process these volumes with great efficiency, finding more diamonds than other, traditional separation methods – including coated and low- or non-luminescent diamonds, the company says.

The performance of its XRT sorters is independent of the “heavies” content in the feed, and is ideal for processing high-yielding ores unsuitable for DMS. The result is an exceptionally high recovery rate, it claims.

“TOMRA guarantees >98% recovery: that is how confident we are in our technology,” Madderson states.

With TOMRA’s sorting solutions, diamond producers can install large diamond recovery systems with a small capital investment and operate with a fraction of operating expenditures per tonne compared with traditional recovery methods such as DMS and XRL, it claims. In addition, the economic recovery of ultra low-frequency exceptional diamonds of +32 mm is now possible.

“TOMRA’s ability to deliver not only a technology that can detect such large diamonds, but also an economical process solution for the recovery of ultra-rare, exceptional diamonds is what sets it apart from its competitors,” Madderson said.

“This is the reason that, to date, TOMRA XRT has become synonymous with the recovery of extraordinary diamonds from all around the world.”

CEEC Medal recipients recognised for pushing lower footprint mineral processing

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Two standout research and field work contributions that have the potential to improve environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance across industry have been awarded the highly respected CEEC Medal for 2020.

Attracting a record 23 high-quality nominations from across the globe, the shortlisted Operations and Technical Research papers showcased exciting site improvements and innovative ideas for future technologies, according to the Coalition for Energy Efficient Comminution (CEEC).

Now in its ninth year, the CEEC Medal recognises the best published papers that raise awareness of comminution research findings, alternative comminution strategies and installed outcomes.

CEEC Director and Medal Evaluation Committee Chair, Dr Zeljka Pokrajcic, said this year’s nominations reflected industry trends to install renewables, consider embodied energy and emissions, and the continued embracing of technologies such as pre-concentration and coarse flotation.

“It’s rewarding to see how industry leaders and experts are collaborating to forge improvements that make good business sense and proactively improve efficiency,” Dr Pokrajcic said.

The 2020 recipients are:

Operations

Peter Lind and Kevin Murray of Newmont and Alan Boylston and Isaias Arce of Metso Outotec, (formerly Metso), for their paper titled, ‘Reducing Energy and Water Consumption through Alternative Comminution Circuits’. This was presented at the 7th SAG Conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 2019.

Technical Research

Dr Grant Ballantyne (pictured), for his paper titled, ‘Quantifying the Additional Energy Consumed by Ancillary Equipment and Embodied in Grinding Media in Comminution Circuits’. This was also presented at the 7th SAG Conference in Vancouver.

Dr Pokrajcic said the winning Operations paper from Newmont/Metso Outotec documents a successful miner/vendor collaboration on how to assess the comminution circuit options in a low energy and water environment.

The paper considers a typical case of a low grade, bulk tonnage copper-gold orebody in an arid climate (Chile, South America) with significant energy costs. It brings together important solutions – including energy-efficient comminution, ancillary equipment, preconcentration and flotation – and presents compelling economic comparisons.

CEEC CEO, Alison Keogh, said of the paper: “This global knowledge sharing offers real value for decision-making across the globe. The paper’s practical, systematic technology approach, which incorporates all-important financial analysis, has the potential to accelerate industry’s progress to deliver lower footprint minerals.”

The paper’s co-authors, Lind and Boylston, explained that the work was the result of collaboration between many innovative thinkers, with ideas and approaches built over many years.

“We wanted to make a difference, to bring technologies together to show that you can save energy, save water and save money as well. This was a group effort, not only by our extended teams at Newmont and Metso Outotec, but also involving Steinert and Scantech in working through how to apply technologies,” they said.

The CEEC Medal Evaluation Committee praised the winning Technical Research paper from Dr Ballantyne as being “an impressive approach to capturing and quantifying energy consumption of ancillary equipment and energy used to manufacture and transport grinding media”.

The paper shares insights on embodied energy using data collected from sites and presents results on the CEEC Energy Curves.

“The research presents a broader approach that considers the impacts of not just energy used in particle breakage but also embodied energy in the manufacture and transport of grinding media, and energy used in the operation of ancillary equipment such as conveyors and pumps,” Dr Pokrajcic said.

“Bringing this spotlight to embodied energy has strategic value. Many companies are including investigation of supply chain in their procurement decisions.”

Dr Ballantyne, previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), and now with Ausenco, noted that his work started in 2012, building on earlier concepts shared by industry at a CEEC workshop in Australia. These concepts were developed further following industry input at the 2015 SAG Conference in Canada.

“I also acknowledge the inspiration and collaboration of Chris Greet (Magotteaux), Evert Lessing (formerly Weir, now Metso Outotec), Malcolm Powell (formerly The University of Queensland) and Greg Lane (Ausenco) for contributing expert input and data to the work,” Dr Ballantyne said.

“New research ideas and collaboration with industry are key to industry innovation,” he said. “Support and mentoring from these suppliers as well as experts from Ausenco and The University of Queensland ensured these new ideas could be published for industry to progress thinking.”

In addition to the two CEEC Medals awarded in 2020, three publications received High Commendations.

High Commendations – Operations

Ben Adair, Luke Keeney, and Michael Scott from CRC ORE, and David King from Minera San Cristóbal operations, for their paper titled ‘Gangue rejection in practice – the implementation of Grade Engineering® at the Minera San Cristóbal Site’. This was presented at Physical Separation 2019, in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

This paper shares the prediction and outcomes of a Grade Engineering pilot at Sumitomo’s Minera San Cristóbal operations in Bolivia. The work identifies ore amenability and levers to optimise up-front rejection of gangue before processing.

Keogh said: “This approach highlights the scale of the opportunity for mining leaders to invest in unlocking hidden value for shareholders through productivity step-change while significantly reducing impact on the environment.”

High Commendations – Operations (continued)

Malcolm Powell, Ceren Bozbay, Sarma Kanchibotla, Benjamin Bonfils, Anand Musunuri, Vladimir Jokovic, Marko Hilden, Jace Young and Emrah Yalcin, for their article titled ‘Advanced Mine-to-Mill Used to Unlock SABC Capacity at the Barrick Cortez Mine’. This was presented at the 7th SAG Conference in Vancouver.

This work was a collaboration between three organisations: JKMRC at The University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute, Barrick’s Cortez mine and JK Tech. It shares an advanced mine-to-mill approach that unlocks improved SABC production capacity at Barrick’s Cortez mine in Nevada, USA.

Dr Pokrajcic said the article was an excellent review of the dynamic between SAG and ball mills, illustrating how mine-to-mill, with the consideration of blast movement as well as fragmentation, and operation-wide optimisation could empower sites to identify and sustain long-term improvements.

“It highlights the opportunity of operationalising cooperative ore blend control to balance energy use across the milling circuit, reducing specific energy consumption while benefitting from increased production,” she said.

High Commendation – Technical Research

Paul Shelley and Ignacio Molina (Molycop) and Dimitrios Patsikatheodorou (Westgold Resources), for their paper titled ‘SAG mill optimisation insights by measuring inside the mill’. This was presented at the Procemin-Geomet Conference in Santiago, Chile, in 2019.

In a first for industry, this innovative approach aims to collect data from sensors inside the grinding balls within grinding mills, CEEC said. It brings potential application for high frequency measurement of temperature and impacts inside the mill.

Dr Pokrajcic said: “If this early work can be successfully commercialised and scaled up, it could bring new insights that link to operational and energy efficiency improvements.”

Keogh said nominations for the 2021 CEEC Medal were now open, and she encouraged the submission of relevant, ground-breaking articles from online events and industry presentations.

“Because of disruptions to physical events, we have extended the closing date for submissions to October 30, 2021.”

Details of the application process for the 2021 CEEC Medal can be found here.

Metso Outotec to flex minerals processing muscles following merger

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The first public showing from executives of the new Metso Outotec has highlighted just how big the new group will be within the mineral processing ecosystem.

Circa-15,000 employees, some 5,000 service representatives, around €4.2 billion ($4.7 billion) of sales in 2019…the stats are impressive.

The minerals sector dominates within this, representing 61% of 2019 sales.

It will cover everything from comminution through to tailings management, meaning the company will be able to touch most parts of the process not involving ‘mining’ itself.

Coming just a day after the merger was completed, Pekka Vauramo, President and CEO, and Eeva Sipilä, CFO and Deputy CEO, understandably did not go into too much detail on the webcast about what the year-long merger approval process had shown the executive team in terms of their initial cost synergy estimates. Investors will have to wait until August for more detail on that.

Last year when announcing the deal, the companies said they expected to achieve run-rate annual pre-tax cost synergies of at least €100 million and run-rate annual revenue synergies of at least €150 million.

Vauramo explained on the webcast that it was the services, minerals and consumables business areas where there was most overlap between the two entities.

But it appears there will be more than just cost advantages to the tie-up.

Vauramo said: “We are complementing each other’s offerings and activities so well that we have many cross-selling opportunities if we speak about what Outotec can do for Metso’s part and what Metso can do for Outotec’s part.”

Sipilä added to this, saying there were complementary areas within the services sector ripe for these type of synergies.

With such a huge offering, it is hard to pick out areas of focus for Metso Outotec, but sustainability has been front and centre for both Metso and Outotec in the recent past. Unsurprisingly, it will be important for the combined group.

On climate change, Vauramo said: “We are really on the spot with that one to develop more efficient processes, with higher recoveries, better quality, less water consumption or full recirculation of water.”

By taking a more “holistic look” at the whole processing flowsheet, the company will be able to ensure less energy is used throughout the entire process, leading to lower emissions. Any water that is consumed will be recycled where possible, according to Vauramo.

This also implies tailings management will be a cornerstone for Metso Outotec, leveraging both companies’ expertise in filtration technology, alongside Outotec’s paste backfill capability, and other developments the two have made within the dry stacked tailings arena.

“Our expertise is in that process,” Vauramo said of tailings management. “That is where we want to be, and we want to further innovate that process.”

Digitalisation developments within the services area (which represents 56% of group sales) will also accelerate within the larger group.

Vauramo, referencing Metso’s experience during the last three-and-a-bit months, thinks remote monitoring opportunities will grow.

“The COVID virus has shown that the need for remote monitoring is really increasing,” he said. “It has shown many business cases for future remote monitoring needs.

“We have learnt that mines can operate at least temporarily – some over a longer period of time – with a reduced presence at site. But, for service reasons, we do need to know how the equipment performs.”

A third remote performance centre (previously called Metso Performance Center) was recently added to this digital offering through the redevelopment of a former Outotec premise in Espoo, Finland. This European location comes on top of the centres already opened in South America (Santiago, Chile) and Asia (Changsha, China).

It is the R&D part of the new entity that will help the company continue to innovate on this front and others; this is an area Vauramo believes the company can continue to lead on.

“Our R&D investments annually are €100 million,” he said. “That is more than anyone else in the industry.”

The company has 30 R&D centres, more than 8,000 patents and produces around 15 new innovations or products a year from this “mostly decentralised” platform.

Asked whether he expected this type of spending to continue into the future, he said: “€100 million makes just short of 2.5% of our combined sales. I would say we are in the right range (with that figure). Whether it should be 3%, or whether we continue with this approximately 2.5% of sales remains to be seen; it depends on our strategy and the opportunities we see.

“What I would say is that we will not hesitate to increase it (the spend) if we have the right opportunities.”

JKMRC keeps tabs on Glencore Mount Isa test work via video streaming

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Mineral processing experts from the Sustainable Minerals Institute’s (SMI) Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) have overcome the hurdle of COVID-19-related travel restrictions to develop a remote survey coordination method which, they say, allows them to engage with site personnel and facilitate the same procedures they would have in person through the use of video streaming.

This approach enabled the team to connect and converse directly with both the copper processing team and metallurgical laboratory at Glencore’s Mount Isa mines.

JKMRC explained: “Surveying, diagnosing and identifying improvement opportunities for processing plants generally requires teams to travel to a mine site, often in remote locations, and undertake hands-on testing alongside mine personnel − a difficult feat considering ongoing travel and distancing restrictions.”

JKMRC Senior Research Fellow and Process Performance Specialist, Lizette Verster, said the new approach offered a flexible, robust and practical alternative to the conventional method.

“Usually when one conducts a survey like this, it would involve a team of researchers travelling to a site, staying there for a minimum of a week, and working closely with site personnel,” she said.

“In this case, rather than us having a representative attend the site who coordinates the work, Glencore nominated an on-site representative who took responsibility and worked with us to ensure they had the information required to perform the survey.”

The JKMRC team set up a video link between the copper processing team and metallurgical laboratory so they could observe and direct the test work as it was being performed.

“The most important aspect of this is establishing a safe mobile link that is in line with the site’s safety requirements,” Verster said. “All remote viewing equipment allowed for hands-free operation and was protected against dust and water exposure.

“We opted to mount a smartphone on a hard hat or, alternatively a chest harness, that allowed site personnel to freely move around the plant while continuously streaming audio-visual data, and allowing for two-way communication.”

Verster said the experience the JKMRC team had at Mount Isa bodes well for using the method in the future.

“We are definitely pursuing this method going forward as it allows for the effective remote coordination of site work,” she said. “It also provides greater flexibility of survey timing which means one can make better use of operational windows for successful survey execution that doesn’t have to be pre-determined weeks in advance.

“The key to success is communication and lots of upfront planning and we are fortunate to have a close relationship with Glencore and are working with them on a number of projects.”

Glencore’s Mount Isa Mines Senior Process Engineer, Roxanne O’Donnell, was impressed with the ease in using video streaming to enable the remote testing.

“This approach minimised the need for people to come onsite and proved very effective in streamlining the analysis of our mineral processing operations,” O’Donnell said.

“At Glencore, we recognise that collaboration is the key to unlocking innovations and improvement opportunities, and we were really pleased to work with the team at the Sustainable Minerals Institute’s Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre.”

OZ Minerals, Loesche team up following West Musgrave vertical roller mill test work

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OZ Minerals, following a successful prefeasibility study of vertical roller mills (VRM) at the West Musgrave project in Western Australia, has signed a “Partnering Agreement” with Loesche.

The agreement with the leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of VRMs will help the company as it moves to the next phase of the project, OZ Minerals said.

“By working in a collaborative, innovative and transparent way, we believe we will deliver superior outcomes for the project when compared to more traditional ways of engaging with suppliers,” OZ Minerals said.

In November 2017, OZ Minerals and Cassini, which owns 30% of West Musgrave, announced that the West Musgrave project would progress to a prefeasibility study. This prefeasibility study timeline was extended in 2019 to complete a detailed evaluation of additional value-add opportunities, the most significant of which was the use of a dry VRM to reduce power consumption.

The study, released earlier this year, showed off plans for a 26-year open-pit mine with “bottom quartile cash costs” and average production of circa-28,000 t/y of copper and circa-22,000 t/y of nickel in concentrates, OZ Minerals said.

It also included details of an “innovative mineral processing plant” that would be built on site.

The grinding circuit for West Musgrave was expected to consist of two stages of crushing followed by two parallel VRMs treating nominally 5 Mt/y each. The second stage of crushing and VRMs replaced a traditional SAG mill, ball mill and pebble crushing circuit.

OZ Minerals explained in the study: “Vertical roller mills are widely used in the grinding of cement plant feeds and products, slag, coal and other industrial minerals, with thousands currently in operation worldwide. The mill has benefits in reducing power consumption by circa-15%, no ball charge grinding media, higher flotation recovery and can be ramped up and down in response to the availability of low-cost renewable energy.”

The VRM uses compression-style comminution principles taking 75 mm rock to flotation feed size in the one machine, according to OZ, adding that the application of the VRM had reduced processing costs and provided a circa-2% improvement in nickel recovery compared with a previous scoping study.

“The technology has been peer reviewed for West Musgrave by an independent expert and has been substantially de-risked through a series of pilot tests whereby 5 t of West Musgrave ore has been tested,” the company said.

Reviewing the prefeasibility study, OZ Minerals Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Cole, said: “We have been able to achieve a further significant reduction in carbon emissions and power demand through the adoption of vertical roller mills as the grinding mill solution and a flotation flowsheet which achieves metal recovery at a much coarser grind size than was previously considered in the design.

“This lower power usage has resulted in a reduction in operating costs, while the use of dry grinding from the vertical roller mills has also resulted in an improvement in nickel recovery.”

Another innovation the company plan to use at West Musgrave include the use of hybrid renewables that could include a combination of wind and solar energy, battery back-up, and diesel or gas.

Mining at West Musgrave is modelled to be conventional drill, blast, load and haul and is assumed to be contractor operated during the first five years of operation, transitioning to owner operate in year six.

The haulage fleet will comprise up to 25 220 t haul trucks and optionality is being maintained to allow for these trucks to be fully autonomous in the future, OZ Minerals said.

Modernising last-generation geo-metallurgy practices

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By Wolfgang Baum*

Dan Gleeson wrote in International Mining April 2020, “…near identical flowsheets have remained the status quo for decades, with the only variation tending to be how many pieces of conventional equipment are used, as opposed to what new innovations are slotted in up- or downstream of primary crushing”.

It is puzzling that, in many mining companies (and the EPCM world), the ore characterisation status quo has also remained the same since the 20th century ended. Robust ore profiling via modern quantitative laboratory technology is spotty at best or frequently outsourced to commercial labs. Models continue to be filled with too much visual data and lack sufficient quantitative process-related details. Hand lens and pocket knives or other qualitative tools prevail, while we try to utilise Big Data analytics.

Geo-metallurgy, the most overused word in mining, lingers on without emphasising the heart and essence of geology and metallurgy, ie modern ore characterisation focused on processing and based on instrumental laboratory work.

The current situation in ore characterisation is reminiscent of the US steel industry, post-World War II: the status quo remained with companies bound to familiar technology. When ‘big steel’ removed its blinders, the industry and technology had changed. Geo-metallurgical work, if it is to make meaningful improvements in future mining, requires ‘Ctrl-Alt-Delete’ followed by some seismic optimisations.

The low-hanging fruit has been harvested and future orebodies will not forgive one metallurgical mistake. A paradigm shift is needed toward robust continuous ore profiling (chemical, mineralogical and metallurgical). And, routine ore characterisation has to range from the blast holes and draw points, to the rougher and final tailings.

The few positive exceptions

Of course, a few exceptions stand out and need to be applauded.

Several mining companies have implemented and advanced cutting-edge laboratory technology and lab automation, built 24/7 central laboratories and continue to modernise ore characterisation in the direction of cross-belt analysis, downhole logging and large-scale orebody profiling.

Yet, these are exceptions, not the rule.

  • From 15 new copper concentrators built during the last 12 years, only +/- 14% had mineralogical lab capabilities on site. This contributes to delays in reaching nameplate capacity, more downtime and ‘noisy’ metallurgy; and
  • In 2018, only +/- 50% of the 10 largest copper producers and only +/-25% of the 10 largest gold producers had significant modern laboratory automation and process mineralogy labs at mine sites.

Too often, lab work has been minimised, de-prioritised and/or run as shortcuts by many mining companies.

  • Block models continue to be overloaded with geochemical data and a lack of sufficient quantitative mineralogy;
  • Operators wonder why they did not receive a warning from the mine geology department that the swelling clay content increased by 4%;
  • Most modern haul trucks may have over 200 sensors, yet most mines lack a cutting-edge mineralogy lab;
  • In 1973, Don Hausen pioneered the use of large-scale XRD (X-ray Diffraction) alteration contouring in Arizona. Forty-seven (47!!) years later, feet are still being dragged on installing routine XRD equipment for mine geology and processes;
  • Heap leaching in copper (and some other metals) continues to be challenged by wrong placement of ore, leach test coding errors, over- and under-crushed and over- and under-cured feed, poor agglomeration, high acid consumption or inconsistent acid addition, scattered permeabilities and permeability failures;
  • Many permeability failures in heap leaching were caused by a lack of geological ore control, missing quantitative clay data, ore blending based on visual logging, and/or poor leach practices;
  • Visual diagnostics are the most inadequate tool for identifying and monitoring detrimental minerals such as talc, pyrophyllite, swelling clay, hornblende, zeolites, acid consumers, pH–changing minerals to name a few; and
  • Finding out, post-start-up, that the mine has a poor hardness, pyrite or clay model should not be acceptable in the third decade of the 21st century.

Not modernising last generation laboratories imperils mining from pit to plant, and is one reason for underperforming flowsheets.

Having a few dump trucks or conveyors misrouting ore in large, integrated copper stockpile leach/heap leach/concentrator operations with molybdenum by-products may result in rapid compounded losses in the multimillion-dollar range.

Pushing tonnage (‘tonnage farming’) has its place, but, without concurrent good ore characterisation, it can be a high risk to optimal metallurgy.

For geo-metallurgy, labs are not everything – but they are an extremely important thing.

The plant does not see assay Cu, it sees minerals and textures!!

If modern ore characterisation had been used as part of an integrated geo-metallurgy program at many mine sites, there would have been significantly less of the issues listed below – most of which are related to lack of mineralogy data and continue to drain money from many mines:

  • Excessive frothing;
  • Over-reagentising;
  • Reagent pyramiding;
  • Permeability failures;
  • Undersizing of cleaners;
  • Higher pyrite dilutions;
  • Inconsistent feed size;
  • Runaway float conditions;
  • Self-floaters being out of control;
  • Unexpected changes in PSD;
  • More oxide molybdenum than modelled;
  • Oxide ore sent to concentrator;
  • High clay affecting mill loading;
  • Higher clay content than modelled;
  • Lack of control of acid consumers;
  • Excessive salting in heap leaching;
  • Increased wear through clay in high pressure grinding rolls;
  • Higher self-floaters = increasing smelting cost;
  • Feed rate variance 12-35% = incorrect mill sizing;
  • Higher acidic gangue = xanthates become ineffective;
  • Uncontrolled clay/mica/chlorite = sluggish molybdenum float;
  • Reduced grinding efficiency – packing of clays in lifters;
  • Excessive sliming = problems with cleaner scalper function;
  • Contaminated recycle water – higher O/F turbidity – U/F density issues; and
  • Poor selectivity, brittle froth, gangue entrainment and too much pH variance.

The cost of the above ‘issues’ may be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.

Fire prevention, (modern lab technology at mine sites) on the other hand, is cost efficient

A heap failure due to clay variance can cost upwards of $15 million, in some cases, whereas unplanned concentrator shutdowns due to de-bottlenecking and tailings losses can prove even more expensive.

Ore misrouting, one of the larger loss factors due to a lack of routine process-related ore characterisation, may increase with deeper pits, more underground operations, longer hauling/conveying and higher strip ratios.

Big Data analytics requires ‘large-spatially-gridded-sampling’ and quantitative mineralogical and chemical characterisation of these samples. Anything short of this, despite the assumed cost savings, remains risky over-simplifications which lead to ‘speculative models’. Efficient geo-metallurgy will start when we enter process-related ore characterisation data into the models.

In regard to cost-cutting of on-site laboratory services, it’s just like in the nautical business – you can’t keep your sails trimmed forever. Future geo-metallurgy efforts would benefit from an assessment of ‘lessons ignored’.

*Wolfgang Baum is Managing Director of Ore & Plant Mineralogy LLC

Multotec keeps the ferrochrome flow going with new innovate spiral

Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, Water management, , , , , ,

Following years of detailed test work in the South Africa ferrochrome sector, Multotec says it has successfully developed and proven a spiral concentrator that eliminates beaching and enhances recoveries in the 1-3 mm fractions of high-density material.

Significantly, when compared with traditional spirals, the new spiral has shown extraordinarily higher metal recoveries, even for minus 1 mm fractions in ferrochrome slag, according to the company.

“Our SC25 spiral concentrator features steeper angles which facilitate the flow of material and increase separation efficiency,” Hlayisi Baloyi, Applications Engineer at Multotec, says.

“It also widens the particle size range that can be treated by the spiral. Traditionally, spirals would struggle to efficiently treat material above 1 mm in heavy mineral applications, but this spiral can go well beyond that. The spiral has been a game changer even for the minus 1 mm size range where higher separation efficiencies have been achieved on chromite ore.”

Baloyi says this innovation has provided the minerals processing sector with an exciting alternative to jigs in the “minus 3 to plus 1 size range”, which have been one of the conventional methods of separating larger particles. The solution is cost effective as spirals use no electricity and are also easy to maintain, Multotec says. “So attractive is the new model that the first order for the commercialised version has already been placed,” the company said.

Baloyi explained: “Taking ferrochrome samples from a number of mines over a period of two to three years, we conducted extensive test work on these at our well-equipped testing facility in Spartan, near Johannesburg,” he says. “Leveraging this data with our in-house engineering design capacity, we were able to develop the optimal solution and locally manufacture the new spiral concentrator.”

Multotec said: “The institutional knowledge within Multotec has been developed over more than four decades, including valuable expertise in fluid dynamics. Hands-on experience in test work and design allows the development of prototypes that solve customers’ specific challenges – followed by scaled-up local production of equipment to match market demand.”

The economic benefits of the Multotec SC25 spiral for ferrochrome producers are substantial, as some plants were losing the value of their 1 to 3 mm material to the tailings storage facility, according to the company. Many of those who used jigs to treat this fraction were also finding that efficiencies were low.

Refentse Molehe, Process Engineer at Multotec, said ferrochrome is not the only commodity the company has successfully tested.

“We have even seen improved recovery in heavy minerals below 1 mm size, alluvial chrome, manganese slag, and there is potential in industrial recycling,” Molehe said.

TOMRA receives positive ore sorting signals as virtual offering gains pace

Comminution of minerals, Environmental, Industrial minerals, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , , ,

While the effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt across the mining equipment, technology and services (METS) sector, the time away from the office or mine site has enabled many within the industry to carry out work that could lead the industry into a whole new growth cycle.

The jury is out on when such an upturn could occur – these economic studies will not necessarily result in a positive mine investment decision – but this activity, coming alongside billions of dollars of investment from governments and central banks, bodes well for the future.

One company that has witnessed this increase in interest is TOMRA Sorting Mining. The Germany-based firm, known to miners for providing high-tech sorting solutions, including X-ray Transmission (XRT) technology, has received many enquiries since lockdowns were established across the globe in March and April, according to Jens-Michael Bergmann, Area Sales Manager for Europe, MENA and India.

“The number of enquiries has definitely increased since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place,” Bergmann told IM last week. “There are many people deep into prefeasibility or feasibility studies (FS) on projects who need ore sorting data for this. They are very happy to have this provided remotely.”

Jens-Michael Bergmann, Area Sales Manager for Europe, MENA and India, TOMRA Sorting Mining

Such remote work could range from the inspection of photos sent from smart phones or distributed within MS Teams videoconferences, to more advanced analysis and testing of material, Bergmann explained.

Fortunately, TOMRA is setup for this type of remote interaction. Its initial sales process – where mining companies will at this stage be considered ‘leads’ – usually involves the exchange of emails/phone calls, inspections of photos/videos and a few kilograms of material to sample.

The next stage would include the performance test, which could involve hundreds of tonnes of material and usually a visit to the Test Center in Wedel, Germany.

It is this stage that has been revamped recently to cater to the lack of travel options for clients.

TOMRA has opened virtual testing facilities that enable miners to take informed purchasing decisions for their processing plants, regardless of where the client may be located.

This brings the capabilities of the company’s Test Center to the client, offering a video of their material being sorted in an ore sorting unit and a follow-up detailed report including assays (supplied by a sub-contractor), ore sorting data and an estimation of just how optimal a sort could be achieved on that material when it is subjected to XRT technology.

“You have a complete document and resource to base economic decisions on,” Bergmann said.

TOMRA, last month, presented the Virtual Demonstration and Test Solution to the market as a “temporary” platform, but recent experience shows the potential for this becoming part of the company’s standard offering.

“We understand it currently to be a temporary version, but in recent days we have had some positive replies that make us think we can continue to offer it in the future to certain clients,” Bergmann said.

In a COVID-19-affected world where every decision to travel on a plane requires strong justification, flying from North or South America, Asia, or Australasia to Europe for a one-day test is unlikely to be warranted.

Such a trip involving operations teams, executives and metallurgists is more likely to take place when a detailed week-long trial examining the effects of sorting technology on roughing, cleaning and scavenging stages is planned, Bergmann said.

“We don’t think in the future we will go virtual permanently, or personal permanently,” Bergmann said.

Testing time for tungsten-tin

TOMRA only established these virtual facilities on May 12, but it has already carried out four or five of these tests for clients that either had sent samples to Wedel ahead of lockdowns or dispatched them during the period when travel was restricted.

Mike Hallewell, Consultant at MPH Minerals Consultancy Ltd

One of these tests has been for Tungsten West, the owner of the Hemerdon tungsten-tin asset in Devon, England.

Previously owned and operated by Wolf Minerals Ltd, Hemerdon has been offline since late 2018 after Wolf fell into financial trouble as the operation failed to reach expected recovery rates.

According to Tungsten West, Hemerdon hosts the world’s fourth largest tungsten resource, with the potential to become the world’s largest.

With eyes on re-starting the operation and improving recoveries, the company has been looking at XRT ore sorting technology to ensure the new operating plan stacks up over the long term.

Mike Hallewell, Consultant at MPH Minerals Consultancy Ltd, has been helping the company explore its processing options and said the virtual test work TOMRA carried out on behalf of Tungsten West was part of studies looking into a re-start of the mine.

“They are at scoping study level and now moving towards feasibility level,” he told IM. “Ore sorting is a key component of that next phase.”

Hallewell said the recording of the virtual test on an Hemerdon ore sample at Wedel was well received by both himself and Tungsten West.

“You have got to convince the Plant Manager that is operating the plant that it (XRT ore sorting) is something he will be comfortable with, on top of making the case to boards of directors that may not have the same metallurgical expertise as the operation guys,” he said.

“When people see particles being blown by the air jets, it greatly enhances the visual understanding of the separation technique being employed,” he added. “To see is to understand.”

TOMRA has done well replicating the experience project and executive teams would have had in Wedel in person with this testing, Hallewell said.

“They have thought about the things that a client would want to do and see if they were there,” he said.

“They provide a powerful video of the air jet stones hitting the sides, the bins where material is deposited into, and even go as far as putting their hands in that bin at the end to try and replicate that tangible feeling of the sort.”

Future indicators

The more successful TOMRA is at replicating the in-person experience virtually, the more likely these ‘temporary’ options will become part of its permanent offering.

Another area that could ‘go virtual’ in the future is the maintenance and servicing side of TOMRA’s ore sorting business, Bergmann believes.

“The maintenance side is moving in that direction already to a certain degree,” he said.

“Since everybody is currently facing travel restrictions, the infrastructure for accurate virtual maintenance will, in the future, be set up in all plants. The awareness of the need to do this will increase,” he said.

Certain parts of the contract negotiation process could also go virtual, such as “all the unloved paperwork”, Bergmann added.

But, the installation and final signoff of these machines is unlikely to make this transition, at least in the near term.

That is despite an XRT ore sorting machine from TOMRA recently being installed at Sotkamo Silver’s mine in Finland when lockdown conditions were still in place.

On this installation, specifically, Bergmann said: “A lot of pre-commissioning work on that unit took place ahead of the delivery and it was a representative from Outotec – a salesperson with engineering experience – that was able to commission it with remote assistance from our specialists in Germany.”

Looking past the virtual offering, TOMRA could be set for an upturn in business in the near- and medium-term if the influx of enquiries it has recently received is converted into, first, demonstrations and, then, sales.

“In terms of first inspections of material, I would say we have had around 50 enquiries in this lockdown period,” Bergmann said.

“While everyone is planning now, if they hit the investment button, there could be a lot of orders backed up. The manufacturing could run into a bottleneck.

“It’s potentially a positive problem, but a problem nonetheless.”

Considering the amount of investment being pledged by governments to stave off an economic downturn, TOMRA is unlikely to be the only METS company facing such a ‘positive problem’.

Visualising the future of particle measurements with 3DPM

Automation, Base metals, Comminution of minerals, Equipment maintenance, IoT, Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The 3DPM vision system has had quite a journey. Since the first prototype was installed at LKAB’s Malmberget iron ore to help the miner optimise its pellet production, the system has helped ‘settle the argument’ between mine and mill at base metal mines in Europe and improve the quality of coke being fed to blast furnaces in Japan.

The future looks bright too, with the potential for the system to play a major role in the automation of mine process plants.

Users of 3DPM have seen the importance of having a high-quality vision system that can measure material from a few millimetres to as big as 300 mm in size at relatively high speeds on conveyor belts.

Matthew Thurley, Principal Scientist at Innovative Machine Vision and one of the inventors of the system, has seen the system evolve at the same time as the industry’s understanding of orebody characterisation has grown.

Sweden-based MBV Systems was involved from the beginning on the system, working in partnership with Thurley during his time at Lulea University. It was a three-way collaboration between the university, the SME, and mining companies that got the product to market.

3DPM stands for three-dimensional particle measurement. The system consists of high-performance hardware for 3D scanning of particles and state-of-the-art software for analysis of the size and distribution of particles on a conveyor belt.

“Each system is optimised regarding the hardware and software to best fit each individual installation site and customer preference,” MBV Systems said. “A few examples include OPC communication, heating options to allow functionality in freezing environments, bulk volume calculation, rock bolt detection, and alarm triggering on oversize material.”

Back in 2006, the system installed at Malmberget was very different.

Thurley said the physical hardware, mounted above a conveyor, was pieced together to function properly, but required integration of many individual parts which was hard to maintain.

Still, it provided the iron ore miner with a detailed particle size distribution down to mm-size classes of its high-grade iron ore pellets.

And, in the 14 years since first installation, the principle of the system has remained: to provide increased knowledge of particle size distribution to generate value in, for instance, crusher/mill control, blast furnace effectiveness, process optimisation, or process knowledge.

As more companies have become familiar with the system, the advanced features such as algorithms to detect fines and partially embedded particles have come to the fore. The hardware has been reinforced for rough environments with IP65 rating and the need for very low maintenance even when running 24/7.

This has meant the system has potential in projects focused on improved quality control, automation and process control; three topics the industry is looking at to improve its bottom line, increase its revenues and remove people from operations.

MBV Systems said: “Our customers, who are already highly automated, must continually make their operations more efficient and reduce costs in increasingly tougher international competition. MBV Systems’ machine vision systems constitute a decisive factor for higher productivity, improved efficiency and for complete quality control.”

LKAB started using the system more than 10 years ago. Over that timeframe, the system won many admirers.

Boliden is a big fan of 3DPM, with installations at its Garpenberg, Aitik and Tara operations.

Earlier this year, the miner decided to install another 3DPM system at Garpenberg, four years after the first system was delivered to the Aitik mine to help boost process knowledge and control strategies for crushers and grinding mills.

The way the Sweden-based miner has applied this technology makes for a great case study, according to Thurley.

At Tara, the system is being used for increased process knowledge – “settling the argument between mine and mill”, Thurley says – while, at Garpenberg, the vision system is being leveraged to detect boulders and rock bolts online in a safe way.

This shows 3DPM can be used for multiple purposes.

Such flexibility is down to the system’s ability to provide full size distribution measurements from 0-300 mm and the use of newer algorithms, with the accuracy dependent on the speed of the conveyor belt and the target size of the material under scrutiny.

One of the differentiating factors of 3DPM compared with other vision systems – many of which are now used within ore sorting projects – is the ability to provide a good 3D data profile of the surface of the rock mass. This helps distinguish between rocks and fines, for instance, even when the two are interwoven.

“With the system, we can classify fines and embedded rocks,” Thurley explained. “In other systems, fines may be mistaken for large ‘rocks’ and significantly skew the measured size distribution resulting in bad data and bad decision making.”

This is particularly important in operations that produce several products within one mine – for instance iron ore lump and fines – ensuring that the correct product ends up in the correct stockpile.

The vision system can be tailored to each application.

“At a pigment producer, for instance, we are looking for material that is 3 mm in size,” Thurley said. “In order to carry out that sort of classification, we use the latest technology to measure 3D points at 0.3 mm resolution.”

Typically, visualisation down to this size of material is not required in mining operations, where the company is really competing with batch ‘mine-to-mill’ ore characterisation studies carried out through sieving or some type of other manual process. Such classification can work well for that ‘sample’ but can be misrepresentative depending on the orebody’s heterogeneity.

“3DPM can, instead, provide an end-to-end analysis that can now start to be used as a decision-making tool,” Thurley said.

Analysis of the ore coming through just after blasting can help provide the reconciliation tool miners require to check how effective the blasting practice is, for instance, helping provide the “pre-crusher size distribution feedback much earlier in the value chain”, he said.

With the incorporation of new software and camera technology, the company is expecting more complex analysis to be carried out on bigger amounts of material, according to Thurley.

“These new technologies will allow us to analyse material on a conveyor belt going at 6 m/s where the previous generation was limited at around 2 m/s,” he said.

This could open opportunities at much bigger operations – some large copper or iron ore mines, for instance – as well as automated plants of the future.

It is not farfetched to see the system operating in the same blasting reconciliation position but providing crusher operators with the analysis required to optimise operations ahead of receiving the material.

Moving one step further, it could provide the same information to a system that operates autonomously.

“This could eventually lead to automatic control of the crusher,” Thurley said.