Tag Archives: mineralogy

Wardell Armstrong expands office and lab space in Cornwall

25th October 2021Metallurgy, Mining equipment, Mining servicesBen Simpson, Cornwall, Cornwall Chamber of Commerce, Darren Buckley, laboratory, mineralogy, UK, Wardell Armstrong, Wheal Jane Earth Science ParkDaniel Gleeson

To accommodate the increased demand for its mineral processing and metallurgical testing services, Wardell Armstrong says it has expanded its office and laboratory space at Wheal Jane Earth Science Park in Cornwall, England.

The new space now accommodates over 30 specialist staff including engineers, chemists, metallurgists, technicians and support staff who all provide services to a global client base.

Darren Buckley from Cornwall Chamber of Commerce opened the new office space last week, with the expansion highlighting Wardell Armstrong’s continuous investment into the Cornish mining industry, it said.

Wardell Technical Director, Ben Simpson, said: “The opening of this facility cements the departments position as the leading ‘mineral processing testing facility in Europe’. I’m delighted to be part of this exciting growth and expansion of Wardell Armstrong.”

Intertek opens state-of-the-art new laboratory in Western Australia

26th August 2021Automation, Environmental, Metallurgy, Mineral exploration, Mining services, Mining softwareAndré Lacroix, FTIR, ICP, Intertek Minerals, lab assay, mineralogy, Minerals Global Centre of Excellence, PhotonAssay, XRD, XRFDaniel Gleeson

Intertek Group has officially opened its new Minerals Global Centre of Excellence, in Perth, Western Australia, bringing with it world-class technical expertise, automated technology, and pioneering innovation and services, Intertek CEO, André Lacroix, says.

The Centre of Excellence is the largest Intertek Minerals laboratory in the world and consolidates the group’s Minerals business into a 20,000 sq.m, multi-service, facility housing over 500 employees. It is powered by the latest pioneering technology to deliver a broad range of Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification (ATIC) services to the industry, according to Intertek.

The new centre was officially opened at an event attended by Hon Bill Johnston, Western Australia’s Minister of Mines and Petroleum.

Intertek said: “COVID-19 has intensified the world’s focus on innovative and sustainable mining practices as industries seek to Build Back Ever Better. From the steel required for the construction of wind turbines to the nickel fuelling the shift to electric vehicles, responsibly sourced commodities underpin a cleaner, more sustainable and technologically advanced future. In order to meet the needs of a growing global population while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a variety of energy sources and commodities will be needed to power the modern world.”

Intertek’s Minerals business has, for many years, driven innovation and sustainability throughout the resource supply chain, from exploration and resource development, through to production, shipping and commercial settlement, supported by a global network of experts and a customer-centric local delivery model, it said.

“As a purpose-led company, Intertek’s mission is to make the world a better, safer and more sustainable place and these values lie at the heart of the Minerals Global Centre of Excellence, which will feature 3,030 x330 W solar panels, making it one of largest rooftop solar installations in Western Australia,” the company said.

The facility will provide miners with access to global specialists in mineralogy, XRD, XRF, FTIR, ICP and statisticians, alongside a new technology and innovation hub with world-class technical expertise and superior customer service at its core, it said.

It will also include eight robotic automated systems, including sample preparation, XRF and wet chemistry systems.

Demonstrating its commitment to investing in advanced technology, Intertek has installed two Chrysos PhotonAssay units at the Minerals Global Centre of Excellence. These units show Intertek’s unwavering focus on leveraging innovation and will provide clients with more accurate and environmentally friendly analysis of gold and complementary elements, it said.

“The need for creative solutions is becoming ever more critical to solving today’s biggest energy and infrastructure challenges,” the company said. “True to its pioneering spirit, Intertek is constantly evaluating new instrumentation and technology to continuously improve quality, safety and efficiency and deliver value for our customers. The new Centre of Excellence shows Intertek’s unwavering focus on leveraging innovation and its commitment to providing clients with industry-leading, high quality analytical data.”

André Lacroix, Chief Executive Officer of Intertek, said: “The world has reached a tipping point in terms of sustainability and it is the movement of our time. As all industries seek to Build Back Ever Better, responsibly sourced commodities today will form the building blocks of a cleaner, greener, more sustainable tomorrow. This exciting new facility will provide our customers with instant access to world-class technical expertise, automated technology, pioneering innovation and services, all in one location.

“With a strong focus on technical excellence, data analytics and superior customer service, we will help the world’s leading mining companies accelerate to a sustainable future by Unearthing Xcellence, in turn enabling us to fulfil our mission of making the world a better, safer, more sustainable place for all.”

Intertek Minerals provides mineral testing services throughout the mining life cycle from exploration geochemistry, mine site laboratory services, minerals inspection, sampling and analysis, robotic laboratory solutions, environmental services and metallurgical testing services across the mining supply chain.

TESCAN speeds up and automates mineralogical analysis with TESCAN TIMA

3rd March 2021Automation, IoT, Mineral exploration, Mining servicesautomation, field emission scanning electron microscope, Marek Dosbaba, mineralogy, scanning electron microscope, TESCAN ORSAY HOLDING, TESCAN TIMA, X-ray spectroscopyDaniel Gleeson

TESCAN ORSAY HOLDING has announced the release of its next-generation TESCAN TIMA, a dedicated solution for automated mineralogical analysis for industrial mineral processing and earth sciences.

TESCAN TIMA delivers rapid access to actionable data across several applications, including mineral quantification, petrography, metallurgy, liberation analysis and other mineralogical or composition studies.

For the mining industry, TESCAN TIMA handles high throughput industrial mineral processing applications with minimal need for operator intervention, according to the company. It automates mineral phase identification, measurement and textural data interpretation, then generates the required process mineralogy reports.

“TESCAN TIMA delivers reliable and reproducible quantitative data to improve processes,” the company said.

Marek Dosbaba, Product Manager, TESCAN, said: “The geosciences community now understands how automated mineralogy can help them ease their research. By providing an alternative to qualitative assessments performed with optical microscopes, TIMA allows researchers to localise minerals of specific importance quickly and provides quantitative insight to elemental composition and morphological characterisation.”

Four energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy detectors, each with their own digital pulse processor, increase throughput speed for sample processing, while TESCAN’s patented high-sensitivity spectral summing algorithm assures accurate and reproducible quantification for low abundance elements, the company says.

TIMA adopts the ease-of-use principals of TESCAN’s Essence graphical user interface so new operators can quickly become proficient and work independently, according to TESCAN. Automation of the process, meanwhile, allows unattended operation for faster processing and access to reproducible quantitative data. TIMA data can be processed offline to maximise the tool time for interactive microanalysis.

When not in use for automated mineralogy, TIMA is a highly capable, standalone field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), TESCAN says. It shares a platform with the TESCAN MIRA G4 FE-SEM so will be familiar to users of TESCAN’s first generation.

Metso Outotec on ore sorting’s potential ‘revolutionary change’

24th February 2021Automation, Comminution of minerals, HOF, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, Sustainable miningArtificial Intelligence, backfill, bulk ore sorting, David Di Sandro, Erwin Huber, GeoMetso, in-pit crushers, Metso Outotec, mineral processing, mineralogy, ore sorting, Outotec, particle sorting, pre-concentration, Rashmi Kasat, sensor fusion, SmartTag, TOMRADaniel Gleeson

Metso Outotec stands out among the mining original equipment manufacturers for having publicly acknowledged ore sorting is on its radar.

The Outotec business had a relationship with TOMRA Sorting Solutions dating back to 2014 when the two companies signed an agreement that would see the particle sorting company supply Outotec-branded sorting solutions to the mining and metallurgical industry. Metso, meanwhile, has previously disclosed it was developing “breakthrough proprietary technology to address the demand of high throughput accurate sorting”.

Close to eight months after the two companies merged to become Metso Outotec, IM put some questions to Erwin Huber, Vice President, Crushing and Conveying Systems; David Di Sandro, Business Development Manager – Optimisation and Test Labs; and Rashmi Kasat, VP, Digital Technologies, Minerals, to find out the current state of play with ore sorting at the mineral processing major.

IM: Back in November at your Capital Markets Day, there was mention of ‘AI-powered Ore Sorting Solutions’ during a presentation. Can you expand on what this offering might include? What stage is it at in terms of commercialisation?

DDS: Ore sorting is one of the most exciting recent developments in our industry. With improvements in sensor capabilities and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), this may well become the revolutionary change this industry needs to sustain itself in the face of diminishing grades and orebody quality.

EH: With our ore sorting solution development, we are targeting the ability to deliver complete offerings of hardware and sensor-fusion platforms as it relates to both bulk and particle ore sorting. These platforms would utilise AI to optimise the feed material for the downstream process. Metso Outotec is uniquely positioned to understand and optimise that plant feed stream with deep knowledge and almost complete technology coverage in both the concentrator and tailings processing areas.

We plan to bring new solutions to the market in the short term and continuously launch new technologies to increase capabilities and capacities when the developments are mature enough.

IM: Will these solutions leverage existing tools within the Metso Outotec product offering? Will they make use of existing agreements with other companies (for instance, the agreement with TOMRA that Outotec previously had in place)?

EH: Metso Outotec carries out its own development of these solutions, and some partnerships are part of it once sensoring and analysing different minerals and elements are not possible with a single or only a few technologies. Mining and concentration are becoming more and more a digital world where breakthrough innovation is finding its space towards efficiency and sustainable possibilities. Smart systems will enable improved equipment uptime, efficiency and remote diagnosis of process and maintenance, and will be the bonding element between our traditional offering portfolio and new technologies.

IM: Previously Metso has talked about the development of a bulk sorting solution: do these ‘AI-powered Ore Sorting Solutions’ fit into that category, or are they more particle sorting solutions?

EH: Bulk ore sorting enables material selection at high throughput flows and particle technology is limited by capacity while bringing the benefit of high accuracy on selectivity.

RK: Bulk sorting is in its early stages in industry and no single sensor can determine minerals content across all ore types and mine sites. This is where AI algorithms play a significant role in ‘self-learning’ ore characteristics, mine site by mine site. It also provides great opportunities to do sensor fusion and more accurately determine the minerals content based on outputs from various sensors and sensor types. AI augments our expert’s tacit knowledge and provides a more reliable way over time to analyse big data generated from online mineral analysis.

IM: Where in the flowsheet do you envisage these solutions going?

EH: The earlier we can remove the gangue from the flow stream, the better our energy efficiency will be by reducing the volume of waste material that is processed by downstream equipment. Deposits in advanced development allow for in-pit backfill bulk ore sorters that may be deployed behind mobile in-pit crushers, or before the coarse ore stockpile where backfilling is not an option. There are several pre-concentration technologies that can be applied at each stage of mineral processing and the ideal operation should combine those tools to remove the liberated gangue at multiple stages of the processing plant in order to achieve the most sustainable process (ie bulk/particle ore sorting, selective breakage, coarse flotation).

IM: Will the benefits of your solution be felt beyond the crushing and grinding stage? Do you intend to use the data generated from the ore sorting solutions to benefit the whole downstream flowsheet?

DDS: One of the benefits of ore sorting is more efficient removal of waste from the process feed. Under certain circumstances, this also means removal of deleterious material which otherwise would adversely affect downstream process performance such as flotation recoveries. In these cases, the downstream benefits are intrinsic. The key would be understanding the geometallurgical mapping of all rock types and their mineralogy, so a philosophy of ‘include or reject’ can be applied on a metallurgical response basis. This mapping can be improved with SmartTag™ and GeoMetso™ technologies from Metso Outotec.

EH: The ability to sort, the geometallurgical mapping and metallurgical response obviously feed back into the block model and allow for more options in the mine plan and life of mine resource recovery, for example with the deployment of low-grade stockpiles. This further enhances the sustainability of the mining operation.

IM: Is the market ready for and receptive to such a powerful ore sorting solution?

DDS: As we all know, for good reason, our industry is full of early adopters rather than innovators. Most operations will need to see the technology succeed elsewhere before increasing their uptake of the technology. The initial implementation will likely occur in partnership with customers whose operations need this technology to be economically viable.

EH: The key is to understand the ore variability through the deposit and through the life of mine. Adopting ore sorting as an integrated processing step does not differ that much from testing and sizing flotation circuits, where small changes in ore properties can affect the overall recovery. It is important to understand these changes and how to react to them during operations.

The confidence level in sensor-based ore sorting testing will grow over time. We already see real-life examples where customers report on ore reserves based on lower cutoff grades due to ore sorting.

IM: Anything else to add?

EH: Despite the fact that the concept of ore sorting, and the sensors required to detect the valuable ore from the waste, have existed for several years, if not decades, the implementation of these systems in full-scale operations have been relatively restricted to particular cases with the right kind of orebody to make the process viable. Implementing ore sorting more broadly remains the challenge and requires the dual application of the right sensors working effectively with the right mechanical handling systems to detect and remove the waste stream efficiently and accurately. The skills required to solve these challenges are not just for the traditional mining and mineral processing engineers, but need to include a cross-disciplinary team addressing the issues from all angles.

This Q&A interview was carried out as part of the IM March 2021 annual ore sorting feature, to be published early next month

IMDEX adds rock knowledge component to ‘answer products’ with AusSpec buy

7th July 2020Automation, IoT, Mineral exploration, Mining mergers and acquisitions, Mining services, Mining softwareaiSIRIS, Artificial Intelligence Spectral InfraRed Interpretation System, AusSpec, Dr Sasha Pontual, GeoAnalysis, IMDEX, ioGAS, mineralogy, Paul HouseDaniel Gleeson

IMDEX has acquired AusSpec, an industry leader in automated mineralogy to the mining sector, in an A$8.5 million ($5.9 million) cash and shares deal.

The deal closes a technology gap for IMDEX around rock knowledge, complements its existing tools that add value across the entire mining chain from exploration to production, and has the potential to expand its offering with major mining companies, according to IMDEX.

AusSpec Co-founder and Director, Dr Sasha Pontual, and the AusSpec team will join IMDEX, the Australia-based company said.

The deal for New Zealand-based company unlocks access to AusSpec’s unique, cloud-based Artificial Intelligence Spectral InfraRed Interpretation System (aiSIRIS) technology, IMDEX says.

aiSIRIS is proven technology that has processed more than two million spectra from more than 1,000 mining projects across the globe and has enabled AusSpec to build up an extensive spectral library, according to the company. It involves the acquisition of spectra from hand-held spectrometers, the QA/QC of spectra to ensure quality for processing in real-time and uploading the data for the cloud-based aiSIRIS AI compute engine to analyse the spectra, according to AusSpec.

“aiSIRIS complements IMDEX’s existing in-field GeoAnalysis solution and integrates with IMDEX ioGAS™ software to provide further interpretation and analysis,” IMDEX said.

IMDEX Chief Executive Officer, Paul House, said the acquisition reflects the company’s continued drive to provide more complete rock knowledge to clients through real-time technology.

“The aiSIRIS technology fundamentally changes the approach to mineralogy,” he said. “There is nothing else like this in the industry.

“Without it, the alternative workflows are costly and time consuming. This makes mineralogy routine and establishes the industry standard.”

House said the AusSpec team was a strong strategic fit for IMDEX, providing a “compelling opportunity to accelerate our rock knowledge offering for clients”.

He added: “Every mine in the world makes decisions on the four components of rock knowledge – location, texture, grade, and mineralogy. Our technology stack currently addresses three of these components and aiSIRIS satisfies the fourth – mineralogy.

“Creating answer products, such as mineralogy, from field data in near real-time, is a big part of our vision and this is just another step in our goal to be the global leaders in creating rock knowledge for resource companies.”

The acquisition price comprises A$3 million in cash, and A$5.5 million in IMDEX shares over two years.

Glencore Tech draws McArthur River parallels at Ozernoye polymetallic project

13th November 2019Base metals, Comminution of minerals, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining services, Precious metalsAdam Price, AMC, Glencore Technology, Grigory Koldunov, Hatch, IsaMill, lead, McArthur River, mineralogy, Ozernoye, Russia, Silver, Yeravninsky, zincDaniel Gleeson

Glencore Technology says it and Hatch are helping the Ozernoye project in Buryatia, Russia, come up with a process flowsheet suited to the complex composition of ore at the polymetallic asset.
The mining and processing operation would produce zinc and lead concentrates.

Ozernoye’s Grigory Koldunov said the company is currently preparing the area for the Ozernoye polymetallic mine and concentrator in the Yeravninsky region, 60 km away from the Sosnovo-Ozerskoye regional centre.

“We’ll start mining works and stripping waste by November. Expected stripping volume by the end of the year will exceed 350 000 m3 of waste,” Koldunov said. In November, the company will begin the construction of temporary roads and a tailings storage facility.

Glencore Technology’s Adam Price said the ore mineralogy at the site was remarkably similar to Glencore’s McArthur River zinc-lead-silver mine, which originally brought about the need to create the IsaMill ultrafine grinding technology (an example pictured) – an innovation that turns 25 this year.

“Ozernoye’s mineralogy is complex, and it’s going to need the right flowsheet to improve the recovery and concentrate quality and therefore ensure the economic viability of the project,” Price said. The fine-grained lead-zinc ore at the Australia operation made for an obvious benchmark, he said.

This year, Ozernoye has been embarking on mining, capital works and construction of infrastructure facilities. Major construction of the plant’s facilities is planned for 2020-2022 and the company plans to reach design capacity of 8 Mt/y in 2024.

In September, Glencore Technology worked with Hatch, AMC and Ozernoye to finish a geotechnical drilling program, test work and analysis. The camp was recommissioned and the company began clearing the site for construction. Capital mine development and drill and blast works have started to provide contractors with structural materials and to begin stripping, according to Glencore Technology.

“But the main challenge with the Ozernoye deposit is the complex composition of the ore,” Glencore Technology said. “The task of the current geotechnical and test work program is to design and develop the flowsheet.”

Glencore’s McArthur River Mine in northern Australia contains a complex ore that remained uneconomical until the IsaMill was created to produce a steep particle size distribution without needing internal screens or closed circuit cyclones, according to Glencore Technology. The horizontal plug-flow design prevented short circuiting and provided for a reliable and easy to operate technology.

The original 1994 IsaMills are still operating at McArthur River Mine, but the IsaMill technology has been refined to occupy a small footprint, very high availability and significant energy efficiency, Glencore Technology says.