Tag Archives: OLGA

Gekko brings real-time grade measurement to the gold sector

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Gekko has launched “Mark 3” of its online gold analyser, OLGA, the flagship product for the company’s real-time data instrumentation division, which operates alongside other key products such as the Carbon Scout to assist in measuring the recovery of gold real-time in gold processing plants, Nigel Grigg, General Manager – Global Sales & Solutions, Gekko Systems, says.

“We are really excited about these new design elements which will improve value and returns for our clients as well as improve ease of operation,” he said. “Now gold grades can be measured in real time compared with the traditional assay-based process which can often result in two-day delays. Operating management will be able to respond immediately if there is a gold excursion or if the data provides other insights into plant trends. This is a breakthrough technology which is now even more affordable and will deliver higher yields in processing plants.”

The OLGA has at its heart the world-first proprietary “Golden Eye” lens technology developed and designed in Australia’s government-funded CSIRO research laboratories.

This component measures gold grade in slurries and solutions combined including low grade slurry streams down to as low 0.1 parts per million. Other elements are also measured including copper, silver, platinum and nickel. The multiplexing feature will allow for up to four streams within a processing plant to be assessed for gold grades, according to Gekko.

The OLGA is the only real-time online measurement system purpose built for gold, Gekko claims. The unit is typically installed to measure the cyclone overflow stream in CIL leach circuits, around the electrowinning circuit and on flotation feed, tails and concentrate. With the multiplexing function, the OLGA can switch measurement of grade from stream to stream.

“The technology represents a significant step forward in the potential to automate gold leaching circuits,” Grigg says.

Another key feature of OLGA is the dedicated sample feed line, facilitating continuous sampling of large volumes with no potential for cross-contamination. The system also offers additional sample points for ad-hoc samples, providing flexibility and adaptability to changing operational needs. Furthermore, the ad-hoc samples can be analysed as batch samples, minimising sampling errors and substituting the need for other sampling systems.

The OLGA Mk3 has undergone rigorous testing and refinement to ensure its robustness, reliability and accuracy in various operational conditions, while offering low maintenance requirements, Gekko says.

Gekko says OLGA’s development was supported by collaboration partners who assisted and provided critical feedback to improve an earlier OLGA technology design. That collaboration included the management and technical teams at Gold Fields, CSIRO, Orway IQ, Curtin University, METS Ignited and Gekko Systems.

Core to the assessment was an OLGA installation at Gruyere Gold Mine (a JV between Gold Fields and Gold Road Resources) where the OLGA achieved excellent results indicating a strong correlation between the automated OLGA and manual assay data and giving the Gekko team the confidence to further develop the OLGA, Gekko concluded.

Gekko installs OLGA, Carbon Scout solutions at Gruyere as part of collaborative project

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Gekko Systems, as part of a collaborative project to collect and analyse real-time gold reconciliations and automate gold processing plants, has installed its OLGA and Carbon Scout solutions at the Gruyere gold mine in Western Australia.

In October 2020, METS Ignited Industry Growth Centre announced the consortium of Gold Fields, Orway IQ, CSIRO, Curtin University and Gekko Systems as recipients of the Tranche 4 Collaborative Project Funds. The METS Ignited funding will assist the development of this project.

In a world-first, the project draws together a range of technologies, including the Gekko OLGA and Carbon Scout, and skill sets that are the first step to truly understanding what is happening in a gold production plant in real time and will eventually lead to a fully autonomous gold plant, Gekko said.

Gekko recently installed the OLGA and Carbon Scout at Gruyere (a joint venture between Gold Fields and Gold Road Resources), the site where the project will become reality.

“The Gekko OLGA and Carbon Scout will revolutionise the industry’s ability to measure gold circuit inventory and recovery in real time, move it into the digital world and provide opportunity for full automation,” Gekko said.

OLGA is a world first on-stream analyser designed to continuously read low grade gold grades in slurries and solutions, giving operations the ability to see and control their plants in real time, the company says. The alternative traditional sampling methods involve significant delays – of up to one or two days for feedback.

The Carbon Scout is a self-contained, ground-level sampling system to improve carbon concentration measurements in carbon-in-leach and carbon-in-pulp circuits to an accuracy of ±0.5 grams of carbon per litre of pulp. Uniquely, multiple other data points include slurry density, pH, DO and gold loading on carbon, Gekko explained. Data profiles are provided in every tank, every hour.

“The combination of OLGA and Carbon Scout, supported by the Gekko Sample Delivery System, means all CIL/CIP sampling can be done conveniently and safely at ground level,” it said. “Each tank is sampled by a patented pumpless delivery system. All samples in the plant including leach feed and tails will be delivered through this system to potentially alleviate the need for expensive cross-cut samples.”

The team of Orway IQ will deliver the data through the Trinity program. With the MillROC data system and the Gekko technical team using the data for system analytics.

The ultimate aim of the project is to have gold process and recovery data being analysed within minutes rather than days from anywhere in the world and for production to be adapted to reflect this data, Gekko said.

Collaborative project featuring Gold Fields looks to revolutionise gold plant data analysis

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Gold Fields, Orway IQ, CSIRO, Curtin University and Gekko Systems have come together to commercialise a complete solution package for collecting and analysing gold plant data in real time.

This is a process that will revolutionise the industry’s ability to measure circuit inventory and recovery in real time, move it into the digital world and provide opportunity for full automation, according to Gekko.

Earlier this month, METS Ignited Industry Growth Centre announced the consortium as recipients of the Tranche 4 Collaborative Project Funds. The METS Ignited funding will assist the development of a system to collect and analyse real-time gold reconciliations and automate gold processing plants by providing the technology, software, skills and expertise to the miners as an integrated package.

“In a world-first, the project draws together a range of technologies and skill sets that are the first step to truly understanding what is happening in a gold production plant in real time and will eventually lead to a fully autonomous gold plant,” Gekko said.

METS Ignited CEO, Adrian Beer, said the project funding is supporting the commercialisation of innovation developed in partnership with industry, research and Australia’s mining equipment technology and services (METS) companies.

“The METS Ignited Collaborative Project Funds are a catalyst for industry collaboration to enable commercial pathways for Australian technology to deliver global results,” he said.

Gold Field’s Processing Projects Coordinator, Matt Dixon, said the value of this collaboration was having information available in real time to make decisions.

“The METS Ignited project is looking to integrate multiple technologies to achieve a step change in the automation and optimisation of gold processing,” he said. “Recent innovations by CSIRO and Curtin University, in partnership with Gekko Systems, are now making the potential to monitor gold in real time a reality.”

Gold Fields has chosen the Gruyere gold mine (owned 50:50 with Gold Road Resources) as the site to install and test these technologies, according to Dixon.

“Combining the OLGA (OnLine Gold Analyser, pictured) and Carbon Scout, with newly developed data capture and analytics technologies, aims to provide a step change to how we measure, monitor and optimise gold recovery,” he said.

This is a “world-first project”, creating a technological capability that does not yet exist anywhere else in the gold sector, according to Dixon.

The project will address current difficulties in accounting for gold during production, lag times in assessing data and adapting procedures to maximise production from the data provided and the safety around a number of those procedures.

The ultimate aim is to have gold process and recovery data being analysed within minutes rather than days from anywhere in the world and for production to be adapted to reflect this data, Gekko said.

CSIRO-Gekko’s OLGA proves its worth at Evolution’s Mt Carlton mine

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Gekko Systems says the benefits of accessing real-time on-stream gold data has been proven with the trial installation of the CSIRO-Gekko OLGA analyser at Evolution’s Mt Carlton operation, in Queensland, Australia.

This trial has since been converted into a sale and permanent installation, Gekko said.

OLGA is an X-ray fluorescence-based technology capable of detecting gold in slurry with around 1,000-times better accuracy than conventional methods – and in real time, according to CSIRO, which helped develop the analyser.

It detects gold (and other elements) contained in a continuous process stream at 10 parts per billion using a pair of X-ray lenses that greatly magnify the slurry’s fluorescent gold signal as it passes through a tank, CSIRO explained.

While the announcement of the trial and commercial transaction for Evolution’s Mt Carlton operation is ‘news’, CSIRO reported earlier this year that field trials at a Queensland gold mine were showing positive results and that the technology was expected to be ready for market this year.

Gekko, last week, said the unit was installed in December 2018 and trialled on a number of slurry streams including feed and tail before the device was purchased in June 2019. “Both CSIRO and Gekko teams worked collaboratively with a very engaged support group from Mt Carlton to deliver a quality outcome,” the company added.

The alpha system was designed for harsh mine conditions and exhibited high availabilities, according to Gekko. Furthermore, sampling accuracy has also been very positive when compared with assay test work on the same sample stream, the company added.

In reviewing the data, Professor Tim Napier-Munn, a Statistical Expert from JK Tech, said: “Based on these data and in this application, OLGA is likely to provide estimates of feed Au concentration that are suitable for use in manual or automatic control of the downstream process, and metallurgical balancing over time”

Mt Carlton was developed by Evolution and commissioned in 2013 and is now one of the highest-grade open-pit gold mines in the world, according to the miner. It produced more than 100,000 oz of gold for the third year in a row in the company’s 2019 financial year (106,646 oz), the same year in which the development of an underground mine from within the open pit was approved.

Last week, Gekko also announced the signing of a partnership and collaboration agreement with Western Australia-based specialist mineral processing engineers, Cadia Systems. The partnership was expected to feature a new Gekko-Cadia brand, which represented an important industry collaboration between Cadia’s engineering capabilities and technical knowledge in areas such as carbon desorption, regeneration and gold room systems and Gekko’s modular plant and package offerings, the two said.

CSIRO and Gekko’s OLGA receiving good reception at Queensland gold mine

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Field trials for the CSIRO-developed Online Gold Analyser (OLGA) are showing such positive results at a Queensland gold mine that the technology is expected to be ready for market this year, the research organisation reported recently.

OLGA is an X-ray fluorescence-based technology capable of detecting gold in slurry with around 1,000-times better accuracy than conventional methods – and in real time, according to CSIRO.#

The analyser, which will be available through technology and services company Gekko Systems, detects gold (and other elements) contained in a continuous process stream.

OLGA can detect gold in slurries at 10 parts per billion using a pair of X-ray lenses that greatly magnify the slurry’s fluorescent gold signal as it passes through a tank.

“Normally you take samples from a stream and send that sample to a laboratory,” CSIRO Research Group Leader, Yves Van Haarlem, said. “If you’re lucky the lab is onsite, but even then the turnaround time for analysis can be 10 to 12 hours. That’s probably too late to do something about it. With OLGA you can act on what you’re seeing almost immediately.”

Conventional X-ray Fluorescence is already a well-known tool in the base metals industry for the monitoring and control of concentration plants, but they tend to have less accurate detection limits – usually in the tens to hundreds of parts-per-million (ppm) range, precluding their use in precious metal concentrators, according to CSIRO.

Richard Goldberg, Gekko’s Head of Innovation and Collaboration, said that other means of detecting gold have been lacking in accuracy and/or the timely availability of results. “We’ve never had the ability to directly monitor gold flows through a plant in real time before,” Dr Goldberg said. “We know that gold grade can vary over relatively short periods and that it will do so between the samples taken as part of traditional process control regimes. As the results from those samples are also delayed, they are unlikely to accurately reflect the changes occurring in the process stream.”

Dr Goldberg said OLGA’s value stems from its ability to provide important information in near real time. In effect, the operators of a plant will no longer be blind to changes in its performance, according to CSIRO.

Andrew Dixon, Gekko’s Performance Consultant Manager, said the new system is proving its triple bottom line credentials. Economically OLGA allows the processing plant to be controlled to allow maximum efficiency of gold recovery, he said.

“This has environmental benefits as well. It will allow you to optimise reagent additions and to reduce any emissions from the plant that may have to be detoxified or treated to be made safe,” he said.

This means a plant will end up with less reagent chemicals in the tailings.

“It’s also more sustainable – the efficiency improvements will have an effect on the stability of the operation,” Dixon said. “A more stable gold processing operation is always going to be more efficient.”

Dr Goldberg said the reaction from gold mining companies that have seen OLGA work in laboratory conditions has been extremely positive and have seen considerable interest in the technology.

“We’re currently conducting field trials to ensure it’s a solid product before we fully release it to the market. To date, the trials have been extremely positive,” he said.

Dr Van Haarlem said Gekko has been the ideal partner for CSIRO on this technology. “Gekko engineered the whole structure around the analyser so that the slurry can be easily analysed, validation samples can easily be taken, and to provide the robustness required for plant installation,” he said.

OLGA is not just about detecting gold concentration. It’s about providing information, according to CSIRO.

“You could, for instance, put OLGA on the feed stream and one on the tailings,” Dr Van Haarlem said. “You could then look at what went in and what went out. If there’s too much gold in the tailings compared to the feed then the plant knows immediately that it’s losing gold. All this can then be acted upon.”

Dr Goldberg said there has been interest from potential buyers from as far away as Africa, Europe and South America. A fully supported product should be available for these regions later this year, CSIRO said.

Dr Van Haarlem said the X-ray optic system is now being tested on platinum and can be used for other metals. Its application could be much more widespread, such as for detecting toxic elements in food and water.

Yet, he believes OLGA’s future rests in its potential to revolutionise gold processing plant strategies and to refine logistics.

“It will provide a lot of data on real time gold and slurry density, which can then be correlated with other plant parameters,” he said. “It might turn out that if you don’t mill the ore sufficiently, gold recovery suffers. It’s going to show us correlations we didn’t even know were happening. This information can help us to optimise the entire production circuit.”