Tag Archives: ore sorting

Scantech launches GEOSCAN GOLD to help digitalise and control ore quality

Base metals, Bulk handling, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, , , , , , , ,

Scantech International Pty Ltd has released GEOSCAN GOLD, a premium elemental analyser that, it says, uses the highest specification PGNAA (prompt gamma neutron activation analysis) technology available.

The analyser, which builds on Scantech’s GEOSCAN-M high-performance elemental analyser, provides previously unattainable levels of risk-free, real-time measurement performance to the resources sector to help digitalise and control ore quality, according to the company.

GEOSCAN GOLD provides high-quality, real-time elemental analysis for conveyed flows where precision and short measurement times are essential for optimal control. This makes it ideal for bulk diversion (bulk sorting) and fine control where elements at parts per million levels need to be measured or determined from proxies such as gold, platinum group elements, silver and toxic contaminants (eg mercury, cadmium, chlorine, etc), Scantech says.

The analyser incorporates a high performance proprietary detector array for a “better, cleaner spectrum” at lower concentrations for superior element recognition. The array overcomes limitations of conventional, low efficiency detection systems, according to Scantech. It can also operate at extremely high count rates with negligible pulse pile-up.

“This innovation vastly improves the signal to noise ratio and spectral peak resolution, enabling elemental detection at lower levels,” the company said.

Just some of the advantages of GEOSCAN Gold that Scantech highlighted include:

  • An ultra-compact design that can install between standard idlers;
  • Unmatched proven performance;
  • Operational at completion of commissioning;
  • Customised calibrations;
  • Three models cater for belts 600 mm to 2,400 mm and bed depths to 530 mm;
  • No contact with material or conveyor belt;
  • No sampling necessary during normal operation;
  • No wear parts, therefore, low maintenance requirements;
  • Optional customised SUPERSCAN console;
  • Interface to most process control systems; and
  • Proven short paybacks in many applications (bulk diversion, blending, monitoring, feed forward, etc) to optimise plant performance.

The company says GEOSCAN GOLD measures elements in primary crushed rock in conveyed flows at <100 t/h to >10,000 t/h irrespective of belt speed, particle size, mineralogy, dust, moisture, or segregation/layering,

It covers most elements from carbon onwards in the periodic table, including gold, over various measurement times and concentration levels. It can also analyse selected elements to below 1 parts per million, and even register accurate results where conveyor belts contain chlorine or steel cords.

It can register gold directly over 5-10 minute increments and other elements, including proxies for gold (eg sulphur, copper, etc), with high precisions over each 30 seconds of flow.

Measurement data is used concurrently for various applications: bulk sorting, ore blending, ore reconciliation, ore tracking, feed forward control, metal accounting, etc.

“GEOSCAN GOLD is the new standard in representative, real time, conveyed material measurement using Scantech’s Rocks2data customisation module,” the company said. “Successful performance is already proven in many challenging bulk ore sorting applications in base metals and PGMs. It builds on the very successful, world-leading GEOSCAN-M with over 100 installations in the minerals sector in more than 10 commodities. Paybacks are in a few months and sometimes weeks. Non-contact design minimises maintenance and remote access ensures trouble-free operation and high data accessibility.”

New Gold to collaborate with MineSense in underground ore sorting move

Automation, Base metals, Comminution of minerals, Environmental, Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MineSense is gearing up for a move underground with the help of New Gold and its New Afton gold-copper mine in British Columbia, Canada.

The Vancouver-based technology company has already established and proven its ShovelSense technology for the open-pit mining sector, with its X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) sensor-based system now operating on shovels, wheel loaders and excavators on a commercial basis across six operating mines. This includes large installations at Teck’s Highland Valley and Copper Mountain’s copper operations in BC, as well as one ShovelSense unit at the Antamina copper operation in Peru.

Designed for operation in extreme environments and retrofits on any existing mobile equipment, ShovelSense units come equipped with a human machine interface and proprietary algorithms that measure and report ore grade/characteristics. They can also connect directly to fleet management or other existing control software systems, enabling mine operators to reconcile geological block models with actual ore grade data.

Having finetuned the system for above-ground operations, the company is now embarking on its underground move, according to MineSense President and CEO, Jeff More.

A trial of the underground ShovelSense system at New Gold’s New Afton mine is first up to complete product development. The company will be installing a unit on a Cat R1600G LHD for this step. This will be followed closely by installation at a “large entity” in Chile – with More anticipating start up in the September or December quarter.

The development agreement with New Gold at the BC-based mine is looking to trial and finetune the system for underground operations, with More confident the ShovelSense system will stand up to the test.

“The core technology – all of the algorithms, software, hardware – is the same as ShovelSense for open-pit mining,” More said. “It is the ‘application package’ – looking at how we can attach the unit to the machine and protect it in an underground environment – that is what we have to test out. The design for this is already complete; it’s just a matter of trialling it.”

New Afton represents a good test for the system.

New Afton is Canada’s only operating block cave mine, with the New Afton deposit part of a larger copper-gold porphyry district in the region. The operation regularly mines 15,000-16,000 t/d of ore and waste, with the majority of this currently going to the mill.

The company has already pursued “ore segregation” projects to boost the grade of material being fed through to the processing side, but the move into the higher-grade C-Zone in 2023-2029 will place an even greater emphasis on ore/waste boundaries and milled tonnes at the operation.

At the same time, the ShovelSense deployment at New Afton will represent the first time MineSense has sent a unit into a mine that has so much payable gold, with most operations the company has worked on being primarily base metal-oriented.

In 2020, New Afton produced 64,000 oz of the yellow metal, along with 32,659 t of the red metal.

“This will be the first time we’re touching gold at this level; we have other mines that have payable gold but not at that level,” More explained.

In New Afton’s case, sampling and historical data has proven that the orebody’s copper and gold ratios tend to be consistent and unchanging over the long term. With this knowledge, New Afton has used technology in the past to determine the copper value and make ore/waste production decisions. ShovelSense allows New Afton to move the ore/waste production decision to the drawpoint, according to MineSense. This reduces mixing and blending during the crushing and conveying circuit which can homogenise the material to the point where it is not worth segregating.

Trialling new technology such as this is nothing new for New Afton.

The operation already uses automated loading through Sandvik’s AutoMine solution, is employing electrification with the use of Sandvik and MacLean Engineering battery-powered mobile equipment, and, in the process plant, has Gekko Systems’ highest volume InLine Pressure Jig IPJ3500 to improve gravity concentration.

More says the ShovelSense unit could be in the Cat LHD bucket at New Afton in August, with the machine then going through an above-ground trial ahead of the underground transition at the end of September.

“By early Q4, we should have completed the pilot,” he said.

Magnetite Mines plots Razorback DFS path that includes ore sorting

Comminution of minerals, Environmental, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining services, Steel and iron ore, Water management, , , , , , , ,

Magnetite Mines is preparing to commence a definitive feasibility study at its Razorback iron ore project in South Australia after receiving positive results back from a pre-feasibility study (PFS).

The PFS supports declaration of a maiden ore reserve of 473 Mt based on 12.8 Mt/y plant throughput and 2 Mt/y of high-grade concentrate, but it has opened the door for two other options.

Process plant optimisation, for instance, could see a nominal 15.5 Mt/y feed using three grinding stages, three stage magnetic separation and flotation to generate a premium-grade magnetite concentrate with 67.5-68.5% Fe content. And a “Head Grade Improvement Case”, based on higher mining rates with a head grade upgrade from selective mining or ore sorting, could see around 2.7 Mt/y of high-grade concentrate produced.

Razorback would involve initial capital investment of $429-$506 million for a post-tax internal rate of return of 14-33%. This is based on the range of throughput and concentrate production options, in addition to 62% Fe iron ore prices of either $110/t or $150/t.

Magnetite Mines said preparation for a prompt commencement of a definitive feasibility study is well advanced with further drilling, test work, metallurgical investigation and engineering workplans in progress.

Magnetite Mines Limited CEO, Peter Schubert, said: “The PFS is a significant milestone for the company, and defines our optimised go forward scope, which has been developed following rigorous and methodical testing of various options. The resulting scope meets our objectives of practical scale, capital efficiency, attractive returns, high quality product and an expected low emissions footprint.

“This small-scale start-up allows for a practical development of a long life, high quality business with a targeted date for first ore on ship at the end of 2024.”

The mining strategy involves a simple, small-scale mining operation, using mining contractors at start-up to simplify development and leverage the advantages of low strip ratio and short, flat hauls due to orebody geometry and outcropping nature, it said.

“The potential for selective mining is a key criterion and a simple truck and shovel operation was selected as a flexible, reliable and selective method of resource extraction,” the company said. “Bulk methods such as electric rope shovels, in-pit crushing and conveying and continuous miners were investigated but not selected.”

The selected fleet used a single 350 t excavator as primary unit with wheel loader back-up loading medium class (150-190 t) rear dump trucks. The 350 t excavator class was chosen as the maximum size of excavator that can achieve the 1 m of selectivity required to take advantage of the orebody characteristics. Ancillary gear has been sized to a size class appropriate for the excavator productivity and road geometry.

“During the definitive feasibility study, as further geological drilling and geo-metallurgical testing is undertaken, the fleet mix will be reassessed match capacity requirements once selective mining strategies are finalised,” the company said.

During the PFS, investigations and modelling showed there is significant potential in accelerating mining activities and realising higher plant feed grades, from some combination of accelerated and selective mining, stockpiles strategy and/or ore sorting, the company said.

Magnetite Mines has been investigating the potential application of a NextOre magnetic resonance analyser (MRA) with ore sorting technology to the Razorback resource. The use of the MRA allows for a high throughput, high accuracy bulk sorting application that is typically added to the front-end of a processing flow sheet to divert waste ores away before processing, it said. “This has the effect of improving mining grades by pre-concentrating the ore that will be subject to processing, whilst rejecting significant tonnages of low-grade material to tailings via a diversion method such as a chute flop gate or dead box diverter,” the company added.

In October, the company announced it had entered into an agreement with NextOre to supply a mobile bulk ore sorting plant using a magnetite resonance sensor for a trial of the NextOre technology. While the bulk trial was originally scheduled for later in 2021, NextOre and the company have agreed to reschedule this trial until later in the development schedule to allow for the results of planned infill drilling and metallurgical test work that are part of the planned definitive feasibility study to be incorporated in the bulk trial design, the company said.

To assess the impact of improved head grades in the PFS, meanwhile, results from an ore sorting case have been developed, using an increased mining rate and the block model used for reserves, then applying the previously released ore sorting results to generate improved plant head grades and mass recoveries.

“These results are consistent with the analysis earlier in the year on the discrete mineralised bands of the deposit and the gridded seam model,” it said. “Due to these encouraging results, the go-forward case for Razorback will be based on the higher head grades available from selective mining and ore sorting, which will be investigated further with comprehensive infill drilling of the Razorback orebody planned and designed to inform a selective mining schedule to definitive feasibility study standards.”

For the PFS, in addition to the test work completed as part of the 2013 PFS and additional high resolution DTR (Davis Tube Recovery) test work, a comprehensive mineralogical test program was completed to better understand the mineralogical composition of the Razorback and Iron Peak deposits, complementing the existing data from the previous test work program. This was informed by the results of the 2013 PFS study, which was completed for a two-module processing plant for a total of 6.2 Mt/y, and an optimised business case for a third module bringing it to 9.3 Mt/y.

Designed by the company’s process engineering consultants, the test work was used to improve the flowsheet. The flowsheet in the 2019 scoping study had three stages of grinding, three stages of magnetic separation and a final cleaning stage with a hydro separator producing final magnetite concentrate at a grind size of a P80 of 25 μm. This is a widely used, low risk flowsheet, but has significant power requirements and generates a very fine magnetite concentrate with potential filtration and product use issues, the company said.

The company has now generated a preferred flowsheet and plant layout for the PFS, which has significant advantages in efficiency and separation over the conventional configuration used in the scoping study estimates, it said. The inclusion of fine grinding and flotation allows efficient production of high-quality concentrate. The final scale of the preferred go-forward option is plant feed of approximately 15.5 Mt/y with ability to process up to 20% DTR with a capacity of up to 3.1 Mt/y concentrate.

Wescoal after RoM upgrade with Acrux, IMS Engineering XRT ore sorting solution

Coal technology, Environmental, Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mining services, Water management, , , , , , , , , , ,

Acrux Sorting Technology has announced that its advanced sensor-based sorting technology is to be deployed at a Wescoal Holdings Ltd-owned coal mining operation in South Africa.

Acrux subsidiary, Acrux Sorting Coal (ASC), has signed a coal beneficiation agreement with two wholly owned subsidiaries of Wescoal, whereby ASC will deploy advanced sensor-based sorting technology to upgrade lower-grade coal from the mines.

Under the agreement, ASC will provide a fully funded turnkey crushing, screening and sensor-based sorting solution centred around advance dual-energy X-ray Transmission (XRT) unit to process run of mine (RoM) coal.

The plant is to be designed, constructed, commissioned, operated and maintained by IMS Engineering Limited, Acrux’s partner on such ore sorting projects. IMS Engineering is a subsidiary of Germany-based HAZEMAG & EPR GmbH.

ASC’s sorting solution offers significant economic benefits as coal resources can now be upgraded to be included as a saleable product, which will reposition the mines along the cost curve, it said.

Paul Bracher, Managing Director of IMS, said: “The XRT technology has proven its ability to upgrade RoM coal through rejecting material that has sulphur or ash content that exceeds programmed parameters.”

The solution will also have a positive environmental impact as no water is used during beneficiation, and the carbon footprint is reduced through the optimisation of transportation and materials handling.

Wescoal’s Executive Director, Thivha Tshithavhane, said: “This sorting technology solution will enable us to impact on ESG, while creating shareholder value from optimising our coal resources at no capital investment.”

Sean Browne, ASC’s Chairman and Group Founder, added: “Partnering with Wescoal underlines our commitment to driving sustainable innovations that reduce the environmental impact of mining.”

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

Base metals, Comminution of minerals, IoT, Mine operation news, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOMRA completes the diamond recovery loop with new XRT solution

Comminution of minerals, Diamond mining, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , ,

TOMRA Sorting Mining says it is breaking new ground with a “unique” X-ray Transmission (XRT) Final Recovery solution that guarantees 99% diamond recovery.

With the new introduction, TOMRA is the first company in the industry able to supply a full diamond recovery solution using XRT technology from 2-100 mm, coupled with all the benefits of cloud computing for monitoring and managing the entire process, it said.

The new TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR final recovery sorter delivers concentration factors of up to one million with limited stages and is the only solution on the market that guarantees more than 99% diamond recovery, according to the company.

“The new sorter stands out for the high sorting efficiencies, the high diamond-by-weight concentrate, and the benefits deriving from its focus on a single consistent detection principal, diamonds,” the company said. “With this new introduction, TOMRA offers a complete partnered diamond recovery ecosystem with a flowsheet covering the entire process – from concentration to final recovery and sort house – and includes custom development with the end-user all the way to installation, then continued management of the asset and support with specialised services and training.”

The TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR is the latest step in TOMRA’s long-term diamond sector strategy, Geoffrey Madderson, Diamond Segment Manager for TOMRA Sorting Mining.

“We always had this clear objective, but the technology just didn’t exist,” he said. “We knew that to achieve our goal, we would need extremely advanced sensor technology. We have been working in-house on the development the new ultra-high resolution sensor more than five years, and now we are able to close the loop: the COM XRT 300/FR is the last piece within our recovery process, covering the final recovery and sort house applications to produce an ultra-high diamond-by-weight concentrate.”

TOMRA says its holistic approach and unique offering has earned a strong market trust in its XRT technology. As a result, the first three TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR sorters produced have already been sold to customers, all of whom purchased the machines on the back of their experience of previous TOMRA sorters.

The makeup of the TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR sorters sees input material evenly fed via a vibration feeder onto a conveyor belt. An electric X-ray tube creates a broad-band radiation, which penetrates the material and provides spectral absorption information. This is measured with an X-ray camera using DUOLINE® sensor technology, which focuses on a single, constant property of the material, density, it explained.

The advanced ultra-high resolution sensor information is processed and analysed by our TOMRA’s new Image Processing Pipeline to provide a detailed “density image” of the material, allowing it to be separated into high- and low-density fractions. If diamonds are detected, it commands the control unit to open the appropriate valves of the ejection module at the end of the conveyor belt. The detected diamonds are separated from the material flow by jets of compressed air. The sorted material is divided into two fractions in the separation chamber.

The tight tolerances and accurate alignment of the new ultra-high resolution sensor results in a high-quality picture that ensures a clear discrimination between diamonds and low-density materials down to 2 mm, according to TOMRA. The sorter features high-speed valves with a fine nozzle pitch, which significantly reduces non-diamond material in the concentrate. The result is ultra-high diamond-by-weight concentrate with a guaranteed recovery of more than 99%, the company claims.

It is possible to replace multiple sorting stages with a single TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR sorter all the way down to hand sorting, according to the company. In the final recovery application, the sorter targets the highest tonnage through the sorter that can be achieved with the highest recovery efficiency, which ranges from five tonnes to one tonne. As a result, the operation benefits from a smaller footprint and achieves much better grade.

It is also possible to replace hand sorting with a TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR. In a sort house application, it targets the highest diamond-by-weight concentrate possible, with about half the tonnage than final recovery, bringing multiple benefits. It removes the traditional bottlenecks around hand sorting efficiencies and eliminates the human error factor, the company says. In addition, it provides a high level of security by protecting the product from human intervention.

TOMRA’s partnered diamond recovery ecosystem includes consultation services during the development of the system and throughout the lifecycle of the equipment, support running the sorters, and help with specialised services and training. The company has also leveraged digital technologies to provide effective support, through its Virtual Demonstration and Test Solution and features such as the TOMRA Visual Assist Augmented Reality tool for remote assistance.

“With TOMRA, the customer’s entire recovery system falls into one ecosystem,” explains Madderson. “This allows for better compatibility and interconnectivity between the different applications of the recovery process. It gives our customers the full benefit of using cloud computing through our TOMRA Insight platform, which turns our sorters into connected machines. This enables customers to monitor and manage their recovery process in one easy-to-access place for both on-site and off-site management teams.”

TOMRA has set up a showroom dedicated to demonstrations of the TOMRA COM XRT 300/FR sorter at its Test Center in Wedel, Germany. Later in the year, TOMRA will also offer virtual demonstrations for those unable to travel to the Test Center.

COREM, Steinert ore sorting tests present opportunities for Cartier at Chimo gold project

Environmental, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining services, Precious metals, , , , , , , , , ,

Cartier Resources says ore sorting tests carried out by COREM and Steinert US on mineralised samples from the Chimo Mine property, in Quebec, Canada, have indicated gold grades could increase substantially with the use of the pre-concentration technology.

Gold from Chimo is present in two types of mineralised facies: i) quartz veins with coarse visible gold grains having an affinity for the gravity concentration of gold at the mill and ii) zones of silica-rich mafic rocks associated with non-refractory arsenopyrite having an affinity for the flotation of a concentrate of arsenopyrite for gold recovery at the mill.

To perform the sorting tests, rocks representative of the two mineralised facies, made up of the following six mineralogical facies, were first selected for static recognition of each of the facies by the sensors of the sorter:

  • Gold-bearing quartz veins;
  • Gold-bearing silica;
  • High grade gold-bearing arsenopyrite;
  • Medium grade gold-bearing arsenopyrite;
  • Low grade gold-bearing arsenopyrite; and
  • Mafic waste rock.

The detection sensors of the industrial sorter at COREM in Quebec, Canada, were the RGB camera using the optical properties of reflection, brightness and transparency to locate quartz and silica and the X-ray Transmission sensor using the volumetric property of atomic density to locate arsenopyrite. The two sensors adequately recognised the six mineralogical facies associated with the mineralisation, with dynamic calibration tests of the sorter with the moving conveyor making it possible to sort, one at a time, 2 kg samples of each of the facies, Cartier said.

The results of this first test at COREM showed the first three sorts (on a total of eight sorts) concentrated 99.1% of the gold contained in 44.4% by mass of material mass for a grade of 56.3 g/t Au, representing a percentage increase of 223% in gold content over sorter feed. The reject, representing 0.9% by mass of material, contained only 0.4 g/t Au.

The sorter was then ready to perform sorting tests on the 105.7 kg production sample, representative of the mineralised facies at an average grade of 2.16 g/t Au. This content was obtained by including 20% by mass of material with zero grade of gold, simulating dilution in the stopes. COREM’s sorting plan separated 53.9% by mass of the material in the form of a preconcentrate at an average grade of 3.68 g/t Au, representing an increase of 170% in the gold grade compared with the sorter feed. The waste disposal, separated from the mineralisation, represented 46.1% by mass of material at an average grade of 0.38 g/t Au.

Sorting tests carried out with Steinert in Kentucky using a Steinert KSS FLI XT machine with XRT, colour, laser, and induction sensors yielded comparable results.

A 80.69 kg production sample, representative of the mineralised facies at an average grade of 2.13 g/t Au, to which 20% by mass of material at zero grade of gold was added mathematically, representing the dilution in the workings, was used for testing. The new calculated diluted grade was 1.55 g/t Au.

Calculation of the results revealed that 51% by mass of the dilute grade material could be separated as a preconcentrate at an average grade of 2.72 g/t Au, representing a 175% increase in gold grade compared with the sorter feed. The waste disposal, which would be separated from the mineralisation, would represent 49% by mass of material at an average grade of 0.36 g/t Au.

Sorting tests with COREM were carried out following these tests to validate that the 20% of dilution material at zero grade of gold, mathematically added, could physically be effectively separated by the sorter, Cartier said.

The sorting tests carried out by both COREM and Steinert US were comparable, with these results providing prospects for increasing the value of the resources with ore sorting technology.

The objective of the industrial sorting of the mineralisation is to increase the grade of the preconcentrated material preceding the milling operations, which allows an increase in the recovery rate at the mill, reduces transport costs to the mill, reduces milling costs, reduces the costs of environmental restoration of mine tailings, and reduces the environmental footprint of mine tailings and, consequently, increases the social acceptability of the mining project, Cartier said.

The most recent resource estimate from Chimo included 6.6 Mt at an average grade of 3.21 g/t Au for a total of 684,000 oz of gold in the indicated category and 15.2 Mt at an average grade of 2.77 g/t Au for a total of 1.36 Moz of gold in the inferred category.

Northern Minerals rare earth pilot plant keeps up thyssenkrupp REC deliveries

Energy minerals, Mineral processing, Mineral project development, , , , , , , ,

Northern Minerals’ Browns Range rare earth pilot plant in Western Australia has continued to churn out more product, with the company set to soon make a shipment of more than 40,000 kg to offtake partner thyssenkrupp Materials Trading GmbH.

The Browns Range pilot plant has now surpassed a new production milestone of 210,000 kg of rare earth carbonate (REC), Northern Minerals said.

A shipment of 40,406 kg of REC that contains 1,835 kg of dysprosium oxide and 233 kg of terbium oxide is ready at Browns Range for delivery to thyssenkrupp, bringing total production of REC from the pilot plant to 211,109 kg.

The REC produced to date contains a total 103,731 kg of rare earth oxide, which, in turn, contains 9,751 kg of dysprosium oxide and 1,245 kg of terbium oxide: critical elements in the permanent magnet motors used in E-mobility powertrain applications.

Northern Minerals CEO, Mark Tory, said: “Despite the operational and supply chain challenges in the past 12 months, the global trend toward electrification of transport continues to accelerate as a result of regulatory changes and bold decisions by car manufacturers in transition to fully-electric fleets.

“Browns Range is still the most strategically placed heavy rare earths operation in the western world, and we continue to apply our significant R&D learnings to successfully produce batches of REC for our European offtake partner thyssenkrupp from our pilot plant in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.”

Northern Minerals started producing rare earth carbonate through the Browns Range pilot plant in October 2018 as part of a three-year pilot assessment of economic and temporary technical feasibility of a larger-scale development at Browns Range.

The company expects to commission a Steinert sensor-based ore sorter at Browns Range in the June quarter as part of its latest R&D work at the pilot plant.

TOMRA boosts sensor-based ore sorting process with key updates

Comminution of minerals, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , , , ,

TOMRA Sorting Mining has introduced the TOMRA ACT user interface together with a new image processing pipeline and additional process data for TOMRA Insight, all of which will, the company says, enable improvements in the overall sorting process for greater productivity and profitability.

The new TOMRA ACT graphical user interface (UI) brings a fundamental change in the way customers interact with their machines, making it easy to control the work flow in their sorting process with simple, intuitive touch gestures and actions on the screen, according to the company.

The UI provides sorting information and real-time process data at a glance through easy-to-understand graphics. With this clear information, the operator can better monitor the sorting process and make fast adjustments at any time, the company claims. The quick feedback on machine performance and throughput enables them to optimise the process, maximising productivity and efficiency.

Ines Hartwig, TOMRA Product Manager

Ines Hartwig, TOMRA Product Manager, explained: “Throughout the development process of TOMRA ACT, we conducted many in-depth discussions with our customers to ensure we provided them with an interface that would improve the performance of their sorters, benefitting their business. We have been testing it with customers and the feedback has been very positive; in particular about the ease of use, even remotely, which facilitates controlling the process and adjusting settings.

“With the new interface, customers interact with their sorters in a much more intuitive way and they have better guidance on how to improve the overall handling of the sorters. As a result, they will be able to improve the productivity of their sorting plant and the profitability of their mining operation.”

TOMRA is introducing the new UI on all its current X-ray Transmission (XRT) sorters and is planning to extend it to other machines in its offering at a later stage. Upgrade packages to retrofit previous models of its XRT sorters will also become available.

The new Image Processing Pipeline, meanwhile, analyses the data sent by the sorter’s sensors and cameras. This solution provides TOMRA with even more flexibility to adjust and customise the image calculations according to the application and the customer’s specific requirements to achieve the best possible sorting results.

The enhanced image processing solution also collects detailed process data, such as information on particle size distribution of the feed, belt occupancy for insights on feed tonnages, or data relating to the health of the sorter. All these statistics are fed to TOMRA Insight, the cloud-based data platform, adding to the process information it has already received. TOMRA said: “This enables customers to improve the overall sorting process further, taking fast action when changes occur in upstream equipment or in the material’s composition. They are able to better monitor and control their processes, the feed material and the sorted fractions, improving their profitability.”

The new enhanced Image Processing Pipeline, and additional data fed to TOMRA Insight, have already been introduced on TOMRA XRT sorters and will in the future be extended to other products.

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

Automation, Comminution of minerals, HOF, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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