Tag Archives: tailings

Decipher to help miners improve tailings governance, monitoring, reporting and disclosure

Communications in mining, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining industry recognition, Mining services, Water management, , , , ,

Decipher, a Perth-based cloud monitoring platform for tailings storage facilities (TSFs), has been working with industry leaders in the tech space to create an integrated TSF cloud solution to help mining companies improve governance, monitoring, reporting and disclosure of tailings data.

TSFs are integral to almost any mining activity but, due to their “toxic nature” and the vast volume of waste materials, mining companies are acutely aware of the risks and challenges that they pose, Decipher says.

“Mining operators have come to realise that a leakage or rupture can have considerable consequences such as loss of life, environmental damage, impact their social licence to operate, and cause potential financial hardship,” the company says.

Prior to the catastrophic failure of the tailings dam in Brumadinho, Brazil, in 2019, which caused a tidal wave of 11.7 million cu.m of mining waste, reportedly killing 270 people, most companies had been required to disclose relatively little information on their facilities and were able to transfer part of their tailings exposure into their General Liability, Property or Environmental Liability Insurance programs, according to Decipher.

“Almost overnight, insurers soon discovered the full financial impact that a significant failure can have on their own business, resulting in a complete overhaul in underwriting guidelines,” the company said. “As a result, mining operators are now required to be more transparent in the assessment of risks and have since experienced substantial premium increases while the insured value has dropped. According to industry experts, underwriters have recently refused to cover tailings dams where the required information was not forthcoming. Additionally, insurers have indicated that compliance with standards may be a consideration in determining future insurability and premiums for tailings facilities.”

Adding to this notion, Decipher CEO, Anthony Walker, explained that insurers can now afford to be selective in where they put their capacity.

“In order for mining companies to achieve satisfactory insurance renewal outcomes they need to be able to demonstrate that their facility adheres to governance processes and certain standards, and, that they are fulfilling their obligation to do whatever is necessary to avoid an incident from occurring, work collaboratively with auditors and underwriters on third-party reports, and comply with industry public disclosure requests such as the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative,” he said.

After speaking with several Tier 1 and 2 mining companies, Decipher has created an integrated TSF cloud solution to help companies improve governance, compliance, monitoring, reporting and disclosure of tailings data, which can potentially assist with the insurance process and flow of information, the company says.

“We have designed the solution so that customers can provide independent users such as insurers, investors, auditors and ITRB with secure access to a quick and effective knowledge management tool with selective data,” Walker said. “This enables our customers to visually demonstrate their good governance, enabling their stakeholders to better understand the facility, its risks and as a result, potentially reduce insurance premiums and improve investor sentiment.”

The solution draws on Decipher’s powerful monitoring capabilities, which has been built with Google Earth Engine at its core, and brings a variety of tailings data such as IoT devices, LiDAR, radar, CCTV, drones, inspections and remote sensing into one central location, offering customers an earth observation and visual approach to their TSF monitoring, it says.

In addition to this, Decipher has advanced tools such as InSAR Displacement, which integrates with industry leading providers so that users can more effectively monitor, measure and detect deformation of land surfaces over time and be automatically alerted to customer defined exceedances, driving greater safety precautions and reducing risk.

Los Andes Copper confirms dry stacked tailings plan at Vizcachitas

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Los Andes Copper has received results from the ongoing prefeasibility metallurgical study on its Vizcachitas copper project which, consistent with all prior test work conducted, confirms the adoption of dry stacked tailings at the Chile asset.

During 2020, Los Andes has continued metallurgical testing at the SGS laboratory in Santiago, Chile. The test work was carried out on representative samples from locked cycle flotation tailings that reproduce the expected particle size distribution for the coarse and fine tailings fractions at Vizcachitas, it explained.

The planned prefeasibility study (PFS) system for the water recovery is to use vacuum belts for the coarse tailings and pressure filters for the fine tailings. The filtration rates for coarse fraction vacuum filtration are between 1.8-2.0 t/h/sq.m and the fine fraction pressure filtration rates between 0.5-0.6 t/h/sq.m. The expected average filtered cake moisture is between 15-18%, confirming that the Vizcachitas ore is amenable to being filtered and dry stacked.

As the PFS advances, the decision to implement filtered tailings for dry stacking reflects the commitment of Vizcachitas to become one of the early adopters of the environmental friendly technology that will guide global mining in the future, Los Andes said.

Filtration reduces water consumption by 50% when compared with thickened tailings disposal alternatives (60-70% reduction when compared to traditional disposal alternatives), according to the company. Furthermore, filtered tailings can be handled by trucks, conveyors and shovels, as other solid bulk materials, eliminating the need for the construction and operation of a tailings dam.

“The latter is a milestone in operational flexibility and safety standards of particular relevance in a seismic country such as Chile,” the company said.

Fernando Porcile, Executive Chairman, said: “The verification that dry stacked filtered tailings is a viable option for Vizcachitas puts us on the forefront of environmentally responsible practices being adopted for the future of sustainable mining globally.

“Water conservation is high on the agenda for many mining companies, especially in Chile, and therefore the fact that we can reduce our water consumption by approximately 60-70% by using this method is a really positive development.

“This is a proven technology which is now being carried over into Tier One copper projects and I am excited that we will be one of the first, large scale, copper mines to utilise it.”

Heritage eyes up Mount Morgan riches, rehabilitation

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A partnership between GreenGold Engineering and Heritage Minerals Pty Ltd has plans to return the Mount Morgan gold mine in Queensland, Australia, to some of its former glory by creating a mean and green way to extract gold from its ample tailings deposits.

The cooperation allows Heritage Minerals to develop the project in a proactive program to maximise the best chance of project success, the company says. Heritage admits it has a big task on its hands, facing doubters that have witnessed a string of false starts at Mount Morgan.

The story behind Mount Morgan dates to 1882 when a syndicate was created to open a gold mine at Ironstone Mountain, 39 km south of Rockhampton.

Ironstone Mountain, later renamed Mount Morgan, was originally operated as an open-pit gold mine at the top of the mountain, before being converted to an underground copper and gold mine.

In 1935, it transitioned back to an open-pit operation and continued until the mine closed in 1980. After this, Peko Wallsend Ltd ran a tailings treatment operation from 1982 until 1991, recovering gold from 27 Mt of tailings.

Mount Morgan pioneered many metallurgical processes to cope with the unique properties of the ore over this time. From chlorine leaching in the early days to various flotation and smelting furnace techniques for the copper/gold ore, the Mount Morgan tailings stockpiles have a rich and varied history.

At different stages over the life of the mine, copper was either a bonus or a nuisance. When copper grades were high, copper was a financial benefit; when the copper grade was low, the metal increased the operating cost associated with gold recovery.

This more than century of mining and processing came with consequences.

The pyrite remaining in the mine and tailings dumps is acid-forming and has generated a significant environmental legacy which remains today. This legacy has become the responsibility of the State of Queensland (1993) and is managed by the Department of Natural Resources and Mining’s (DNRM) Abandoned Mines Division.

Despite these environmental liabilities, five companies have come back to Mount Morgan since Peko Wallsend stopped operations in the early-1990s, encouraged by higher yellow metal prices and improved processing options for the refractory ore.

“We’re the sixth company to have a shot at reprocessing the tailings, with none of the companies before us getting past the feasibility study stage into financing,” Peter Mellor, Corporate Secretary at Heritage Minerals, told IM.

All of them were unsuccessful primarily because of the presence of nuisance copper and the high cyanide consumption that comes with removing this, according to Mellor.

The most recent company to try its luck at Mount Morgan is a case in point.

ASX-listed Carbine Resources developed a process flowsheet to remove part of the troublesome copper by acid leaching the tailings and producing copper sulphate. Additional revenue from the production of pyrite concentrate supplemented gold sales.

It was the production of premium quality (50% sulphur) unroasted iron pyrite concentrate that enabled the commencement of the reduction of acid-forming material at Mount Morgan, Carbine said.

Despite coming up with a 1.1 Mt/y blueprint that, in the expanded case, could operate for 20 years and produce 23,000 oz/y of gold, 2,700 t/y of copper sulphate and 200,000 t/y of pyrite concentrate, the plan ultimately fell down on the projected economic returns, negatively impacted by excessive royalty liabilities.

A February 2018 update came with a revised operating model at Mount Morgan showing all-in sustaining costs (AISC) of A$862/oz ($621/oz), A$313/oz higher than the company’s December 2016 feasibility study.

“The increase is due primarily to higher cyanide consumption and lower by-products credits due to a lower pyrite price and the loss of copper sulphate premium associated with a change in the copper products produced,” Carbine explained.

Fresh approach

To be fair to Mellor and the Heritage team, they are not looking to repackage the same project blueprint in a markedly better gold price environment as other companies have been known to attempt. Instead, they are setting up the project and the town of Mount Morgan for a brighter and sustainable future.

After gaining rights to the project from Norton Gold Fields following Carbine’s exit, one of the first things Heritage did was appoint GreenGold to carry out the definitive feasibility study.

Equipped with its ReCYN resin-based technology that has been shown on other projects to reduce cyanide consumption by up to 50% through capturing free cyanide from plant tailings and recycling it back into the leach circuit, the selection was an obvious choice.

The company could potentially detoxify the tailings stream and clean up the water discharge at Mount Morgan. This would be a boon for the DNRM, which currently treats the water from the open pit and tailings deposits before being released into the local creek due to the low pH levels caused by the acid-forming pyrite.

“Our process plant will use this water, treat it and send it out as clean water down the creek,” Mellor explained.

This is one of several changes the company is implementing to make the project viable.

“For example, Carbine were previously looking to float off the nuisance copper at the start, which came with the associated capital costs of building a flotation plant,” Mellor said. “Yet, the copper really represented a low amount of revenue (2,700 t of copper sulphate in the studies) overall.”

The ReCYN resin plant can deal with the higher cyanide consumption needed to treat the copper at the back end of the flowsheet. This will allow the company to focus on the gold – which represents 90% of revenue – that can be processed by a technically-simple carbon in leach plant.

Malcolm Patterson, MD of Heritage Minerals, and Peter Papa, Technical Director of Heritage Minerals, observe the task ahead at Mount Morgan

The open pit is partially filled with previously processed tailings, with Mellor saying the reprocessing of 10 Mt of tailings (averaging 1.1 g/ Au) can help complete the rehabilitation process.

“We have come up with a really neat environmental rehabilitation scenario where we fill the existing open pit up, and cap it all off nicely so the surface water cannot penetrate,” he said.

Set to build a 2 Mt/y plant to re-process this material, Heritage is only looking five years out from first production, although there is potential for this processing quantity to be doubled.

Even with this near-term gaze, the definitive feasibility study (DFS) anticipates a one-year payback and an upfront capital expenditure bill of A$74 million (compared with Carbine’s last A$96 million estimate).

“There is more potential than this,” Mellor says of the feasibility study, highlighting several areas of interest within proximity of the existing open pit. “Yet, we wanted to get the economic, environmental and social aspects ticked off first before laying out any longer-term plans.”

The company has been very thorough in coming up with this five-year plan.

Already blessed with an extensive JORC resource database from previous Mount Morgan tailings reprocessing protagonists, the company continued to drill for tonnage and bulk density definition of the tailings resource; the latter with a Dando percussion drill rig capable of punching 1 m cores down to 30 m depth.

With a board decision on the DFS expected before the end of the year, Heritage could soon enter the financing stage, followed (hopefully) by construction.

If all goes to plan, operations – a simplified earthmoving and processing method – could begin in 2022.

“Mount Morgan is definitely not the easiest site, but it is the most prestigious in terms of history and challenges,” Mellor says.

Heritage and GreenGold will soon be judged by the financing community on whether they are up to such a challenge.

Decipher to help miners align with new tailings storage facility standards

Communications in mining, Environmental, IoT, Mining industry recognition, Mining services, Mining software, Sustainable mining, Water management, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wesfarmers-owned software-as-a-service company, Decipher, says it has extended its successful TSF cloud platform to provide a solution to simplify the process of tailings storage facility (TSF) data disclosure as well as helping companies align with the new global tailings standard.

The recent Global Standard on Tailings Management was launched on the August 5, 2020. The historic agreement includes six topic areas, 15 principles and 77 auditable requirements, which covers the entire TSF lifecycle – from site selection, design and construction, management and monitoring, through to closure and post-closure.

With an ambition of zero harm to people and the environment, the standard significantly raises the bar for the industry to achieve strong social, environmental and technical outcomes by elevating accountability to the highest organisational levels and adds new requirements for independent oversight, Decipher says.

“These recent initiatives have encouraged mining companies to respond quickly to public demand for more transparency which has highlighted the need for a software solution which can improve tailings data management, reporting, monitoring, compliance and governance,” the company said.

This is where Decipher’s technology comes into play.

Decipher Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Walker, said the resources industry is actively seeking easily implemented, cost effective and globally accessible solutions.

“The early adoption from Tier 1 miners and general interest has been phenomenal indicating that there is a real need for a TSF data disclosure solution; it excites us that our technology platform can be leveraged to support better management and monitoring of tailings storage facilities,” he said.

Topic Area VI of the new standard requires operators to support public disclosure of information about tailings facilities, and participate in global initiatives to create standardised, independent, industry-wide and publicly accessible information about facilities. For example, the recent Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative called upon 727 extractive mining companies to make public disclosures about their TSFs to form an independent global database – The Global Tailings Portal, developed by GRID-Arendal.

Due to manual processes, and often disparate and siloed datasets, mining operators have estimated it took them around six weeks per site to collate their tailings data, according to Decipher. “With many operators having well over 50 sites, this process is challenging and surfaced many inefficiencies,” it said.

After hearing these frustrations from the industry, Decipher designed a tailings database solution to help companies easily capture, manage and disclose tailings data, enabling them to meet data provision requests from industry groups such as the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative, it said.

Decipher has also been working closely with GRID-Arendal to create an API to facilitate automatic update of tailings data within the Decipher platform directly to the Global Tailings Portal.

“We believe this will significantly increase efficiency and provide a massive time savings for mining operators who choose to disclose regularly,” the company said.

Topic Area III of the standard aims to lift the performance bar for designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, monitoring, and closing facilities.

Recognising tailings facilities are dynamic engineered structures, this topic area requires the ongoing use of an updated knowledge base, consideration of alternative tailings technologies, and a comprehensive monitoring system.

“Decipher’s TSF solution is trusted by environmental, tailings, geotechnical and management teams globally to help improve monitoring, compliance, reporting, operational visibility and safety,” the company said. “The platform brings together data from laboratories, IoT devices, LiDAR, CCTV, drones, inspections and remotely-sensed platforms to serve users with up-to-date information to provide key data and insights, enabling teams to effectively monitor, govern and operate their TSFs.”

Armed with Decipher’s Tailings Database solution, Decipher says. customers can:

  • Comply and meet requests for data provision from industry groups such as COE, ICMM, UNEP, PRI, Global Tailings Review and more, with fields embedded for simple reporting and tracking;
  • Store an endless variety of tailings data in one location which is otherwise managed by a number of teams in disparate systems;
  • Operate with increased confidence knowing required data is being collected and monitored;
  • Easily visualise their operational TSF data on the map;
  • Cluster data into key areas such as safety, risk, compliance, construction, design, roles and responsibilities;
  • Assign actions and tasks for data collection with a register and audit trail of all actions and respective statuses to monitor progress, and reminder and escalation notifications;
  • View dam data across multiple sites in a single screen with the ability to easily export for reporting;
  • Facilitate automatic updates to databases and portals based on integration capabilities with third-party systems or public portals;
  • View spatial visualisation to display tailings dams in proximity to surrounding environment and communities;
  • Better align with standard such as the Global Tailings management; and
  • Access custom reports.

Antofagasta responds to environmental concerns with new Los Pelambres copper mine plan

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Antofagasta Minerals is preparing to submit an investment proposal for its Los Pelambres mine in Chile that could see it stop using water from the Choapa River and nearby wells, and to use mainly seawater from 2025.

In this way, MLP will be able to guarantee the availability of water for its operations and advance its studies into extending its operations beyond 2035, when its current environmental permits expire, it said.

The submission to the Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA) also considers Minera Los Pelambres (MLP), the operating entity, building a new concentrate transportation system with modern control systems, routed away from the most populated areas. This will allow maintenance to be carried out without interfering with the daily life of the surrounding communities.

The 60%-owned mine produced 363,400 t of copper in 2019, alongside 11,200 t of molybdenum and 59,700 oz of gold.

Iván Arriagada, CEO of Antofagasta Minerals, said: “We are going to invest in works that allow us to adapt our operation to the changes that have occurred in the Choapa province and the region over the last 20 years as a result of the prolonged drought caused by climate change and the increase in its population and productive activity.

“This is a key step in the future of Los Pelambres.”

Arriagada added: “We have a long-term strategic vision to extend the life of the operations while ensuring its continued coexistence with other productive activities in the province of Choapa. We are particularly interested in taking care of natural resources that are scarce today, such as water, and continuing to reduce our potential impact on the environment.”

This new stage of the company’s development, called Los Pelambres Futuro, also includes the contribution of the Los Pelambres Expansion project, which was 36% complete as at the end of June. A significant part of the work on the project was stopped as a result of COVID-19 and construction is now restarting in stages.

“We want to make minor adjustments to the design of the expansion project, which is already under construction, to facilitate the future expansion of the desalination plant,” Arriagada said. “In this way, there we will be less impact on the environment.”

It is estimated that the Operational Adaptation Investment (OAI) will be submitted to the SEIA in the first half of 2021. Its execution could begin in 2023, creating up to 2,000 jobs.

The OAI includes the expansion of the 400 litre/s desalination plant, currently being built in Punta Chungo, and the industrial quality desalinated water supply system, to 800 litres/s.

Mauricio Larraín, General Manager of MLP, said: “If our investment proposal is approved, in the coming years we could stop extracting water from the Choapa River and nearby wells, and more than 95% of the water used by Los Pelambres will either come from the sea or will be recirculated water.”

This plan could see MLP become the first mining company in the central zone of Chile to operate predominantly with seawater.

“The decision to use desalinated water is an idea that arose from dialogue with nearby communities and authorities and seemed to us to be the best way that we could contribute to easing the water scarcity challenges in this part of the country that affects us all,” Larraín said.

The company, which currently has environmental permits to extract water from the Choapa River until 2035, has worked for years with its neighbours and the authorities on the water management of the Choapa Valley. This work will continue in the future with the objective of promoting the sustainable use of the available water and strengthening the Rural Drinking Water systems for human consumption, the company said.

Lastly, the Environmental Impact Study will include some continuity and maintenance works for the tailings system. These works are already included in the Environmental Qualification Resolution (RCA) 38/2004 and consist of works on the north and south contour channels, repositioning pipes and other works.

Arriagada concluded: “This set of initiatives will require very significant investment in the province of Choapa over the next 10 years, close to $1 billion, and will also generate a significant number of jobs. It will also contribute towards helping the region and the country overcome the social and economic crisis generated by COVID-19 as soon as possible.”

Decipher and K2fly team up for new tailings storage facility platform

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Decipher, a Perth-based cloud monitoring platform for tailing storage facilities (TSFs), has partnered with K2fly, a global provider of technical assurance solutions for the resources industry, to evaluate an integrated monitoring and governance platform for tailings.

Tailing storage facility failures, in which there is an uncontrolled release of water, waste material or by-product, constitute a significant risk for industry, regulators and the environment. Industry best practice and legislation is requiring that an Independent Technical Review Board be assigned for each TSF to ensure proper governance and compliance, according to Decipher.

Decipher and K2Fly have come together to combine their complementary technology strengths to create a solution to help mining and resources companies in monitoring and governance of these risks, Decipher says.

Anthony Walker, Decipher Chief Executive Officer, said the resources industry is now looking for a solution that is cost effective, comprehensive and accessible.

“A recent report by KPMG identifies tailings management as one of the top 10 risks in 2020 to the global mining industry,” Walker said. “This is confirmation of the need for a timely solution which, together, Decipher and K2fly can provide.”

K2fly’s Chief Commercial Officer, Nic Pollock, said the proposed solution will ensure industry has access to a significantly better tool to aid monitoring and governance of TSFs to recognised standards.

“Our solution reflects best practice and will support compliance with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management recently endorsed by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), and other Global Tailings Review convenors, as well as standards set by national regulatory bodies,” Pollock said.

Decipher and K2fly have commenced discussions with several global miners about the proposed tailings management solution, which can also be deployed remotely during COVID-19.

There are an estimated 3,500 active TSFs globally, covering around 1 Mha of land, Decipher, a Wesfarmers company, said.

Lost Dutchman Mine ready to tell its metal separation tale

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A company out of Arizona, USA, believes it has come up with a density separation technology that could upgrade heavy metal concentrates without the need for water or chemicals.

Lost Dutchman Mine (LDM), named after the legend of a rich Arizona gold deposit discovered by an elusive Dutch prospector, never since located, is the company in question. Being supported along the way by the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) out of Sudbury, Ontario, the firm is looking to find a way into the mining sector at a time when environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns have reached a new high.

Mark Ogram, one of three Co-founders of LDM, explained the company’s aim and name, saying: “We’ve been able to find gold where people could not find it.

“We have now come up with a solution that requires no chemicals or water to purify a gold ore.”

While gold is the company’s initial focus, the process can be applied to most heavy metals including silver, copper and tungsten, according to Ogram. Some encouraging results have also been seen removing sulphides from gold ore ahead of further processing, in addition to ‘cleaning’ coal, he added.

A gravity separation process that uses air flow rather than water to separate these materials by density, the obvious comparisons are with Knelson concentrators or other separation technologies – all of which tend to use water or another medium for their processes. Ogram says Knelson concentrators are also for free gold, not refractory gold, the latter of which the LDM technology can cope with.

allmineral’s allair® technology also comes to mind as a comparison. This is a process that leverages many of the functions of the water-operated alljig® technology but, instead, uses air as the pulsating medium. So far, allair’s applications have been confined to mostly coal and other minerals.

Like many of these technologies, it is feed preparation that will prove decisive for the application of LDM technology, with ore crush size and moisture content the two key factors.

“We don’t think we would need ball mills to get the feed down to the right size,” LDM Co-founder Ken Abbott said. “A standard crushing and screening setup should be suitable.”

While test work to date has been with material in the 30-60 mesh range, Abbott is confident the technology will work with material from 100-200 mesh.

“It will be a little more of a sensitive process, but it does work should people require it,” he said.

When it comes to moisture content, a drying process will most likely be needed ahead of feeding to the LDM unit.

“The material needs to flow freely to work well,” Abbott said.

In-field test work involved the company using a tumble-type continuous screener/dryer to reach the appropriate moisture content, but a more ‘industrial’ process will be required in commercial applications.

The best results are likely to be achieved when both factors are consistent, according to LDM.

“The system requires a steady and uniform distribution in the feed cycle that includes surge capacity and automated material flow to ensure a steady feed rate,” the company says.

Dale A Shay, a consultant with RIMCON advising LDM, said vat leaching operations were already producing material at the appropriate size for the LDM technology to be tested. “They are also reducing the moisture content to an appropriate level,” he said.

Despite this, the company feels tailings applications may be the most suitable place to start with. This harks back to the ESG concerns miners are feeling – some of which revolves around tailings impoundment areas – as well as the fact the ‘conservative’ mining industry is generally more comfortable testing new technologies on material they already consider to be ‘waste’.

For the technology to prove out, the company will have to scale up its testing.

LDM has, to date, carried out benchtop, laboratory scale and in-field tests on low-grade material, but it has only reached a 1 ton (0.9 t) per hour rate.

“We would put in a tonne and get a few grams out,” Ogram said. “That is how we developed the technology.”

Despite there being a linear progression of recoveries from benchtop to lab to the field, LDM will need to go bigger to find the widescale applications it is after.

Yet, its potential entry into the market is well timed.

Removing the use of chemicals and water in a process that will most likely come after initial crushing could prove cost-effective, as well as environmentally sound.

Yes, the air flow component and feed drying will consume power on mine sites, but this ‘upfront’ operating cost will pay off further downstream as not as much material will be transported to make its way down the process flowsheet. It is more likely to go straight to tailings or backfill material feed.

Abbott explains: “The technology drastically reduces the material that will move onto final concentration, which substantially reduces material movement on site.”

For new developments, there is a knock-on benefit for permitting; the regulatory boxes are much more likely to be ticked when the words ‘water’ and ‘cyanide’ are absent from applications.

LDM Co-founder, Wayne Rod, sums this up: “Although from a cost perspective, it is expected to be competitive with other concentration technologies, the real savings will come on the ESG front and being able to reduce any environmental issues you may have.”

This is a message Rod and the rest of the LDM team are taking to the headquarters of major mining companies, where executives and board members are treating ESG challenges like a ‘cost’ they need to reduce to stay viable.

“As that ESG issue becomes even more prevalent, I see technology becoming a much bigger focus area,” Rod says. “Taking water and chemicals out of the concentration process will help alleviate some of that pressure.”

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.”

SRK leveraging real-time data to improve tailings dam safety

Automation, Communications in mining, Environmental, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining maintenance, Mining services, Mining software, Water management, , , ,

Renewed global concern about the risks of tailings dam failure is accelerating a revolution in the use of automated sensors to generate big, real-time data to better monitor and manage these facilities, according to SRK Consulting.

“The need for knowing more about tailings dam conditions – and in real time – has become a major focus within the mining sector, demanding a step change in the way we collect, process and interpret data,” Lyzandra Boshoff, Principal Engineering Geologist at SRK Consulting, said. “As part of these efforts, SRK has been rolling out initiatives using automated vibrating wire piezometers (VWPs) on tailings facilities.”

Boshoff highlighted the particular significance of seepage and the associated pore pressure regime within a tailings facility as a vital aspect of the integrity and stability of the structure. This has conventionally been tracked by manual standpipe piezometers whose performance, while accurate, depends on the quality of installation and aftercare, she said. And, of course, manual data collection is subject to human error.

“This means expending considerable effort for relatively little data, which may often not exactly reflect the current situation by the time the information reaches the engineer for analysis,” she said. “Even the automated sensors using vibrating wire technology tended to rely on manual data collection from the logging devices connected to the sensors.”

This is now changing as many telemetry hardware developers have improved their wireless capability and cloud technology to upload and store data, allowing data to be immediately accessed by engineers and management.

“This has changed the landscape of data flow and interpretation, as well as the potential size of the datasets that can be generated,” she said. “SRK has been at the forefront of rolling out automated VWP networks, using logging systems that can send data wirelessly to cloud-based databases and can then be visualised and analysed in real time.”

Among the technological innovations the company is developing is a customised database and visualisation platform specifically for VWP data. This includes built-in, automated validation and interpretive tools to automate some of the routine engineering interpretive work. It builds upon available software technologies to create a solution that is customised to the field of tailings dam management, while also presenting opportunities for applying the principles in a range of disciplines.

The datasets generated by VWP networks can be significantly large, depending on the frequency at which data is collected. Conditions on site would determine the detail required for tracking where potentially adverse circumstances may develop, the company said.

“These VWP networks are also useful when needing to confirm whether the mitigation measures in place are having the desired effect,” Boshoff said.

Applying these technologies, SRK says it has been able to review the impact of construction process and other site activities and incidents on pore pressure responses, and analyse the impact of depositional patterns on the seepage flow regime within a facility.

“For the first time, we can see and correlate in real time what we have always predicted using models and assumptions,” Boshoff said. “Harnessing the power of big data, we can now test our assumptions and substantially raise the confidence of our observations. With the exponential growth in the application of technology in this field, more data is being generated and is available to be harnessed and interpreted.”

The sheer quantity of data generated means that engineers must innovate, finding new and more efficient ways to validate, evaluate and interpret the large incoming datasets.

Boshoff notes, however, that harnessing the full power of big datasets demands the appropriate database structures and validation processes to be in place – which is where SRK is investing considerable effort.

“To support this need, we have recently put in place a data services department at SRK, pulling together some of our brightest minds and data analysts,” she said. “This is helping champion our initiatives to harness these growing datasets into sound engineering information – so they can contribute to making informed engineering decisions.”

Itronics’ Rock Kleen technology ready to clean up heap leach operations

Base metals, Environmental, Industrial minerals, Mineral processing, Mining services, Precious metals, Sustainable mining, Water management, , , , , , , ,

Itronics says test work on two separate precious metals closed heap leach materials pads has provided positive results in recovering metals and minerals using its proprietary “Zero Waste” technologies.

Rock Kleen Tailings Processing Technology neutralises the residual cyanide and removes nitrogen produced by blasting rocks in the mining process, making the materials available for use as industrial minerals, according to Itronics.

This means it offers potential value to miners through the recovery of precious and base metals, the removal of cyanide (from leaching) and nitrogen (from blasting), the potential to produce industrial minerals products from ‘waste’ rock, and the potential elimination or reduction of the capital costs associated with conventional tailings storage facilities.

Itronics said the test work at its metallurgical laboratory on two separate silver-rich closed heap leach materials pads had provided positive results in recovering precious metals, base metals and industrial minerals. The company said laboratory testing also indicated the technology would prove effective on copper heap leaches.

Whitney & Whitney, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Itronics, has designed flow sheets for two different heap leach waste materials processing operations, which recover gold, silver and various base metals based upon the processing test work completed by Itronics Metallurgical Inc.

“Mineralogical analysis has defined potential industrial mineral products for the two separate resources allowing for 100% of the available resources being converted to saleable products,” it said.

Rock Kleen tech neutralises the residual cyanide and removes nitrogen produced by blasting the rocks in the mining process, making the materials available for use as industrial minerals, according to Itronics. This is where the company’s GOLD’n GRO Multi-Nutrient fertilisers come into the equation, according to President, Dr John Whitney.

“Base metals recovered using Rock Kleen technology are perfect for use as raw materials in the Itronics GOLD’n GRO fertiliser manufacturing process,” he said. “Designing gold/silver heap leach mines using Rock Kleen, or Rock Kleen in conjunction with cyanide leaching, will ensure maximum heap leach recoveries while targeting 100% of the resource as profitable product.”

The company says Rock Kleen technology has the potential to turn lower grade gold/silver deposits into profitable operations.

“Conventional cyanide leaching may recover a high percentage of soluble gold and a portion of the silver, but all the remaining materials are left as a waste product,” the company says. “Rock Kleen recovers additional gold/silver and base metals, and then the remaining rock can be sized for commercial grades of industrial minerals for sale leaving zero waste from the mining enterprise.”

John Key, Vice President, Projects for Whitney & Whitney, said: “Pilot scale testing is very promising. Each deposit must be evaluated on a standalone basis but many existing operations and heap leach projects being designed now could potentially benefit greatly by including a design using Rock Kleen or including the Rock Kleen technology into their flowsheets in conjunction with cyanide leaching.”