Mining companies have a great opportunity to implement technology that has matured in the hands of other industries. This maturation is now providing mining with a chance to slash costs, which quick-footed companies are taking up.
Increasingly, technical personnel are confiding to Mining Weekly about success being achieved by mines making use of know-how that other sectors have already perfected.
Data science and the modern world’s ability to analyse to a far higher degree are presenting a surfeit of new possibilities, including extracting and processing with much more precision.
To bring about innovation, mines have become far more open about leaving innovation ownership in other hands, which has opened the way for modernisation with the help of a broad spectrum of solution providers, which are helping to take operations down the cost curve very materially.
There are disclosures of pilot plants being instant successes through the assembly of innovation already well proven in other sectors.
One of the successes involves putting an end to the excessive grinding of mineral particles and allowing for much larger particle sizes, which frees up plant capacity, cuts electricity use and takes water out of the equation. Dry-stacking, in turn, eliminates the need for tailings dams. In this way, margins are widened without the need to outlay capital.
Mining must stride into the twenty-first century. It has been an industry that has tended to sink a lot of capital plant and then become a technology prisoner of that capital investment.
The modern mining approach is to avoid spending billions to build one big plant, and rather to espouse smaller plants and bolt-on expansions that accommodate technological advances.
In this way, mines are ensuring that they are no longer financially shackled to the same technology for long periods of time.
For some time, there was great emphasis on automating mining and processing activity but, currently, short-term emphasis is on obtaining immediate returns without having to outlay capital.
An example of this is taking steps to pre-sort plant feed to ensure higher grade, which boosts output. For example, doubling a 4 g/t feed to an 8 g/t feed doubles output from an already capitalised plant.
At the point of extraction, every effort is being made to extract paying ore and leave nonpay material behind.
Mining research and development is moving away from the large, aggregated approach of the past towards an ultra-precise view that judges each part of the orebody on its merits. Only the mineral matters and as much waste as possible is left behind.
Intense thought is being given to bringing processing closer to the rockface until, ultimately, it results in in situ processing, which holds out the possibility of mining and processing being merged into a single pursuit.