The Case: AllScan | Nickel Ore, Stockpile and Mining Management.
The Challenge.
Our customer operates a screening plant that upgrades mined ore before being stored on stockpiles, prior to further processing. Management of the screening plant operations were undertaken based on the results of samples taken of the in-feed material, however the lag on waiting for analytical results from these samples made making meaningful real time decisions impossible. This limited their ability to maximize the upgrade of the ore or control the levels of deleterious components.
The Purpose.
By determining the levels of Ni, Fe, SiO2, MgO and other elements in the mined ore the customer was provided with real-time oversight of the in feed to the ore upgrading process. This meant they could make decisions about in pit operations and screening operations to control and maximize the grade of stockpiled material.
The Discovery.
RTI’s first step was to understand our customer’s specific challenges. From there we adjusted the calibrated result of the Allscan to report material parameters defined by the client as best being suited to inform their decision-making process such as the SiO2/Mg, Fe/Ni and Ni/Co ratios. RTI worked with the customer to validate the analyser performance of the Allscan to allow process control decisions to be made based on the generated results with confidence.
The Result.
By tailoring an integrated solution using the AllScan, our customer was able monitor their feed material from the mining operations. The ability to control the ore upgrade process in real time allowed for a 50% increase in the grade of the product at the infeed to the furnace. This combined with ability to greatly reduce the variation in deleterious competent has had a positive impact on both power consumption costs and CO2 emissions.
Other Potential Commodity Applications.
This technology has application in the context of ore upgrading and stockpiling, where material composition is a critical factor, across the full spectrum of mineral and ore mining and processing.