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Five technologies that will rock the mining world: exclusive HighGrade survey

28 Jul 2010

By Richard Roberts,  (Article from HighGrade.net, 28 July 2010)

CENTRALISATION, visualisation, simulation, optimisation, automation and communication are all words linked to technologies that industry leaders around the world believe can radically change mining in the decade ahead. Corporate “motivation”, they say, has been lacking in the past. That’s why two words have fundamentally changed that perspective now.

Rio Tinto.
Why does a single mining company, which a year ago was buried under the weight of the GFC, investor fury and $US40 billion of debt, deserve recognition as the fulcrum in the mining industry’s fast shifting technology debate?
It’s because the technological and cultural change manifest in its iron ore operations centre in Western Australia, the semi-automated shiploaders, trainloaders, and dump trucks in the Pilbara 1500km to the north of the centre, and the $A25 million investment in cutting edge research at the University of Sydney, among other initiatives, are all being driven from the top. Rio Tinto’s so-called ‘mine of the future’ signals a long-awaited strategic shift by an industry major.
A very public shift. And an increasingly believable, long-term shift.
The operations centre and the semi-automated machinery were “just the start of a revolution that is transforming the way we extract value from our resources, and will result in a far better, safer industry than could have been imagined even a decade ago”, said Rio Tinto Iron Ore managing director Sam Walsh when the company opened the Perth operations centre in June.
While there are some who’ve worked in the industry for many years, who’ve fought to remove what Rio Tinto Iron Ore general manager resource development Gerard Danckert this week described at a Perth mining conference as the industry’s “chains of convention”, who still see Rio’s initiative as another mirage, many others appreciate the symbolism.
“Sam Walsh said Rio have not wavered in their commitment to the mine of the future,” said Olga Sawtell, chief executive of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics and Rio Tinto-sponsored Centre for Mine Automation in Sydney.
“Two-and-a-half years ago we, the centre that I oversee, were contracted by Rio to deliver the mine of the future. We’re not the sole participant in this mine of the future, but we’re the gatekeepers. There are lots of people involved. It’s a huge project ... the idea of a fully autonomous mine.
“They truly have not wavered in their commitment, notwithstanding the GFC, the [Australian mining] tax debate, etc. Every time something like that comes up I shiver because I’ve got all these PhDs, and researchers and technicians specifically employed for Rio. It’s a huge endeavour and certainly in no way have Rio resiled from that. They’ve embraced it. And in fact we’re negotiating the extension of that mine of the future contract.”
Visualisation, simulation, optimisation, automation and communication technologies are set to rock the mining world in the next 10 years.
Not just because the technology is there, it’s improving all the time and mining’s path forward has been well and truly lit by innovators in other industries, but because the mining sector finally has a corporate ‘champion’ pushing the technology barrow.
A landmark HighGrade survey of more than 160 mining industry leaders, conducted over the past month, asked them to nominate the technologies they expect to have the biggest impact on the industry up to 2020. The survey evoked a substantial response from the CEOs and other senior figures at mining, contracting, consulting, engineering and equipment manufacturing companies, and leading research and development organisations, in Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, USA, Canada and Sweden.
Exploration, mining, mineral processing, transport, power and training technologies were tabled – among more than 400 individual nominations – but technologies expected to impact the profits, performance  and safety of mines were dominant. Large-scale, long-life surface and underground mines were a particular focus.
The top five technologies expected to rock the mining world this decade are:
•   1. Advanced software and hardware that allows integrated real-time visualisation, simulation and planning, true real-time monitoring, analysis and production management, and cost tracking – the tools to turn data into value-driving information and decision making.
•   2. Technologies facilitating total communication connectivity in underground and surface mines, and between all components of the production chain.
•   3. The electronic brains, eyes and other sensors of ‘smart’ mobile mining/production machines (semi-autonomous and autonomous machines).
•   4. Remote and tele-remote control technologies.
•   5. New continuous mining and material movement equipment and systems for rapid mine development and production.
 
Centralised planning, dynamic scheduling and real-time operations management is seen as the inevitable result of integrating most if not all of the above technologies.
“We now have the technologies to use simulation to assess a range of scenarios of what is in the ground, run a range of auto-generated designs, use simulation engines to assess any number of economic and physical parameters and create multiple production schedules/scenarios,” said Craig Morley, chief executive of global mining consulting and technology firm Snowden.
“Currently during feasibility studies or planning cycles analysis can provide companies with risk profiles and a range of options from which they can choose the best one for their particular financial requirements.
“What is really exciting is that as these systems and technologies improve it is likely that this kind of sophisticated analysis will jump across into the production environment as well. There are some tools dancing on the edge of this vision now. However, it is possible to imagine an interactive model that takes account of all resource, mining and processing assumptions that is being updated in real time during mining and processing activities and that is being used by ‘analysts’ to assess the impact of events that may happen – like changes in the weather, commodity price variations, maintenance shut downs, or simply that the company needs to react to consumer specifications.
“Marry this with efficient remote mining capabilities and you have a powerful command and control environment.
“I see this as having a significant impact on R&D direction and a high degree of company adoption over the next 10 years.”
Exploration and mineral processing technologies also showed up strongly in the survey, without making the top five.
Rising energy and power costs, and water scarcity and costs, and general materials availability and escalating cost all have a major bearing on the construction and operation of mineral processing facilities and these factors are also seen as big drivers of technology development and adoption in the industry generally. Clearly, though, survey respondents see the next decade as one in which the mining part of the business must catch up with mineral processing. The latter has been well out in front of mining in the technology stakes for at least 20 years.
High-pressure grinding roll mills (which helped transform the economics of the $A3 billion Boddington gold-copper mine in Western Australia), gravity and electro-magnetics, preconcentration of ore at or near mine operating faces, and insitu leaching and processing are all seen as having potential to significantly impact energy use, mineral separation efficiency, waste reduction, costs and safety, up to 2020.
CSIRO veteran mining technologist Jock Cunningham said there was no clear explanation as to why mining and mineral processing had become such contrasting arenas of technology investment and deployment. But separated they were.
“There is a tendency for mining companies to use what they traditionally know and see an extra system as an add-on to their production,” he said. “It’s quite different in mineral processing where technology systems are used to the fullest extent where they can be.”
Warren Hallam, managing director of Metals X, said: “There was a time when plant automation of processing plants significantly reduced the number of employees to control a plant, not just operators but maintenance and management as the focus is not just on operating and controlling but on equipment protection and safety. It is now the norm. I doubt that any refinery could even operate without automation now. There is no reason why with current technology with lasers and GPS, etc, that numerous [mining] tasks can’t be automated and controlled from anywhere.
“Innovation is only limited by imagination and the willingness to address each issue as it arises as the technology is available. Of course the development and rate of development is dependent on the capital spend.”
Again though it’s the extension of technology into inherently hostile mining and mineral processing environments, via communication and information systems, that is seen as perhaps being a defining feature of the decade ahead.
“Real-time monitoring of the status of mining and mineral processing operations on a large scale will provide very significant opportunities to improve efficiencies across the industry,” said Scanalyse CEO Peter Clarke.
“The Rio Tinto remote operations centre is an early example of the benefits of close monitoring of the entire process, being alerted to aberrations and reacting in a timely manner to any interruptions.”
Similarly, the information age continues to rapidly change the exploration game. Already computing power and better software is helping companies to double and triple economic mineral resources without additional drilling. It’s not just due to revised commodity prices and cut-off grades.
The CEO of an Australian gold mining company said geological modelling software in the hands of an experienced consultant had taken more than 200 years of data in an established mining area and then in a period of just five weeks “turn out the most amazing targeting exercise that I have ever seen”.
“We have drilled about eight holes into the targets so far and have had free gold in every hole.”
And yet many experts believe the industry is still scratching the proverbial surface of modern computing resources.
“Mining is the largest industry not to benefit from high performance computing. There is capacity and opportunities that could be turned on now in simulation, optimisation, forecasting and design,” said David Beck, principal of Beck Arndt Engineering.
“Over this decade we will see methods that will allow sub-blocked block models – multi-resolution block models – to be generated directly from drill-hole data without the need to rely on perfectly formed wireframes,” said Jun Cowan, principal of Prestologic. “This completely eliminates the process of wireframe validation, which can take up a substantial proportion [up to 30%] of the modelling workflow.
“There is already the capability for accurate geological modelling without digitisation ... which for mining and exploration companies who have used this software [is] now cutting down the modelling workflow from months to days.
“In some of the research that I am involved in, there is indication that the effects of these technologies will cut down the workflow by an order of magnitude or more. So if a modelling workflow now takes 40 days, the new workflow will accomplish better results in four days or less. It could well be as short as 24 hours with expected improvements in computer hardware over the next 10 years.”
Cowan said there was also plenty of scope to change the way resource estimation was conducted. If technical limitations were eliminated, methods could be introduced to accelerate the estimation process, potentially cutting down the workflow from weeks to days.
“It is certain that the impact of these improvements will be far reaching, because this is a change that affects the treatment of the basic sample data that mine operations obtain: the drill-hole data. I am not in a position to make predictions on what improvements will have see the processes of mining as a result of this change, but in the world of geological modelling I doubt very much that in 10 years time geologists will still be hand digitising geological models on a computer screen and validating wireframes. The good old days of hand digitising with GMPs will be a distant memory for most geologists by 2020.”
Mark Warren, managing director of Optiro, said on the mine design, and mine planning and scheduling side, new tools that deployed advanced mathematics and greater computing power were able to simulate and optimise systems from pit to port in greater detail than before and “make decisions around new heuristics”.
“At the mine we are already seeing research and limited scale adoption of solutions that have the potential to analyse data on a scale never done before enabling more precise decisions on scheduling to be made as well as optimising the tonnes/ounces extracted from the resource.”
“There has been a lack of information transfer from exploration technologies into mining,” said Dr Phil Dight, Winthrop professor of geotechnical engineering, Australian Centre for Geomechanics.
“One particular area has been the adoption of techniques like hyperspectral imaging which could have a profound impact on companies mining in saprolites and being able to recognise areas more prone to failure much earlier in the mining cycle.”
Meanwhile, the retired executive general manager of exploration at Newcrest Mining, Dan Wood, had this perspective on technology.
“Technological advances in mineral exploration have, in the past, not been the panacea that many in the industry had hoped they would be, although a number of very useful geophysical and geochemical applications were developed which greatly assisted the discovery process and in some instances led directly to the discovery of an orebody,” he said in The Australian Geologist in June this year.
“Invariably mineral resource discoveries have come about because of talented geologists and company managements which encouraged informed risk-taking and were willing to persist where others might have given up on the chase.
“While technology will definitely take us to the next level our biggest challenge seems to be not with the technology, but having those in the industry with the experience to define, develop and use it.”
And that, as is shown elsewhere in this week’s edition of HighGrade, is a whole other story.