Abstract:
The mining industry is well accustomed to taking the risks inherent in investing capital an orebody we can neither see or touch. Despite this, we, as an industry have often shied away from spending the upfront capital required to adequately de-risk a project. This has led to a recent history of start-ups which have failed to achieve their design capacity, and which require significant additional capital reinvestment early in their life. Diligent front end engineering, testing and design work is the best and lowest cost way to address these problems. In these underperforming projects, capital equipment was selected without sufficient information to design with confidence. Of critical import is an understanding of the geometallurgical units in the ore body, and their relative expected grinding and metallurgical performance in the selected circuits. Relevant to this, there now exists an advanced, integrated toolbox that has been under development for the past 25 years. This toolbox, if correctly used de-risks projects.
This presentation is intended to address the value which can be gained (or losses which can be avoided) through robust engineering. It will include a discussion of the evolution of industry best practices in design, for comminution and metallurgical recovery plants, corporate structure, and expectation differences for junior and senior mining companies, as observed during a 55 year career by John Starkey in mining and process engineering. Common mistakes and myths at the project engineering stage will be addressed with a focus on autogenous and semi-autogenous grinding, flotation, gold leaching, and iron ore metallurgical recovery circuit designs. Ultimately this presentation is intended to inform engineers, executives and investors about modern project engineering services available in the mining industry, and how mining companies can derive maximum value from their projects through careful front end engineering practices.
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