ORAL

SESSION: MineralMonAM-R5	Lotter International Symposium on Sustainable Mineral Processing (4th Intl. Symp. on Sustainable Mineral Processing: Principles, Technologies and Industrial Practice)
Mon Oct, 23 2017	Room: Peninsula 2
Session Chairs: Andrew Menzies; Shaun Graham; Session Monitor: TBA

12:00: [MineralMonAM03] Invited
Automated Mineralogy: The Past, Present and Future
Shaun Graham¹ ; ¹Carl Zeiss, Cambridge, United Kingdom (Great Britain);
Paper Id: 310 [Abstract]

Automated Mineralogy, and specifically the SEM-EDS-AM solutions available, have played vital roles in the development and application of modern process mineralogy. Since the initial development and introduction into the market, these technologies have contributed to optimizing mineral processing plants around the world. Despite their success and undisputed value, until recently the development of these solutions, in terms of the solutions methodology and analytical capabilities, has been limited. This talk aims to introduce and outline the history of these solutions with the view to providing an insight into the current state of play and new capabilities of the solutions within automated mineralogy. This will include modern trends and case studies that show these solutions are moving towards mine sites that utilize these newly ruggedized and deployable automated mineralogy solutions to adopt an operational mineralogy approach. This will act as the background, and as an introduction, to what future developments we can expect to see in automated mineralogy, and how these developments will be critical in providing reliable and routine on-site mineralogical analysis that will be required as mines of the future looks to adopt a Mining 4.0 capability. In addition, technological developments such as the use of machine learning and widening the analytical capability with 3D data and wider analytical instrumentation. These topics will be used to outline the future roadmap of AM and how these solutions will become strategically more valuable for 4.0 mining operations.

SESSION: MineralMonAM-R5	Lotter International Symposium on Sustainable Mineral Processing (4th Intl. Symp. on Sustainable Mineral Processing: Principles, Technologies and Industrial Practice)
Mon Oct, 23 2017	Room: Peninsula 2
Session Chairs: Andrew Menzies; Shaun Graham; Session Monitor: TBA

16:00: [MineralMonAM08] Invited
The Application of Recent Advances in Automated Mineralogy to Address Problems in Mineral Processing Flowsheet Optimization
Benjamin Tordoff¹ ; Shaun Graham² ; ¹Zeiss, Cambridge, United Kingdom (Great Britain); ²Carl Zeiss, Cambridge, United Kingdom (Great Britain);
Paper Id: 99 [Abstract]

Chemical assays have long been the benchmark technique to value prospects and mines from early stage exploration all the way through to metallurgical accounting. However, while the mines are looking at extracting metals, it is the minerals that dictate where the metals are located. This can also be extended to deleterious elements and problematic minerals for the processing circuit. Minerals, not elements, control processing behavior, therefore early and appropriate characterization in the mining lifecycle will add significant value to an operation. The potential for process mineralogy to play a major role in process improvement is well recognized but has historically been limited in its practical application due to issues including expense, long turn-around time and data complexity. Recent technological advances have started to change this, making such information accessible and usable by minerals engineers in the field or on site. Automated Mineralogy (AM) is one of the primary tools used in such work, and ZEISS MinSCAN is the first truly ruggedized system that can be deployed on site. Based on technology used by the military in field operations, the instrument is designed to operate in environments not typically associated with such tools and can provide data such as bulk mineralogy, element assay and deportment, liberation, and association rapidly and easily. Mine sites can now produce data, almost real time, to monitor the plant performance. There is also a growing demand to implement this solution at an earlier prefeasibility stage, to feed into geometallurigcal modeling to reduce risk in earlier prediction and decision. This data offers a common language and dataset that can be used by all stakeholders in the mine development from exploration geologists through to metallurgists. This paper outlines the technological innovations of the AM solutions, the ruggedized developments and how they can be successfully employed to mine site operations.