COMMINUTION
Sustainable throughput
Metso’s Can Özer says there is an increasing
awareness across the industry of the importance
of instrumentation and control and the lost
opportunities that come with operating a
processing plant without them
and processing is conducted across industry in
future.”
Challenge Canada
Mining companies are continuing to demand uptime and
throughput increases from their comminution circuits, but
they are asking the OEMs that supply such equipment to
achieve these results with the use of less energy and
water. Dan Gleeson finds out how the technology
companies are facing this mandate
omminution is by far the largest
consumer of energy out of all the
processes within mining. It can account
for up to half of a mine’s operational costs, in
addition to around 3% of global electrical
consumption, according to the Coalition for
Energy Efficient Comminution (CEEC).
It is also a large consumer of water, with the
crushing and grinding processes requiring this
resource to effectively liberate and reduce the
size of the valuable minerals and metals mining
companies eventually sell.
With the Paris Agreement under the United
Nations Framework Convention Climate
Change’s 2020 starting point fast approaching,
companies everywhere are looking for ways to
reduce their carbon and hydrogen footprint.
It is hardly surprising, then, that a reduction
in energy and water use features high up the list
of priorities for mining companies and the
equipment and service providers they deal with.
Outotec, a supplier of process technologies
and services for metals and mining, attested to
this in its 2018 sustainability report: “In
technology development, we focus on
increasing resource efficiency – aiming to
reduce energy and water consumption,
emissions, effluents and waste.”
The company said last year 80% of its
research and development projects were related
to initiatives targeting sustainability
improvements.
Weir Minerals, too, highlighted this trend in
its recently-published 2018 annual results.
“Longer term, the division developed
C
customer-led technology roadmaps
concentrated on how it can help deliver the
mine of the future, with customers priorities
focused on increased efficiency, use of smart
technology and sustainability,” the company
said.
Alison Keogh, CEO of CEEC – a not for profit
organisation set up by the mining industry in
2011 to help improve efficiency, lower costs and
maximise net present value – told IM that the
mining industry is focused on productivity and
value to shareholders, but also a shift towards
more sustainable, productive mining processes.
“Comminution can be key to reducing a mine
site’s energy and emissions, and the
technologies employed also play a part in water
usage,” she said.
Prominent companies and organisations have
set some ambitious targets when it comes to
increasing the sustainability of their mining
operations and, therefore, comminution
processes.
According to Keogh, in 2017, the Canada
Mining Innovation Council announced a 10-year
industry target of 50% reduction in energy, 50%
reduction in water and 50% reduction in
mining’s footprint.
At a company level, Anglo American, in 2018,
announced its aim to improve energy efficiency,
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce
freshwater water withdrawal in water scarce
areas by 30% before 2030.
“This is not trivial,” Keogh said. “These
aspirations are driving changes at sites now,
and they will significantly change how mining
Keogh’s opinion has been acknowledged
globally, with the Canada Government recently
launching a competition called the Crush It!
Challenge! The contest is aimed at tackling the
disproportionate amount of energy used in
mining to extract valuable minerals, Natural
Resources Canada (NRC) said, while helping the
country transition to a low-carbon economy.
The process of crushing mined rock has not
fundamentally changed in more than a century,
according to the NRC. It reasoned now was the
time for a transformation.
“Finding and advancing innovative solutions
that reduce energy use for crushing and grinding
mined rock will reduce pollution, improve
productivity and help our mining industry
become more competitive,” the NRC said.
The 25-month challenge, spearheaded by the
federal government (Impact Canada), in
cooperation with NRC, the Centre for Excellence
in Mining Innovation, and Goldcorp, recently
saw 12 semi-finalists selected to pitch their
concept at Goldcorp’s #DisruptMining event.
A ‘Challenge Jury’ made up of key experts
from the Canadian mining sector will select the
top six finalists by May, who will each receive up
to C$800,000 ($596,047) to build and test their
cleantech solutions. The Challenge Jury will,
ultimately, choose the best breakthrough clean
technology and award the winner a C$5 million
prize grant.
“This initiative will mobilise new ideas from
inside and outside the mining industry to
modernise an important energy consuming
process and will grow the cleantech sector to
enhance Canada’s mining innovation ecosystem
as part of the Government of Canada’s efforts to
transition to a low-carbon economy,” the NRC
said.
The semi-finalists were:
n Erin Bobicki (University of Toronto)
‘Demonstration of Combined Microwave-
Assisted Comminution and Sorting for Energy
Reduction in Mineral Processing’;
n Hassine Bouafif (Industrial Waste Technology
Centre) ‘New Approach to Continuous
Comminution via High Pulse Power’;
n Georgi Doundarov (Magemi Mining) ‘High
Optical Power Laser for Mining to Replace
Drill and Blast and Crushing’;
n Cliff Edwards (Envisioning Labs) ‘Transcritical
CO 2 Pulverization’;
APRIL 2019 | International Mining 65