HIGH PROFILE
of these sorting processes, the better it is for
recoveries.
Being able to remove an orebody above the
cut-off grade alongside waste tonnages and
upgrade the latter has led to an effective lift in
head grade. It has been enabled by new sensing
technology with a particular type of neutron sensor.
What we have seen in early results has
surprised us on the upside. We thought we would
see a 5% uplift in head grade, but in fact we have
seen about 20% – to qualify that, it’s in its early
stages.
If you take this to its logical conclusion, you
can see the day coming where you would cut the
rock – no drilling and blasting – immediately sort
the rock behind the machine cutting it and
distribute said rock efficiently into its value in use;
you don’t have stockpiles, you have plants
sensing the material right through and adapting
in real time to the change in mineralogy. I think
there is another 3-4% increase in recovery in that
whole process when we get it right.
Our sweet spot when we created FutureSmart
Mining was always the orebody and processing
plants, more so than automation (although that is
part of the potential mix). That was different to a
lot of the other players in the industry. This focus
could lead to the development of different types
of plants; ones that are flexible, more modular
and you can plug and play.
IM: How have Anglo’s Open Forums played into
these developments?
TO: We have held eight Open Forums on
sustainability, processing, mining, exploration
(two), future of work, energy and maintenance.
Out of those eight, I think we have got around
10,000 ideas from them. These forums have been
specifically designed where only about a third of
participants are from the mining industry, with the
other two thirds coming from the best and
brightest analogous industries we can tap into –
automobile, oil & gas, food, construction, even
Formula 1 racing and NASA.
The reality is that out of those 10,000 ideas, the
success rate is about 1:1,000, but the one that
makes it is quite often a game changer.
IM: Going back to the bulk sorters, am I right in
thinking you plan to put these into Mogalakwena
and Barro Alto too?
TO: The aim is to have them across our business.
At El Soldado, the copper angle is very important.
The technology – the sensing and using the data –
is probably a touch more advanced in copper, but
we are building one currently in our PGMs
business at Mogalakwena and a bit behind that,
but ready to be built, is one in nickel, yes.
In terms of our program, you will see them
spread across our business in the next, hopefully,
18 months.
IM: Where does your approach to advanced
process control (APC) fit into the FutureSmart
Mining platform?
TO: We want to have APC in some form across all
our business by the end of this year. We have
probably come from a little behind some of the
other players in the industry, but we’re pushing it
quite aggressively to give us the platform for data
analytics. The upside we have seen just by putting
the process control in so far has surprised me a
bit – in a good way; power reductions,
throughput, having this different level of control.
All of it has been pleasing.
We spent about 12 months looking at the
whole data analytics space to see how we were
going to implement our solution. If you look
around at the sector, everyone wants to be
involved and profit share. If you add it all up, you
could end up with not a lot of profitable pieces at
the end. We have strategically chosen the pieces
we think are important to us and our profit pool
and have been happy to be a little looser on some
of the non-core areas.
The other key plank to the APC is that we own
the data. The reality is, in the new world, data is
like a new orebody and we’re not willing to let go
of that.
IM: Your Smart Energy project involving a haul
truck powered on hydrogen has certainly caught
the attention of the market: how did you come up
with this innovation?
TO: Initially, we couldn’t make renewables work
from an investment criteria perspective – it was
always close, but never quite there. Donovan’s
team then took an approach where they said,
‘forget the normal investment criteria. All we want
to do is, make the business case wash its face.’ In
doing so, it enabled them to oversize a renewable
or photovoltaic energy source – the power plant –
using that extra power to produce hydrogen and
putting that hydrogen to use in the haulage fleet.
Re-engineering the haulage fleet gave us the
business outcomes we were looking for.
DW: These business cases bring you to temporary
barriers. When you hit that temporary barrier,
people normally stop, but what we said was, ‘OK,
just assume it is not there and go forward.’ That
brought the whole business case back again by
looking at it differently again.
IM: Where is this project likely to be situated
within the group?
TO: We’re still not 100% fixed as the initial work
will be done here (the UK). You are talking
about quite specialist skills working with
hydrogen.
When the system has gone past its initial
testing, it will go to a site, probably in South
Africa, but we are not 100% locked into that at
this point.
IM: On the 12-month timeline you have given,
when would you have to be on site?
TO: The infrastructure will be pre-built here in the
UK. We’re effectively testing it here. In a way, the
physical truck is the easy bit.
It’s going to be using a 300-t class truck. The
guys have already done quite a bit of the detailed
measuring and the design elements are well
under way.
IM: On mechanised cutting, you recently
mentioned the building of a “production-sized
machine” for at least one of your mines in South
Africa. Is this a variant of the Epiroc machine – the
Rapid Mine Development System – you have been
using at Twickenham?
TO: It’s the next generation of machines. It’s fair to
say that, in the last 12 months, the technology has
come to the point where we are confident it is viable.
What we’re looking for is a fundamental
breakthrough where, for example, we can take the
development rates up three or four times from
what you would usually expect. That is what we’re
chasing. It would involve some sort of pre-
conditioning of the rock ahead of the cutting, but
the cutting, itself, works.
For us, mechanised cutting is a real solution to
some of the safety issues we have had on our plate.
Regardless of whether it goes into South Africa or
another underground mine, we see it as a key part
of our future underground design and operation.
IM: Where does haul truck automation fit into the
pipeline for Anglo American?
TO: All the equipment we buy, going forward, will
be autonomous-capable, which means we can run
it in either format (manned or unmanned). You are
then left with a number of decisions – have you
got the design to retrofit automation? Is there a
safety issue to be considered? Is there a weather
issue to contend with? There are a whole series of
gates that we’ll take it (automation projects)
through.
It’s good to go back to P101 here. Where P100 is
getting all of our key processes to world-class
benchmarks, P101 is about establishing a new
benchmark. By definition, if you get your
operations to that point, the gap between that
manned performance and autonomous
performance is not that great.
Autonomy is part of our future armoury, but
when and where and how, we’ll have to wait and
see. For example, we are currently looking at the
option of autonomous haulage trucks at one of
our open-cut mines in Queensland.
When you look at our portfolio of operations,
it’s often a more complex environment than when
you are just working in the wide open Pilbara. IM
This is a shortened version of a longer interview
run on www.im-mining.com
JULY 2019 | International Mining 9