COMMINUTION AND CRUSHING
“ It ’ s a real eye-opener for the industry .” Lundquist , like Boylston , highlighted the elimination or mitigation of grinding media use as another key HPGR selling point .
“ Grinding media consumes a high embodied energy , which , when eliminated , brings even higher energy savings per tonne of ore processed ,” he said . “ The operating costs of grinding media are massive , especially when looking at rod mill circuits . It ’ s something that as an industry , we need to focus more on .
“ Creating grinding media to destroy it seems nonsensical .”
Furthermore , without water or grinding media , the use of Enduron HPGRs can lead to higher mineral recoveries from the increased stability and controllability they offer , according to Lundquist .
The latter advantages are aided by Weir Minerals ’ Synertrex ® , an intelligent data platform that uses network connectivity to capture and contextualise equipment data and relay it to service centres , service technicians , its customers and Weir Minerals ’ design centres for condition monitoring , driving predictive maintenance .
Seen by many greenfield projects as a “ must have ”, Lundquist sees more brownfield operations taking advantage of the use of Synertrex following a period of COVID-19-related site access restrictions .
Weir Minerals states it is number one in HPGRs in mining , yet Lundquist says clients continue to pit the technology against new or innovative technologies in the engineering stages .
“ It is important to balance proven performance and development to ensure the clients trust the HPGR to perform 24 hours a day , seven days a week , 365 days of the year ; while ensuring they don ’ t miss out on ‘ what ’ s next ’,” he explained .
One recent project Weir Minerals was involved in had to strike this balance , with the client wanting to make sure the Enduron HPGR it was buying would work and had proven performance but would not preclude it from the exponential gains that could come with applying new technology that was yet to be proven on a large scale .
“ As an example , we have never had a premature bearing failure on an HPGR with our oil-lubricated cyclindrical bearing arrangement over 20 years ,” Lundquist said . “ With performance like that : why would we change
something that works and has worked for a long period of time ? That said , this patented design allows us to increase our tyre width and , in terms of a development push , improve our design without actually impacting performance and reliability .”
The company has been able to reduce the edge effect on its HPGRs by over 50 % compared with other competitor products and increase its centre crush zone thanks to this design , according to Lundquist .
“ This allows more material to be subjected to higher pressure , offering maximum material reduction in the targeted size zone and , following that , the lowest possible recirculating load .”
The latter benefit provides advantages on the material handling side for conveyors , ore bins and screening area requirements .
“ And , since our design eliminates bearing failures , we ’ re able to utilise the benefits of skewing without the negative consequences ,” Lundquist said . “ By applying even pressure across the face of the tyre on a segregated feed , we ensure a much more even wear profile , which maximises size reduction and lowers tyre lifetime cost and total footprint .”
Automated , adaptive fragmentation monitoring at the crusher
Orica , last month , added to its portfolio of automated post-blast fragmentation monitoring solutions with FRAGTrack™ Crusher , a product that enables customers to measure material on the truck ahead of crushing .
This solution , designed to meet growing demand from customers for downstream monitoring and optimisation solutions at every stage of the mining value chain , leverages the latest deep neural network artificial intelligence ( AI ) framework along with “ industry-proven ” hybrid 2D and 3D particle size distribution ( PSD ) processing methods to deliver a fully autonomous adaptive fragmentation monitoring solution at the crusher dump pocket .
FRAGTrack Crusher provides truck-by-truck PSD analysis of rock fragments during the dumping operation with unmatched accuracy and without impacting operations or productivity , according to the company .
The technology delivers constant performance tracking for both the drill and blast operations and the downstream processing functions , driving continuous improvements end-to-end in the mining value chain . When bundled with Orica ’ s FRAGTrack Conveyor technology – which delivers accurate and reliable fragmentation measurements on conveyors – in a fragmentation monitoring solution , it enables further analysis of the crusher ’ s performance and the impact of blasting parameters in a production workflow in real time , according to Orica .
Orica Vice President – Digital Solutions , Raj Mathiravedu , said : “ The full adoption of AI technology into our architecture , coupled with our strategic partnership with Microsoft , allows us to expedite the delivery of capabilities that were not previously possible , and FRAGTrack Crusher is an example of how we leverage AI to help deliver intelligence and value to our customers .”
It is also another example of the company ’ s open architecture , where PSD data is seamlessly integrated into the existing site operation workflows via a real-time application programming interface and industrial open platform communication unified architecture protocol to drill and blast software and crusher distributed control systems .
FRAGTrack Crusher has already been gaining traction globally in the mining and quarry markets , where it is being used as a critical enabler of blasting optimisation and mine-to-mill initiatives , according to the company .
“ This signals a significant transformation from the subjective nature of existing manual PSD analysis methods while eliminating the safety concerns of on-bench photography and the extensive time required to manually process and correlate to relevant data sets , including fleet management data to determine the material ’ s blast of origin ,” the company said .
In the most recent application of FRAGTrack Crusher in a Tier One lowcost gold operation in Western Australia , it successfully delivered an automated blasting optimisation workflow on site , leveraging PSD as a primary key performance indicator to throughput and overall mill performance .
The project included installation of a FRAGTrack Conveyor system , post crusher , allowing pre- and post-crusher PSD to be monitored . When combined with a fragmentation improvement process , the FRAGTrack solution enabled a continuous feedback loop that enabled the operation to rapidly optimise blast designs that FRAGTrack Crusher provides truck-by-truck PSD drive overall analysis of rock fragments during the dumping operation with unmatched accuracy and without project profitability , impacting operations or productivity , according to according to Orica . Orica
30 International Mining | APRIL 2022