Selection of Cell Operating Conditions to Optimise Performance of Flotation Circuits with Large Cells

• Maximizing value from ores is the key focus of Ore2Metal Inc. Every stakeholder in any mining company, is likely to have a different definition of value addition, which could range from wealth creation, employment, economic growth, caring for the local environment and various societal needs.
• Irrespective of the goals of different stakeholders, maximizing revenue generation from an ore body is essential before any other benefits can kick-in. This is where technology and domain knowledge play a vital role.
• To maximize revenue from a mining operation, recovery is one of the key drivers whether it’s for precious metals, base metals & energy metals along with various non-metallic minerals like silica sand and carbonates from tailings.
• The challenge, however, is that this source of revenue is constantly under threat due to various challenges such as increasing ore complexity, high ore variability, operational inefficiencies and lack of technical know-how. Also, environmental regulations, shortage of water, water quality along with high cost of energy and consumables put additional constraints on operational costs and recovery.
• It is therefore imperative for any company to be proactive in addressing these challenges to ensure the company’s performance is not impacted. There are three interventions that are necessary viz. domain expertise, digital know-how and sustainability, to ensure the value addition from complex ores is maximized through leveraging state-of-the-art technologies.
• Technologies have advanced to an extent that the minerals and metals lost in the tailings, after processing, can now be recovered economically. This, however, requires tremendous insight and know-how of diagnostic mineralogy along with innovative processing routes to improve and maximize recovery. Metals such as iron in pyrite, that are conventionally discarded to flotation tailings or stored as jarosite residues, could now be recovered thus alleviating many of the ongoing environment concerns across the globe. It is important to note that this also allows recovery of many precious and minor metals presently lost in various waste streams in milling and smelting operations.
• The aim of Ore2Metal Inc. is to assist mining companies in their value addition drive focusing on recovery of precious metals, base metals and energy metals from ores to enhance their profitability and sustainability.

A value chain approach is always the best for maximizing overall metal values from an operation. Often targeting localized value addition such as focusing on only Mill recoveries results in solutions that are hard to sustain in the long run. For example, one may optimize the grind target or reagent scheme to improve flotation recovery of a certain ore type, but the gains could easily dry up if variability in ore type, mineralogy or mining ore dilution start to play a key role, and this happens quite frequently in many mining operations. Ore2Metal Inc. focuses on integrating domain expertise in geometallurgy, mine ore fragmentation, comminution, flotation and extractive metallurgy to develop robust and sustaining solutions. This may involve some detailed investigation, but the outcomes always overwhelm the additional work involved. With Ore2Metal’s extensive experience, the timelines typically involved in these investigations are quick, high quality and cost effective.

Though digital in only an enabler, but it has a powerful impact when coupled with the right domain expertise. The digital era is upon us and it is imperative that we leverage digital whether it’s sensors technologies to measure operational parameters or data analytics or modelling of our unit operations along with the value chain from mining ore to metal production. Predictive capability along with artificial intelligence is becoming important whether we gear ourselves to optimize operations or to predict failures or breakdowns from an asset optimization point of view.
Digital way of working in mining operations is already leading to significant improvements in production efficiency and effectiveness. This is resulting in new operational models where the integrated planning, real time monitoring, control, data analytics and improvement roles are carried out virtually from anywhere in the world. Site based roles are only limited to certain operational tasks and preventive maintenance activities, now even these activities are increasingly being automated.
Minimizing manual interventions and man-machine interactions in operations through digitalization is key to driving safety, productivity and reliability. Maximizing value from ores is only possible when the principles of digitalization are blended with domain expertise. This is an area where Ore2Metal Inc. provides unique expertise to the mining industry.