News

Water – An Exhaustible Resource

In 2005, Amira’s P902 project reported:

“Mines are substantial water users, mostly in the plant, but water can no longer be considered the ‘free’ and inexhaustible resource that minerals engineers have been able to rely on in the past. Many ore deposits exist in arid areas, and others are worked in areas in which there is severe competition for water from agriculture, other industries, and local populations. Water supplies for mining will be increasingly compromised in the future, reducing availability and increasing cost. There is also a need to meet more demanding regulatory standards in the quality of the process water that is disposed of to the environment. These pressures are leading to an increasing emphasis on saving water in mineral processing operations, including its more efficient re-cycling.

A decade later BHP installed its second desalination plant at Escondida. At an estimated cost of US$3.4B per desalination plant, this challenges has cost in the region of nearly US$7B, without addressing the cost and environmental footprint of trucking water from the the coast to the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. This represents one mine in our industry. How quickly will the cost of managing access to water multiply when we consider other operations in arid regions across the world?

Is there another way? How effective are the alternatives? What challenges need to be overcome from a technical, scalable, and economic perspective? How does Dry Processing stack up?

Advantages of Dry Processing

Dry processing would have a number of advantages:

• No tailings effluent to be disposed of, reducing disposal costs and demands, and limiting environmental impact.
• No dewatering processes are necessary (e.g. thickeners, filters, driers).
• Operating costs may be cheaper due to reduced need for pumping, chemicals etc.
• Plant footprint may be smaller, and capital cost lower.
• Processes may be more energy efficient.
• Bulk product freight costs would be reduced, with zero or low product.
• Some dry processes may be more efficient in terms of value recovery grade, though this would depend on the process and commodity.

Amira P902 “Dry Processing of Minerals”

The Amira P902 “Dry Processing of Minerals” project looked at setting the foundations for developing radical solution to dry processing from both the technological, economic, and policy perspectives.

Researchers

The four research groups involved in the production of the report, and the areas in which they contributed were:

• The Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), a CSRP participant, contributed a chapter reviewing dry processing techniques and applications. The JKMRC was also responsible for overall coordination of the project and production of the final report.
• CSIRO Division of Minerals, a CSRP participant, contributed a chapter reviewing ore sensing technologies.
• RWTH Aachen University, Germany, contributed two chapters: a review of the status quo of dry coal processing, and a review of sorting technologies.
• The Mining and Minerals Centre at the University of Nottingham, England, contributed a chapter on dust management in the dry processing of minerals.

The Amira P902 Dry Processing of Minerals Report

This team provided a comprehensive 287 page report that brought together the world’s understanding of:

1. A review of sensing technologies for ore sorting, including Nuclear methods; X-ray methods; Photometric methods; Electrical methods; Magnetic methods; Microwave methods; Sorting processes; Air separation processes; Operational sorting processes
2. A review of sorting in non-mineral industries
3. A review of patents relating to dry ore processing
4. A review of suppliers of sorting and dry processing equipment
5. A review of the status quo and performance of dry coal processing
6. A comprehensive review of sorting technologies
7. Investigation into supplier capabilities and a market analysis
8. Investigation into industrial applications
9. Dust management in dry Processing, including a review of regulation and legislations across the globe
10. Mineral processing operations across coal, iron ore, mineral sands, and non-ferrous metals and construction and industrial minerals
11. Evaluation of dust issues in other industries
12. A suite of conclusions and recommendations

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Next Step: Amira P902A Dry Processing of Copper Ores

The Amira P902 “Dry Processing of Minerals” project was the foundational study to support the second stage study: Amira P902A “Dry Processing for Copper Ores”. The 2008 Amira P902A Proposal outlines that the objective of the second stage of this investigation was

“To define the separation performance and operating envelop of the alternative classifiers and separation technologies in terms of the ore characteristics, classifier operating parameters and throughput. The concurrent activities would address:

• Staged evaluation of the technologies to separate copper ores
• Adaption technologies to ore sorting technology for specific ore types
• scaling and piloting of Dry Processing by enhanced electrostatic separation

Each of the three components would be pursued by a research institution that had identified as having special expertise in each particular field. By using a global, multi-team approach the project was expected to conclude within two years.

The key deliverable was to demonstrate technology performance, with a simulated ore, and a recommended ore, amenable to pre-concentration.

GFC Pause

The Amira P902A “Dry Processing for Copper Ores” project was went into pause when the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) hit.

… Is this something we should look at reviving?

Should we revive Amira P902A Dry Processing for Copper Ores?

Let us know if you are interested: contact Patricio Pastorelli, our GM LATAM who is centrally located to co-ordinate an effort across the Americas where mining for Copper in Arid regions and the pressure on water resourcing – for mining and communities – remains a challenge.

Creating successful opportunities to develop and support talent and skills creation by necessity is a critical step in solving our industry’s current and emerging great challenges. We share some thoughts on how we are using “Centers of Excellence” to build solutions for our industry.

Era of Innovation

Over the last decade the minerals industry has astutely moved into the innovation space, adopting and adapting technologies to support remote operations, automation, and robotics. Additional emerging applications sit on a bed of digital analytics, machine learning, and AI.

These technologies are available now because of investments in research and development over the last 30 to 40 years. Investments made by governments, computer sciences, medical, financial, and manufacturing sectors. Our industry is smart to leverage these investments and to borrow from these to develop minerals industry technologies. They bring us ideas, concepts, and processes that can help improve operational efficiency, effectiveness, and safety.

Minerals Industry Innovation

But these emerging technologies are not sufficient for the great wall of challenges we face in the next 3 to 5 years. We need to meet increasing decarbonisation targets – in operations whilst dramatically increasing the supply of raw materials to support the green revolution … We have to discover more, and move, process and extract minerals much, much more efficiently than ever contemplated before

… And we are living in a world where there is declining interest in joining our industry.

We are at risk of not having the talent and skills to help us find solutions to some of the most fundamental mining sciences and engineering challenges. So Amira Global is on a crusade to deliver sustainable global opportunities that will provide the talent and skills for near and future term. We invite you all to join our efforts.

Our Critical Questions

We have to ask ourselves a few critical questions:

1. What does Talent and Skills development look like to us?
2. How are we going to do create opportunities that deliver to industry technological knowledge, R&D output and transference to innovation (testing, scaling, piloting?) whilst simultaneously supporting the ecosystems to produce skills?
3. What do we mean by a Center of Excellence?
4. Where are the best places/locations/environments to make this all a reality?
5. When? What sort of timelines do we envisage?
6. How can we ensure these efforts are sustainable and produce into the future?

These are questions we are working with our ecosystem to address. Will be get all of them right first go – absolutely not, but we are good at learning and developing (and have been improving our processes of over 64 years!)

Centers of Excellence

To us Centers of Excellence have certain characteristics:

• A “Center” needs to be connected to a broader field – they cannot exist in isolation
• They can be physical or virtual, but always need a primary point of contact or position
• They exist to breed excellence – they may not be there yet, but the intent is always to systematically work towards introducing and developing excellence in a field that is connected to other centers and spaces through constructive and collaborative engagement
• Their structure is framed to ensure excellence in governance and financial stewardship
• The programs are designed to systematically develop and deploy knowledge and technologies that offer solutions to our industry’s challenges
• The Centers have cultures that are positive, constructive, collaborative, and connected – to each other, to industry, and to research communities
• There is a focus on developing leadership, operational and research capability to allow a diffusion of outcomes through into our communities
• Always, these centers must have a strong connection to the minerals industry

Examples of Amira Centers of Excellence

Amira has a long history of developing Centers of Excellence.

AMSRI

The Australian Mineral Science Research Institute (Amira P924 project (“AMSRI”)) was established through Amira in 2005 to 2010 as a virtual institute as a collaboration between University of South Australia, University of Newcastle, University of Melbourne, and University of Queensland. Along with industry sponsorship through Amira, AMSRI also received support through Australian Federal funding.

The AMSRI initiative was a bold one.  It was very encouraging that a sub-set of minerals industry majors decided to support fundamental studies that could lead to industry-wide benefits; the minerals industry is more typically focused on short to medium term initiatives that have the potential to directly benefit only those companies that had funded the work. Such tactics lead to incremental improvements; whereas AMSRI sought to identify potentially step-change improvements. 

Eight concepts for improved flowsheets or equipment for mineral processing emerged from AMSRI: Four of the Emerging Concepts related to new technologies for Coarse Particle Recovery, worth NPV benefits of several hundred million dollars in each case. These benefits arise from combinations of greatly improved energy efficiencies and lowered water demand in comminution.

A further four Emerging Concepts, arising from other parts of the AMSRI program, though less advanced also indicated high potential for significant benefits to the minerals industry.

In order to successfully commercialise the Emerging Concepts that were identified, it was recommended that companies experienced in commercialising technology become formally involved in future in their ongoing development, with the development of those eight Concepts be spun-out from AMSRI, into projects that are managed in a way that fast tracks the path towards commercialisation or towards identifying fatal flaws.  The optimum path forward is likely to be different for each of the eight Emerging Concepts.

Our Learnings:

• design pathways and processes to commercialisation into the programs from the outset (management of IP and governance surrounding these are essential conversations in all projects)
• include supplier companies in the projects (Our Member based spans the minerals industry and we encourage Supplier Members to participate in our projects)
• align with innovation commercialisation support agencies early on that can rapidly support spin-offs (part of the Amira Global Alliances Program)

P934 WAXI & P1061 SAXI

The West African eXploration Initiative (WAXI) (Amira P934 project), lead by the University of Western Australia (in collaboration with nearly 20 other institutes), has been running for over 15 years. It has produced an incredible cohesive body of geological knowledge across West Africa, a database of nearly 100 theses, and over 90 PhD, Masters and Post Docs … 60% of whom are based in West Africa! This is an incredible legacy of knowledge and talent for the region that is now available to support industry exploration activities in the region.

An exciting development is the emerging leadership in the region with graduates who have trained through the program now leading modules from within the region.

This is producing a hub of knowledge and a West African Community of Practice in Exploration.

In parallel the South American eXploration Initiative (SAXI) (Amira P1061 project) is developing the equivalent talent and knowledge in the South American geological region connected through plat tectonics to West Africa! This enables the two regions to feed off each other’s knowledge, learnings, and regional Communities of Practice.

Additional “AXI” centers that are in development using the same model include:

• EAXI – an East African eXploration Initiative
• GAXI – the Geodynamic Andes eXploration Initiative

Each AXI produces a Center of Excellence to service the region, whist simultaneously connecting to each other to create a cohesive global body of knowledge and capability.

Our Learnings:

• Developing regionally relevant knowledge requires developing capability in the region.
• Connecting Centers of Excellence improves depth and breadth of knowledge and skills
• Virtual institutes can be strengthened by the provision of world-class equipped and well maintained laboratories in each region. This needs to be built into the creation of hubs in various regions.

Amira Full Mining Value Chain (ACoE)

Embracing the learnings from Amira’s various programs, Amira has initiated the development of a full mining value Center of Excellence (ACoE) in Ghana to service testing, scaling, piloting needs of R&D programs in the region.

We are in deliberations with the regional universities on how the ACoE can serve a cohesive, interconnected program of works that can support testing and deployment of research, development, and innovation outcomes and strengthening capability building for the region, the continent, and the globe.

Pan African Decarbonisation Institute (PADI)

Amira is on a mission to create a virtual Pan African institute of complementary and supplementary research, development and training that collaborates, connects, co-ordinates to co-create a pipeline of talented Africans that position Africa as a leading player in the decarbonisation value chain, and that transforms Africa's energy sector by leveraging Africa's new energy material resources and Africa's research, development and training capability.

Our vision is to build a self-sustaining pipeline of Pan African research, operational, and technical leadership, talent, and skills in minerals decarbonisation from resource management through to product development and delivery.

PADI’s current initial proponents include: University of Cape Town, Université de Lubumbashi, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Mines & Technology, Takwa (UMAT), and Reminex (ManageM Group).

Amira will launch a Prospectus at Indaba in February 2023 that invites further participation from industry, government agencies, and research organisations to progress and support PADI and the opportunities this creates for industry technologies and skills pipeline.

Future Minerals Forum – Saudi Arabia

Jacqui Coombes has been invited to contribute to the closed Ministerial Roundtable in Riyadh as part of the Future Minerals Forum in January 2023. We look forward to updating our community on the developments and learnings from this discussion.

Follow up on Linkedin to stay in the loop.

Further information

In the meanwhile, please reach out to Anthony Anyimadu, our VP Mineral Processing and GM Africa who has taken a lead on both PADI and ACoE (labol1680218918g.ari1680218918ma@ud1680218918amiyn1680218918A.yno1680218918htnA1680218918).

Kindest regards

Jacqui Coombes