MINMO

Advanced Methods in Monitoring and Control of Ore Concentration

Keywords: Mining, Mineral grinding, Particle size analysis, Data mining, Soft sensors, Process control, Process monitoring

In this project, monitoring and optimization of the unit process chains of mineral concentrating plants is studied. Practical cases are located in three mineral processing plants in the middle and northern Finland: Kemi mine - Outokumpu Chrome Oy Pyhäsalmi mine - Pyhäsalmi Mine Oy (Inmet corporation) Siilinjärvi mine - Kemphos Oy The process monitoring and optimization is based on the information provided by on-line process analyzers. The concept is to apply control strategies for grinding process to achieve the optimality of the subsequent concentrating plant. Control of the grinding circuit is partly based on the information provided by on-line slurry particle size distribution analyzers.

The main objectives of the project are better control of grinding circuit and subsequent concentrator increased throughput of the grinding circuit enhanced usability of on-line mineral particle size distribution measurement improved monitoring of the concentrating plant Goal in the optimization ofthe concentrating plants is to maximize the profitability and thus to find optimal operating parameters for each sub-process. In mineral concentration plants, the performance is typically dependent on several aspects such as the feed ore type, grade-recovery dependency, energy price, product market price, etc. However, in addition to this list the efficiency of the mineral enrichment is often strongly affected by the mineral particle size. Thereby, the aim is to control the mineral grinding mills in order to achieve better operation of the concentration plant. The monitoring and control concept includes among others: data based process modeling, detection of process disturbances and evaluation of the process control performance

Publications

• Antti Remes, Jarmo Aaltonen and Heikki Koivo,
  "Grinding circuit modeling and simulation of particle size control at Siilinjärvi concentrator,"
  International Journal of Mineral Processing, Vol. 96, no. 1-4, pp. 70-78, 2010.
  Electronic publication
• Antti Remes, Jarmo Aaltonen and Heikki Koivo,
  "Soft-sensor estimation of an apatite thickener operation at the Siilinjärvi concentrator,"
  in IFACMMM2009 - Pre-prints of the Workshop on Automation in Mining, Mineral and Metal Industry, Luis Bergh (ed.), Vina del Mar, Chile: IFAC, 2009, 6 pp.
• Antti Remes and Niina Vaara,
  "Applicability tests of the particle size control at the Kemi concentrator,"
  Materia, Vol. 1, s. 42-45, 2009.
  Electronic publication
• A Remes, J Kaartinen, H Koivo, K Saloheimo, N Vaara and H Pekkarinen,
  "Monitoring of the grinding and gravity separation operation at Outokumpu's Kemi concentrator plant,"
  in Proceedings of the XXIV International Mineral Processing Congress, Wang Dian Duo, Sun Chuan Yao, Wang Fu Liang, Zhang Li Cheng and Han Long (eds.), Beijing, China: BGRIMM, 2008, pp. 2438-2447.
• A Remes, N Vaara, K Saloheimo and H Koivo,
  "Prediction of concentrate grade in industrial gravity separation plant – comparison of rPLS and neural network,"
  in Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress, July 6-11, 2008, Seoul, Korea, Myung Jin Chung, Pradeep Misra and Hyungbo Shim (eds.), Seoul, Korea: IFAC, 2008, 6 pp.