Andy Home: A quiet revolution is taking place in the mining industry
If the world wants to move away from fossil fuels, it will need to have a large amount of copper. Can the mining industry meet this demand?
The challenges are enormous. The challenges are huge.
The mining process has been highly wasteful and polluting in the past.
Back to the Future
According to a research paper from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, the world discovered 650 million metric tonnes of copper between 1910-2010 but only 100 million tons made it to the market.
The metal in the tailings ponds is still there, waiting for the right technology to unlock its potential.
Rio Tinto has successfully separated critical metals like scandium and Tellurium from waste streams in existing operations.
Other people are looking for ways to extract the value of the massive legacy of mining activity.
Hudbay Minerals is, for instance, evaluating the possibility of re-mining the tailings on the Flin Flon Site in Canada's Manitoba. The mine closed its doors in 2022 and left behind nearly a century of mineral-rich waste.
Cobalt blue Holdings of Australia, which is collaborating with Flin Flon on this project, also signed an agreement in Queensland with Mount Isa City Council to investigate reworking pyrite as a possible alternative source for sulphur after the town's Copper Smelter closes.
Many of these projects, and others like them, are only in the conceptual or pilot stages. But India's Hindustan Zinc has committed $438 million to processing 10 million tons of tailings per year at its Rampura Agucha Mine, which is the world's biggest zinc mine.
LESS WASTE
The miners are re-evaluating the value of the legacy waste and are working on ways to reduce waste.
Both economic and environmental benefits can be expected. As ore grades decline, the mining industry generates more than seven billion tons of waste per year.
Many of the efforts in this field are incremental. Glencore Technology has, for instance, been improving its ISAMill mill to handle ever-larger particle sizes. It is hoped that the ore grinding will be reduced to save water, and to reduce tailings.
The Albion Process, which is used by the company to leach ore, can increase copper recovery rates up to over 99%. It also reduces operating costs to as much as a third. This allows for complex ore bodies that would not be feasible with traditional technology.
Some companies, such as Allonnia (which describes itself as a company that specializes in bio-ingenuity), are taking a more revolutionary approach.
D-Solve, a technology developed by the company, uses microbes for selectively removing impurities like magnesium from concentrates.
Allonnia just partnered up with Eagle Nickel Mine in the United States to create an onsite pilot unit that will test a technology which, in lab tests, can increase nickel grades by 18% while reducing magnesium impurities 40%.
Big Tech meets Old Technology
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new technology that will bind these innovations.
Rio Tinto, BHP and other majors are already using AI to automate haulage systems. They also use it to predict maintenance downtime instead of reacting to equipment failures.
The next major leap in AI technology is generative AI. BHP uses "digital-twin" technology in conjunction with a virtual replica in real time of the mining process at its South Australian Copper Mine and the giant Escondida Mine in Chile.
BHP says that GenAI models are used at Escondida to "inform ore blending and blasting strategies, identify ore areas with challenging ore properties, and support implementation of SAG Mill model predictive control."
Freeport-McMoRan, a U.S. copper manufacturer, has partnered up with McKinsey's consultancy to use AI in order to boost production. Its North American operations were experiencing declining output because of mature mines and outdated process technology.
The integration of traditional mining and data engineering allows real-time adjustments in processing rates for variable ore. AI trials at the Baghdad Mine in Arizona led to an increase of 5%-10% in copper production.
The company expects to increase production by 90,000 tonnes per year if it is implemented across its other American operations.
This is the equivalent of a new production plant that would cost over $1.5 billion, and take eight to 10 years to plan, build and commission.
Future Mining
It is said that mining is a dirty industry.
Proof is found in the billions and millions of tons of sludge that are stored in tailings pools around the globe. This has led to a public aversion to new mining projects.
In the past, mining was also a very inefficient industry. Minerals of low quality were either left in the ground or thrown away as waste because there was no technology to treat them.
This is changing, as one of the oldest industries in the world rapidly modernizes. It combines innovations in traditional processing methods with new technologies like bio-engineering or AI. It's a revolution that is quietly taking place in laboratories, data centres and pilot plants around the globe. The promise is a cleaner, more efficient industry. This could mean that the world won't run out of copper.
These are the opinions of a columnist who writes for.
(source: Reuters)
