Abstract
In recent years, we have witnessed a strong desire in the mining community to improve plant overall efficiency by using operational data and adopting new digital technologies. Following this trend, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies have been areas of development and application for the past decade. Despite the dedication of resources and talents in digital technologies, mineral processing operations frequently fail to meet the full potential of their investments.
Digitalization in mineral processing faces an important challenge: the variation of ore properties, equipment conditions, and overall process stability. Many artificial intelligence strategies and other digital technologies throughout the years have been underutilized or abandoned simply because they cannot provide a compelling answer to the challenges that operation and maintenance teams face every day. The fundamental application of these technologies is to transform data into intelligence to improve plant availability, productivity, profitability and most importantly safety of the equipment and site personnel. This work highlights opportunities and results of the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies in mineral processing operations around the world.
ANDRITZ has been in the automation and digitalization solutions business for mining for several decades and has developed its own technology and applications built on its proprietary METRIS All-in-One platform. METRIS provides solutions for production management, equipment condition monitoring, and process optimization using the latest data analytics and artificial intelligence methods in an integrated approach.