A new approach to mining
The industry needs innovative solutions to address its challenges around safety, productivity and sustainability into the future
The mining industry needs to radically rethink the way it operates if it wants to be sustainable, as merely scaling up current equipment or automating operations will no longer be sufficient. What is needed, believes Anglo American, is a completely new approach to mining, one that applies innovative thinking, enabling technologies, and broad collaborative partnerships to address mining’s major challenges, including safety, productivity, energy and water.
Speaking at the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration conference in New York in May, Anglo American’s group technical director Tony O’neill outlined the company’s innovation-led approach to sustainable mining — Futuresmart Mining.
“When talking about innovation at Anglo American, I always start with what we’re solving. In the year 1900, to produce 40 kg of Cu, 2 t of rock was mined. Today, as a result of declining grades, to produce the same 40 kg of Cu, material movement and energy consumption has risen 16 times and water consumption has doubled (per unit). Clearly, this trajectory is unsustainable. Mining innovation has to address precision to target only the metal or mineral, with radically less waste, water and energy, and a smaller footprint.”
As part of its own innovationled approach to sustainable mining, Futuresmart Mining, Anglo American is testing and adapting a number of new and existing technologies across its operations looking for safer, more efficient and more sustainable ways to mine, process, move and market its products.
One example is its Rapid Mine Development System (RMDS), an advanced drilling and cutting system which was developed by
Anglo American and Atlas Copco, to tackle the challenge of precise, continuous mining at depth. It is currently being tested at its underground Twickenham platinum mine in Limpopo.
The RMDS safely excavates low-profile tunnels with rapid access to ore. It causes less damage to the overhead walls, thereby reducing the risk of collapse, and enables greater ore excavation time, as there is no time lost for explosive blasting.
At Anglo American’s subsidiary Kumba Iron Ore, the group has developed a new ultra-high densemedium separation (HDMS) technology in partnership with Exxaro Resources, which has allowed it to convert “waste” material to product by lowering the ore body cut-off grade at its Sishen mine. The ability to re-process vast quantities of waste has allowed the company to release new reserves and increase the life of the mine, which is currently estimated at 15 years.
The technology has improved to a stage where an additional 210 Mt of mineral resource could be declared at Sishen, according to Kumba Iron Ore CEO Themba Mkhwanazi. The expectation is that the resource potential could be increased to more than 1bn t.
Futuresmart Mining is developing other solutions to address the challenge of precision mining with minimal energy, water and capital intensity. The Concentrate the Mine concept is a fully integrated mining systems approach pioneered by Anglo American. It integrates a number of enabling technologies to extract more metal, with less waste. At its centre is Coarse Particle Recovery (CPR). CPR allows parti- cles to be floated at sizes two to three times larger than normal.
This has two main benefits. First, it uses less energy and can therefore increase production rates; and second, it allows for easier extraction of water from the process, leaving a waste stream that is dry and stackable.
Dry stacking is an important focus area for Anglo American because water sent to tailings ponds often represents the largest water loss at a mine. Futuresmart envisages a future in which tailings ponds will disappear and be replaced with dry tailings stacks.
Early indicators at their CPR pilot plant in Chile point to a 30% increase in throughput, with 30% less water, 20% less energy and 2% - 3% recovery loss.
“The difference is this: Futuresmart Mining is about more than just delivering technology solutions; it uses technological and broader innovation to directly mitigate some of the sector’s social and environmental effects, including reducing water and energy usage. In this way, it not only has the potential to transform the way we mine, but the way we contribute to society. This is what makes our approach unique,” says O’neill.