Comminution and Material Handling
Optimization of processes reduces energy usage
Comminution – the grinding, blasting, and crushing or ore – is at the center of mining operations. As ore grades have consistently dropped, the need for more effective recuperation of ore has directed attention to the potential for optimization of material handling. Investment has followed.
Indeed, Latin America is an excellent market for material handling companies. South America is the fastest-growing market for Hofmann Engineering, and in 2022, the company grew by over 50% in turnover compared to the previous year. Hofmann Engineering provides a variety of products including girth gears and pinions for mill gearing, electric rope shovel transmissions, roll assemblies and gearboxes for HPGR, and in the past year, expanded into hydraulic excavator critical components and the crushing market.
As part of the company’s rapid expansion within Chile, in June 2023 it will test the new multi-axle, CNC controlled floor borer with a 50-ton rotary table. Simão Antunes, general manager of South American operations at Hofmann Engineering, stated: “We have a 20-year plan for expansion in Chile and plan to fully complete the first phase out of three by the end of 2023, allowing us to manufacture the HPGR rolls locally and provide critical and heavy precision machining services for manufacturing and refurbishing of critical components for the mining industry.”
Weir Minerals is a global company that offers services for the mill circuit, including pulp pumps, hydrocyclones, traction devices, among others. The company is focused largely on transfer pumps, although also offering a value-added mill circuit line, which is focused on maximizing recovery while minimizing energy and water use.
Weir takes a collaborative approach to the industry. It has an agreement with Eriez, allowing Weir Minerals to optimize ore recovery through coarse particle flotation, as well as an alliance with STM in incorporate vertical mills in existing and greenfield facilities, improving the efficiency of the process. “Our customers’ expectations have motivated Weir to join forces with Eriez and STM to come up with an optimized flow sheet considering our Enduron HPGR, our CAVEX2 cyclones, the Eriez CPF (coarse particle flotation cells) and STM vertical mills,” said Martin Brenner, regional managing director of Weir Minerals. “We are ready to offer these solutions and have seen a high interest in the market to upgrade existing facilities.”
“We see a high demand for applications with filtered tailings. In the future, most tailings will be transported as filtered bulk tailings, which are complex to handle as they are wet and sticky.”
Sergio Zamorano, CEO FAM Minerals & Mining – Part of Beumer Group
For Metso, the merger of Metso and Outotec, Latin America is a very important region, representing 20% of the company’s sales. Chile is home to the company’s largest casing plant. The company was very busy over the course of 2022, counteracting the logistics challenges of global interdependence by investing in local capabilities.
Metso has benefited from the desire of major mines to upgrade. For example, Metso recently won a contract with Collahuasi for a specific floatation cell that minimizes energy consumption while maximizing ore recovery. Additionally, it recently worked with Codelco to upgrade the company’s 40-year-old crushers to maximize efficiency. “The mining industry is showing great interest in increasing its energy efficiency, and many companies have turned to Metso to optimize the production of their plants,” said Eduardo Nilo, president for South America at Metso Outotec.
The comminution process consumes more than half of the energy used by the mining industry, according to the Coalition for Energy Efficient Comminution. “I think one of the biggest challenges is the sustainability of operations,” said Christian Pasten, regional business development manager at Glencore Technology. “Lower ore grades mean operations need greater efficiencies.”
“The treatment of coarse particles is crucial due to declining ore grades. We can improve recovery efficiency by optimizing the process and reducing the need for excessive grinding. Typically, copper recovery has been focused on the coarsest fractions, resulting in a significant loss of the finer particles that end up in tailings dams.”
Claudio García Bernal, CEO, FLSmidth South America
Glencore Technology offers a range of technologies that optimize productivity in material processing, including ISASMELT, a smelting furnace installed in Peru and the Jameson Cell, a flotation device that can recover fine and coarse particles, which has been in Collahuasi since 2019 and Centinela since the end of 2022. Pasten explained: “Minerals have lower grades, and so higher volumes are needed to get the same results. Our equipment means an operation can process more feed with less capital cost.”
Sustainability is now a driving force within the material handling space. FLSmidth recently introduced the HPGR Pro, a highly sustainable high-pressure grinding roll technology. In 2019, the company introduced MissionZero, a sustainability commitment program. Claudio García Bernal, CEO of FLSmidth South America, said: “Our new strategy, starting in 2023, focuses on full lifecycle solutions that align with MissionZero’s sustainability commitments, while delivering measurable improvements in customer economics as well as building customer loyalty and collaboration.”
Reducing a company’s carbon footprint is not only a matter of checking a few boxes, shifting to renewable energy and commissioning electric trucks. It requires an examination of the complete mining system. For example, conveyor belts are more energy efficient that trucks, providing an opportunity for bulk materials transport providers. Sergio Zamorano, CEO of FAM Minerals & Mining Latin America – part of Boehmer Group, said: “There is significant demand for transformational engineering projects to reduce the carbon footprint of existing mines and move into continuous handling.”
“Mining operations need to depend less on human intervention, and we need to provide monitoring and control through technology across the entire mining production chain.”
Jorge Von Loebenstein, Engineering Manager, Tecnipak
Terra Nova Technologies, meanwhile, is responding to the push towards sustainability not just by offering in-pit crushing and conveyance systems that reduce the need for trucks, but also by enabling component reusage for material handling systems. “Many of the stacking systems in the region have reached the end of their lifecycle, and our customers, rather than replacing them, are requesting services such as modification and upgrades to extend the life of the systems and increase their energy efficiency,” explained Ignacio Fernández, general manager LATAM at Terra Nova Technologies.
Operating in the Chilean jurisdiction is unique compared to other mining jurisdictions. José Castillo, managing director of Rema Tip Top Chile, said: “The fundamental difference is the cheer scale of operations. Chuquicamata, Los Bronces, and so on are mines that operate at a scale nearly unmatched.”
The intense scale of these mines results in demand for giant material handling machinery. Castillo continued: “That makes this a unique market because the giant conveyor belts require specific procedures to maintain operational continuity. Scheduling and planning changes or repairs to giant belts require complicated engineering utilizing precisely engineered high-tonnage systems.”
“Large operations like Codelco, BHP or AMSA produce at a scale nearly unmatched by other countries. That makes this a unique market because the giant conveyor belts require specific procedures to maintain operational continuity.”
José Castillo, Managing Director Chile, Rema Tip Top
Article header image courtesy of TAKRAF