How can Operational Mineralogy be used to increase the efficiency of the identify, diagnose, execute, augment (I.D.E.A) cycle for continuous improvement?

The approach in Operational Mineralogy is to focus on generating mineralogical data that is useful for particular goals.  This helps to identify when the process plant is underperforming, diagnose where that is occurring and whether the root cause can be attributed to an unexpected change in ore characteristics or an operational issue.

Operational Mineralogy provides a tool in increasing the efficiency of the Identify, Diagnose, Execute, Augment (I.D.E.A) cycle for continuous improvement.  This can be built using daily mineralogical analysis to identify potential issues and provide direction for diagnosis of the problem, which can then be used in more targeted projects for more detailed diagnosis and development of solutions.  Assessing mineralogical trends on daily composites can allow rapid development of a process baseline, from which any fluctuations can flag that there may be an issue.

The volume of data generated in an Operational Mineralogy program can rapidly become overwhelming. An iMin Solutions program is structured around three basic principles for use of data to allow decision makers at a mineral processing operation to more quickly arrive at useful decisions that add value to the operation:

1. Identify: The use of mineralogical data, in conjunction with plant operations data, to efficiently identify areas of sub-optimal performance where improvements might be made.

2. Diagnose: Once areas for potential improvement have been identified more detailed analysis of mineralogical information, whether further analysis of available data or through targeted analysis programs, may be used to diagnose the cause of the issue. Mineralogy will often only be one aspect of the process for diagnosis of issues but should form the basis of explaining phenomena that are noted in other available plant data.

3. Execute: By using mineralogical information on a routine basis to identify and diagnose the cause of sub-optimal process operation the program will provide sufficient data to make informed decisions about implementing recommended solutions. The goal will be to generate sufficient information that value based decisions can be made, with potential impacts on other process areas assessed in the process.

3. Augment: Once changes have been implemented, maintaining routine mineralogical analysis helps to quantify the benefits and whether additional improvements can be made.  This then feeds back into identification of further improvement opportunities.

The information generated in an Operational Mineralogy program will provide an operation with the tools to react faster to process issues. As the volume of data increases and long term trends can be established this reactive approach can be extended to evaluate the mining plan and algorithms generated to predict the performance of material before it is fed to the processing circuit.