Today, at times, it seems the mining industry is under constant siege with a shortage of skilled labor, increased regulatory scrutiny and ever escalating costs. As one Australian firm framed the situation, the need to work smarter and not harder, is crucial during this historic mining boom.

Technically, Australian suppliers do not manufacture a lot of capital intensive equipment compared to the major mining OEMs worldwide. They do, however, offer some specialized systems that can save a mining operation a lot of money. Mining operations are finding that technologies, such as those developed by Gekko Systems, Intellection, Ausmelt and Immersive Technologies, are paying big dividends.

Another area where Australians show their mining proficiency is project management. Several companies, such as Runge, Micromine and Mincom offer enterprise systems to better manage projects at the mine site. In fact, an estimated 60% of the mines around the world are using software created by Australian companies.

In large part, the success of Australian engineering and project management firms can be attributed to the years of experience in accepting and solving tough challenges in mining and mineral processing.

Gekko Systems Offers New Mineral Processing Concepts
Based in Ballarat, Australia, Gekko Systems has a world class technical team that specializes in plants for processing gold, silver, diamonds and tin/tantalum. The company has a number of patented proprietary technologies such as the InLine Pressure Jig, InLine Leach Reactor and Python Processing System. The plant systems combine effective materials handling and low footprint designs that focus on minimizing pumping, power and expensive chemical requirements.

During the last year, the company has invested significant technical and financial resources to progress some exciting product and process developments. “We believe that technological leadership is strategically critical both in good times and bad,” said Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, managing director, Gekko Systems. “While the outlay has been significant, the results are really exciting with two new products being prepared for full launch over the next two years. Numerous other design improvements on current equipment are also paying dividends for our customers.”

The company currently markets two successful processing technologies, InLine Leach Technology and the Inline Pressure Jig. They are also working on several new concepts, the G-Rex resin exchange system and the Python processing plant.

InLine Leach Technology allows Gekko’s pre-concentration gold plants to offer 50% better value than traditional plants, Lewis-Gray explained. The InLine Leach Reactor (ILR) was originally developed for the treatment of coarse gold concentrates and it has been extremely successful in this application with recoveries of greater than 98%. “More recently however, the larger volume continuous units are being applied successfully to the treatment of silver flotation concentrates,” said Lewis-Gray. “This development generally requires multiple unit installations and has allowed customers to achieve significantly higher silver recoveries compared with returns from smelters.”

Pre-concentration gold plant designed and installed by Gekko Systems for Lihir Gold Ltd.’s Ballarat Project.

A number of recent continous gravity pre-concentration installations, such as at Lihir’s Ballarat plant have been particularly successful. Lihir’s gravity flotation and intensive leach (GFIL) installation includes a range of Gekko key proprietary technologies including the IPJ and the ILR.

The Lihir plant was completed in 2006 with a construction time of six months. The new feed rate is 65 mt/h and it has some unique design characteristics that are advanced environmentally and economically attractive. Low power consumption is achieved through use of VSI crushing (rather than ball mill) and a coarse grind size. Flotation is not required as all pre-concentration is achieved through the IPJ, which also lowers power consumption. A mass pull to concentrate of 5% is treated in a batch ILR.

Aurix is a resin developed to selectively recover gold from pregnant solutions. “It’s an excellent product that has struggled to find its niche due to the lack of a materials handling system,” Lewis-Gray said. “However, that has changed with the development of full-scale resin exchange system.”

The two technologies in operation together form a formidable alternative to carbon based gold recovery systems. Gekko has taken advantage of the selective chemical properties by developing G-Rex as a materials handling system. The GRex+ Aurix system has been applied to recovering gold and silver from the pregnant leach solutions produced by a continuous ILR. Two full scale operating units are currently installed, one for Olympus Pacific at Bong Mieu in Vietnam and the other for Lihir Gold at Ballarat in Australia. The largest volume unit currently treats at a rate of 150,000 oz/y gold. “The benefits of the system includes: fast kinetics, small footprint, full automation, modular and simple design, reduced number of process steps, audit simplicity and reduced capital costs,” said Lewis-Gray.

Australian federal government funding for research has assisted in the design and development of an underground processing concept, known as the Python processing plant. The process is being prepared for full scale trials in South Africa.

In recognition of Gekko’s technological advances, founders Sandy and Elizabeth Lewis-Gray were awarded the prestigious 2007 Warren Centre Innovation Heroes Award.

The annual Innovation Heroes Award is awarded for outstanding Australian innovations in engineering technology. It recognizes people who bring great ideas to life, and the role they play in driving economic and social progress.

Runge Group Completes IPO After a Healthy Round of Acquisitions
The global financial markets stagger from crisis to crisis while the commodity sector continues to go from strength to strength. In such a volatile environment, growth and consolidation within the global mining sector is inevitable as is the increased demand for all commodities, which underpins the value of the mining industry. Even in this climate, Runge’s initial public offering (IPO) on the Australian Stock Exchange continued, with a high degree of interest being generated in their unique offering in the mining services sector.

The market is validating that Runge is a leader in providing mine planning and, more importantly, mining business planning, the company recently explained. Runge’s acquisitions over the past few years have built a global network of strong local teams capable of covering the full spectrum of mine-related services across all mining methods and commodities. Runge believes that they are independent of the commodity boom.

Against this backdrop, the Mining Dynamics product further illustrates Runge’s standing as the leader in mine business planning and technology. It provides the next generational change in mining technology and its use in running a mining business. With the consolidation of many mining businesses, it is imperative that management make quick decisions based on accurate information about their operations.

Mining Dynamics provides a synchronized planning platform which makes sense of all the complex data and offers up insight and information to assist critical business decisions. The enterprise system is an example of the innovation that comes from Runge and the Mining Technology Services (MTS) hub in Brisbane.

Runge was established in 1977 by Dr. Ian Runge. Originally focused on general consulting to the mining industry (e.g. feasibility studies) the business commenced developing software to aid the provision of its consulting services and to assist its customers in the planning of mine sites. Today it provides consulting services and software products targeted at customers that operate larger mines that require mining business solutions for increased profitability.

In January, Runge acquired Resource Evaluations Pty Ltd. (ResEval). Based in Western Australian, ResEval is a specialist mine consulting group providing geological and mining engineering services to the Australian and global mining industry. In November 2007, Runge acquired GeoGAS, an Australian owned consulting and contracting services company for the coal mine and coal seam methane industries.

In September 2007, it announced it had entered into strategic business partnership with ESRI, an American software firm which designs and develops the world’s leading geographic information system (GIS) technology. Runge and ESRI are collaborating to bring unique solutions to mining customers in the area of advanced 2-D/3-D Integration and visualization. The first Runge product to emerge from the new partnership was the Mining Dynamics Platform, which provides scaleable access, information control and enterprise systems integration for mine site operations. The software delivers a visual system to support data management and discovery across the entire production chain; from geology, modeling and design, through scheduling and reconciliation.

High-tech mineralogy research center using QEMSCAN technology recently opened in Colorado. Back: Pieter Botha,
Johnny Walters, Rodger Cook, Philip Fisher and Daren Jensen. Front: Chris Geeves (AUS), Calvin Treacy (AUS),
Valerie Richardson, Dr. Hanna Horsch (AUS), Gina Williams and Dr. Alan Butcher (AUS).

The South African power utility, Eskom recently purchased a QEMSCAN system for coal analysis. This was the first purchase by a power generation company, according to Intellection CEO Calvin Treacy. He described the deal as a milestone for Intellection.

“There is real potential for our technology to produce tangible benefits for coal exploration, mining, handling and processing, power generation and other coal users; so, we’re delighted Eskom is showing the world how it’s done,” said Treacy.

Eskom generates 95% of electricity used throughout the country. It ranks among the top seven utilities in the world for generation capacity. As a large consumer of coal, it is seeking to use the resource more efficiently, and will apply QEMSCAN data to predict coal performance in pulverized fuel boilers and the subsequent environmental impact.

Intellection has expanded its support for international minerals industry research, becoming an industry sponsor of AMIRA International’s P9 project for the Optimization of Mineral Processes by Modeling and Simulation. AMIRA is an independent association of minerals companies which develops, brokers and facilitates collaborative research projects. It currently has around 50 active R&D projects in its portfolio, valued around $80 million.

P9 is the world’s largest university-based mineral processing research project. In its 45 years, it has re-shaped the practice of designing and optimizing mineral processing plants, using mathematical modeling and computer simulation. The 15th extension of the project, P9, is now underway.

“The P9 vision—to improve comminution, classification and flotation performance on sponsor sites through modeling, simulation and characterization of particles and their process environments, and through training and transfer of skills and technology to the industry—was closely aligned with Intellection’s own technology development aims,” said Treacy.

The first university research center in North America to use the innovative QEMSCAN automated mineralogy technology has been officially opened in Colorado. A partnership between Intellection and the Colorado School of Mines’ Advanced Mineralogy Research Center (AMRC) will focus on research and education in geometallurgy, petrology, petroleum geology, environmental geology, rock physics, soil analysis and other geosciences. The new AMRC facility on the campus in Golden, Colorado, USA, was dedicated on April 3, 2008.

Process schematic of Ausmelt’s tin smelting technology.

Engineering design for the new Ausmelt furnace will begin immediately. The smelter will be designed to process around 38,000 metric tons per year (mt/y) of tin concentrates. The concentrates will be smelted and reduced sequentially in a two-stage process in a single furnace to produce approximately 18,000 mt/y of tin metal.

Empresa Metalurgica Vinto is one of the world’s leading tin producers. It plans to expand and modernize its operations in Bolivia using Ausmelt Technology. Ausmelt’s technology for tin smelting is already being used at two of the largest tin smelters in the world, in Peru and China.

“Including the Bolivian plant, about 40% of the world’s primary tin output will be produced using Ausmelt Technology,” said Paul Abbott, managing director, Ausmelt Ltd. “This is particularly pleasing given that tin processing was the original basis for development of the technology. This is our third contract win in South America. The other projects were the Funsur tin smelter in Peru and a lead smelter for Votorantim in Brazil, which is a current project.”

“This project is very important for us as this will be the first modernization after more than 30 years from the start-up of the Vinto complex,” said Engineer Francisco Infantes, general manager, Vinto smelter complex. “This will put us in a position to favorably compete with other modern international tin smelters.”

Pit Optimizer Raises the Bar for Pit Planning Software
Micromine’s new Pit Optimization module in Micromine is an ultimate pit shell and pit sequencing optimizer. Using the Lerchs-Grossman algorithm, it calculates a subset of blocks (from an existing block model) that yields a feasible pit with the greatest value. It does this for a given geological model under a given set of pit slope constraints, mining and processing cost, metallurgical recoveries and selling price parameters.

With the recent release of the first service pack for Micromine Ver 11, users can expect even faster processing speeds, according to the company. “In some optimization scenarios, we have improved our pit optimizer’s performance by up to 50%,” said Ivan Zelina, Micromine’s technical manager.

Despite being a recent addition to the Micromine software suite, the Pit Optimizer has dynamic functionality and has been lauded for its user-friendly interface. “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of [a recent comparison] study and it proves that our application is particularly robust,” Zelina said. “We were initially not entirely happy with the performance of our optimizer and that is why we focused more of our recent development efforts on it. This has paid off.”

Headquartered in Perth, Western Australia, Micromine has been developing innovative software solutions for the mineral resources industry since 1986. It has grown over the years to become one of the world’s leading mining IT companies. Micromine claims that it is the only company providing integrated solutions that manage and monitor every crucial step in the mineral exploration and mining process.

SKM Applies Iron Ore Expertise in Brazil
In an example of how Australian expertise is being utilized overseas, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) has applied its extensive iron ore experience gained in the Pilbara to Brazil. SKM, an Australian-headquartered global project delivery, engineering and sciences firm, recently completed a Value Engineering Study for the world’s largest iron ore producer, Vale (formerly CVRD). The scope of the $500,000 study was to optimize the current basic engineering design of screening and crushing facilities of a wet process iron ore beneficiation plant at Vale’s Carajas Programa 130 million mt/y mine in Brazil.

SKM’s Group Engineering Manager, John Armstrong, said that SKM was handpicked as a single service provider from a worldwide list of firms. “SKM was selected to undertake the study due to the firm’s outstanding practice and experience in providing operability, maintainability and reliability of plants in the Pilbara region in Western Australia,” Armstrong said.

The Carajas project is an upgrade of Vale’s existing Carajas Mine Operations from 100 million mt/y to 130 million mt/y. SKM was engaged to undertake the Value Engineering Study on the proposed new secondary and tertiary/quaternary crushing and screening facilities to identify opportunities for reducing capital and operating costs. This involved simplifying the plant by reducing the number of equipment items to decrease total maintenance effort and improve overall system availability. The study also investigated reducing procurement and construction lead times to fit into the project timeframe.

Ferrous Project Development General Manager for Vale, Jamil Sebe, said that SKM’s experience in iron ore beneficiation plants had provided exactly what Vale was seeking.

“We visited several Australian iron ore beneficiation plants between 2006 and 2007, and we were impressed with their constructability, level of automation and robustness of equipment,” Sebe said. “The layouts adopted by the plants enhanced the maintenance and operational performance of the equipment, as well as enabling a reduction in plant personnel, and, most importantly, a reduction in operational cost.

“This was exactly the model we were looking for with our 130 million mt/y and ‘Serra Sul’ projects in Brazil,” Sebe said. “In order to improve the quality of these projects, which are the most important in the Vale pipeline, we decided that we could not just walk toward the objective, but we should leap toward it. For this reason, we sought a partnership, which today we have with SKM.”

SKM has been working on iron ore projects in the Pilbara for both Rio Tinto, as part of the Rio Tinto Iron Ore Expansion Projects, and for BHP Billiton, as part of the Mine and Port Developments Joint Venture with Fluor, for more than a decade.

For the Vale project, a team from SKM’s Mining and Metals group in Perth was relocated for a month to Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

“The assignment was concluded when a delegation from Vale visited our Perth office in early November 2007, when a final review of the Value Engineering Study was concluded,” Armstrong said.

“We anticipate that this initial step will potentially lead to other opportunities for SKM to get involved with Vale, at which time SKM’s extensive network of global offices will be an integral part of a pool of expertise to support and consolidate our work with this valuable client.”

Immersive Technologies Trains for the Future
According to Immersive Technologies, its simulation technology can help a mine improve production performance. “Most importantly we have improved safety performance and reduced operating costs,” said Richard Calautti, marketing communications manager, Immersive Technologies. “As a result of simulator training, the mines have experienced less unscheduled maintenance with reduced brake failures and tire wear and tear. The systems improve operator response to problems such as vehicle fires, brake failures and other emergency situations, which our equipment is able to test. We can also test weather conditions and a large set of skills sets that involve a collection of different levels of proficiency.”

Phelps Dodge purchased a simulator for its Morenci copper mine in Arizona in early 2004. “Their reasoning at the time was to elevate safety levels, reduce unscheduled maintenance costs and improve production performance, through improved operator training,” said Calautti. “That training was so successful that since that time they have bought five more simulators for other mine sites. They have trained more than 1,000 haul truck and shovel operators since they began the program. About 25% of these were completely green operators getting prepared for the field. That’s one of the most important things the equipment can do—prepare people before they arrive at the pit.

Since May 2007, Immersive Technologies has been working with Elk Valley Coal’s Fording River mine in Canada. “At the time, they were looking to address tire life and skilled operator shortages,” said Calautti. “They purchased a simulator. Then, they found that they had such a dramatic increases in tire life and improved operator training that they purchased another five simulators in May 2008 to cover their other operations. Not only was training improving, but they more than doubled tire life.”

Immersive recently launched a light vehicle simulator. Used in conjunction with the company’s Advanced Equipment (AE) Simulator, the Light Vehicle Conversion Kit is designed to be a realistic training tool which replicates the driving characteristics and handling of “off-highway” road conditions found within mine site environments.

Immersive said the kit was developed in response to industry statistics which show that one of the main causes of injury and fatalities on mine sites involved light vehicles. The kit, according to the company, will play a key role in addressing HR/occupational health and safety requirements faced by global mining companies for operators who drive on site.

Built to operate as either a right or left hand drive, the product includes a fully operational manual transmission and features operating controls common in 4WD vehicles. Particular attention has been placed on recognizing and avoiding visual blind spots using unique visual aids which can be activated to demonstrate the inability of haul truck drivers to see the light vehicle when in close proximity.

The simulator kit also instructs trainees on how to respond to emergency situations, incorporates highly realistic off-road conditions and simulated landscapes and environments for all scenarios, including night operations and driving in rain or dust.

“The light vehicle is something that can be used at mine sites in remote regions, where new hires may not know how to drive,” Calautti said. “These simulators are used for completely green drivers to train them. In a more established market, it is used to up-skill people. It allows the user to understand the blind spots on mining haul trucks. A lot of accidents happen with light vehicles on the mine site.”

Immersive Technologies has established a high level of trust with the OEMs. They have exclusive relationships where the company receives proprietary technical data. As an example, Cat recommends them exclusively, according to Calautti, and provides Immersive with the information it needs to produce simulators based on their equipment. “That way, when an operator is trained, they can go straight to the equipment in the field and they are well aware of all of the cabin controls and they know exactly what to do,” Calautti said.

In June, Immersive Technologies launched a simulator for the Liebherr R996 hydraulic excavator and the Komatsu WA1200-3 wheel loader. The company has also developed a new trainer console, TabliT. In 2009, the company plans to launch a simulator for underground equipment.

Mincom Supports Mining Intelligence
As Australia’s largest software provider to asset intensive industries, Mincom counts 18 of the world’s top 20 mining companies as customers. The company’s key focus, over the past several years has been the creation of a specialist technical mining solutions capability called the Intelligent Mining Solution (IMS). This suite of technical mining products ‘bridges the production management gap’ between the realtime production control environment and the back-office transactional information provided by the enterprise resource planning systems.

A series of acquisitions undertaken by Mincom over the last three years has continued to extend the company’s IMS offering in a number of specialist areas to cover the entire spectrum of the mining value chain. This includes exploration, geological modeling, mine planning, production scheduling, laboratory management, sample tracking, stockpile management, material tracking, metallurgical accounting, outbound logistics, sales and contract management.

The company’s initial focus was to support bulk materials operations, such as coal and iron ore but a more recent focus has been to provide solutions for the mineral and metal processing operations.

“There has been a pressing industry need but equally a huge gap in software vendors’ offerings to mining operations to overcome emerging operational requirements such as better accounting for product recovery through the various processing and beneficiation stages,” said Dave Stevenson, vice president-mining, Mincom. “One of our newly commercialized and most strategic software modules is our industry-leading metallurgical accounting solution.”

The basis of the solution is the result of more than 15 years worth of intellectual property acquired from JKTech, a leading Australian mining technology provider and technology transfer company of the world renowned Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Center (JKMRC) at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Lonmin Platinum, the world’s third largest and lowest cost platinum producer, uses the Mincom Production Accounting solution to manage its metallurgical accounting, from its mine shafts all the way to the finished product out of the precious metal refinery, and includes all the process steps in-between.

Lonmin is well on its way to fundamentally transforming the way it conducts its business. From business units working in information silos where answering such questions as “What is the value of the metal in the process?,” meant very different answers from each business unit to a unified metallurgical accounting process.

More recently, Mincom has extended its production accounting solution to incorporate a gold module—a portal specifically designed for monitoring gold plant performance, which includes cyanide code management, environmental management and a number of other operational areas where performance measurement is required.

Regulatory codes such as Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and international best practice adoption (such as the AMIRA P754 metallurgical accounting code of practice) has also meant that mining organizations must improve production accounting and metal balancing processes to remain competitive, as well as meeting stringent shareholder reporting requirements.

“There was a time when a multitude of spreadsheets was all that was used to try to keep track of production accounting in mining operations. With new regulatory requirements a more robust, reliable and transparent approach has been necessary. Mincom’s production accounting solution supports the adoption and implementation of the AMIRA code,” said Stevenson.

“One of the key points of departure is that our IMS suite has been developed in the mining industry, for the mining industry,” said Stevenson. “We don’t try to adapt solutions that have been designed for the discrete or process manufacturing industry.”

In the absence of purpose-built, technical mining solutions the more progressive mining operations have experimented with manufacturing solutions but, because mining is very different to manufacturing, these solutions have not effectively dealt with the unique requirements and uncertainty across the various aspects of the mining operation.

Global demand for scarce skills in key mining disciplines has driven further technology innovation.

“Mincom is working with customers to address the skills gap by developing solutions that embed industry IP and use technology such as workflow and statistical modeling, to automate routine tasks as far possible,” said Stevenson.

It is estimated that up to 60% of time is used in non-value adding tasks such as data discovery and manual data capture, rather than focusing on analysis to identify opportunities to increase recovery and efficiency.

By automating routine tasks such as the data acquisition, data validation and sign-off processes and enhancing the user experience by using workflow to focus efforts, Mincom’s solution is supporting the improved utilization of scarce resources.

Mincom has a long heritage in the mining sector spanning nearly 30 years. The company laid its foundations in Australia’s mining industry commencing operations in 1979.

Over the years Mincom has specialized in providing a number of enterprise solutions to support mining operations worldwide—from enabling processes to manage assets, schedule production, carry out plant maintenance, through to planning and recording the various activities and their associated costs using the company’s ERP/EAM solution, Mincom Ellipse.

Mincom’s industry experience has translated into a comprehensive understanding of the mining business and market drivers that impact mining operations and the company has also invested over a number of years in providing enterprise mission systems to support each aspect of the mining value chain from ore body through to final product.

“One of our key successes is that we employ chemists, geologists, mine engineers and metallurgists to develop our leading mining solutions,” said Stevenson.

“We believe we have the most complete vision for the future of mining solutions. Our approach is to synthesize the requirements from our interactions with our mining customers across all the major mining geographies, including Latin America, North America, Africa and Australia and develop the required solutions. Unlike other ERP and MES vendors, mining is where we have come from. You could say it is in our DNA,” said Stevenson.