Abstract
A diamond mine generally consists of mining and mineral beneficiation operations. Mining operation includes planning, drilling, explosion, loading; hauling and mineral processing normally has the following operations: crushing; screening; washing; transporting; separation; sorting; storing; water treatment, etc. The operation could be described as a complex and expensive balancing act where material flow rates, size, density and other factors must all be in required balance if any degree of plant optimization and efficiency is to be achieved. One of the main objectives to optimally operate a mine is to maintain balanced production among all product streams.
To achieve a balanced and optimal production at a mine, two tasks at least must be considered. The first is to have an optimal production plan, including a set of optimal production targets for all process units. And the second task is to make sure that all those optimal targets in the mentioned optimal production plan must be achieved at all process units by using all resources available. To achieve the mentioned two tasks, all measurements, equipment and systems at the mine must be available in real time, particularly those critical measurements such as weightometers, densitometers, ore types; stockpile levels. With the advancement and applications of technologies in mineral processing industry, an automated mine optimization system is developed to include the following three functions: (1) mine production optimizer; (2) various dynamic controllers; and (3) a set of soft sensors. Over the past ten years, a large amount of work has been done to develop the system, started from forming the concept to testing and implementation at various mines. The system can potentially help improve the production throughput up to 30% at the mineral processing operation of a mine.