In July 2018 Interlate worked with site team to uncover a 2% improvement in throughput for a gold processing plant in the USA. Using a combination of technology, data analytics and technical expertise, this result was achieved this in just a few weeks.
Our client’s technical team is constantly seeking to help the company’s mining operations increase their profitability. The challenge is to find solutions that create sustained improvement.
Interlate was given the opportunity to demonstrate how sophisticated data analytics, combined with technology and expertise could uncover hidden value in a processing plant. Our client agreed to provide the site data and operational context for this challenge.
The gold processing plant was a new plant that was in its final stages of ramp-up to full production. Interlate’s brief was to find opportunities to support the ramp-up without spending additional capital.
Interlate focused on areas that would have an immediate positive impact of plant productivity.
Advanced analytics were used to identify an opportunity to improve milling circuit throughput by approximately 2% per annum via tighter power draw control. Further more, a possibility to optimize both capital and operating expenditure by dynamically adjusting the flow-sheet was also identified. This could be achieved through utilising real-time data analytics.
Interlate’s Galaxy Engine™ is a hyper-variable analytical platform that is capable of processing millions of data points across discrete operating scenarios simultaneously at great speed.
In order to bring lasting positive impact to plant productivity, Interlate fused multiple disparate data sources, including plant instrument data, laboratory assay and test-work data, and metallurgical mass balance data into a unified data model. Then with added subject matter expertise, Interlate developed an interactive decision tree, which generated discrete operating states for further interrogation. Further analysis of these states in collaboration with our client’s operations team uncovered a set of power draw operating tactics for the site to use to reduce throughput constraints.
Test-work analyses were then used as a basis to create an analogue of the plant performance for that day, which allowed the inference of flotation concentrate performance. This enabled the team to establish the distribution of gold production values sourced from the different parts of the circuit, leading to the consideration of dynamically adjusting the flow sheet to optimise capex and opex.