Study on Tracking the Mined Ore Compound with the Use of Process Analytic Technology Tags

Abstract

The growing need of reducing the use of raw materials and energy in the chain of supplying goods draws the attention to all aspects of the most energy intensive processes like mining and processing of metal ore. Processing of raw materials strongly depends on their parameters, hence the more accurate identification of them should improve the process efficiency. The Process Analytic Technology with information carrying tags (pellets), annotating transported or processed raw material – is investigated within the DISIRE project. The application of DISIRE PAT for non-ferrous minerals processing is dealt with the copper producer KGHM S.A. The ore exploited in its underground mines in Poland is among the most difficult for processing. The ore compound is recognized in-situ – in mining faces. On the way to processing plants down the transportation system consisting of belt conveyors and ore bunkers, the portions of ore from numerous mining faces are converted into an unknown mixture. The study of PAT tags implementation to assign the conveyed ore with the relevant information to recognize the mixed ore compound is presented.