This working group, formerly the Industrial Comminution Efficiency Working Group, is a community of interest for operators, suppliers, subject-matter experts and other stakeholders interested in discussing and addressing common industry challenges for mineral processing. Topics include comminution efficiency, plant improvement and design, emerging technologies, metallurgical accounting, and testing procedures. The Working Group officially launched in 2020 following an industry survey to determine priorities.
WHY MINERAL PROCESSING MATTERS
Global collaboration in mineral processing is important because, while technology and society rapidly advancing, this field employs long-term assets that make it challenging to change. Further, processing is energy-intensive, and collaboration is needed to meet the global demand for energy efficiency.
OBJECTIVES
- Develop guidelines and tools to meet common industry needs in mineral processing
- Coordinate a global network of multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial professionals with knowledge on mineral processing to share lessons learned, best practices and drive valuable conversations
- Enable a global platform for knowledge sharing on mineral processing
WORKING GROUP HISTORY
The working group was originally formed in 2020 with top priorities including energy and water efficiency, geometallurgical planning, metallurgical test work for greenfield projects, and tests for the selection of comminution equipment. Since then, a series of sub-committee calls and forums have furthered the defining of industry priorities leading to the launch of a geometallurgy guideline series project, the formation of proposed projects for process control and metal accounting, several proposed projects in the industrial comminution efficiency sub-committee, and the review of published guidelines.
WORKSHOP OUTCOMES
ACTIVE PROJECTS
Methods to Survey and Sample Grinding Circuits for Determining Energy Efficiency (Revision)
This guideline, originally published in 2016, covers surveying and sampling Autogenous Grinding (AG), Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG), rod, and ball mill circuits within the normal range of application. The intended application of this analysis is to treat a complete grinding circuit as a singular process block, irrespective of the number of grinding stages or internal classification steps. Learn more
PROPOSED PROJECTS
Geometallurgy
This proposed project aims to develop a suite of guidelines that will provide industry guidance for how geometallurgy can be used to add value for greenfield or brownfield project development and within an operating site.
Process Control
This proposed project is in the process of defining the areas where guidance would be most valuable. Emerging areas of priority are training and skills framework, plant management, lifecycle modelling and planning, data management, and alarm systems.
Metal Accounting
This proposed project is still largely undefined, as input is needed on where the need for guidance is greatest. During the most recent project call, there was a discussion on what a maturity curve for metal accounting might look like. This will help to narrow down the focus for where a guideline project would be most valuable.
