Technological innovation in Córrego do Sítio Mineração - A study of technical and economic aspects by using sensor-based sorting for refractory gold ore

Abstract

The mining sector has a fundamental financial and economical role in the country where it practices these activities. In addition to employment creation and socialcultural development, the mining sector brings economic growth to the country. However, the sector is facing challenges due to COVID-19, incidents involving tailings dam facilities, rising energy costs, low grade ore deposits, restrictions in mining regulations and access to the available resources. Currently sensor-based sorting (SBS) is well known and applied worldwide in the food, recycling, grain separation industries, and processing of metals, such as diamond, gold, platinum, and feldspar. In the mining industry, ore sorting technology can result in significant improvement in ore quality by removing gangue, uplifting grades, reducing cost reduction and recovering minerals. In this article, we discuss the ore sorting test work and modeled cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for refractory gold ore at Córrego do Sítio Mineração, based on the test results and operating parameters.

A Review of Sensor-Based Sorting in Mineral Processing: The Potential Benefits of Sensor Fusion

“…A classification of sensorfusion applications in mineral processing was proposed. A few implementations of sensor fusion [19,27,34] were found in the literature and were discussed along with several identified potential applications. It was found that while sensor fusion offers significant potential, few implementations have been reported, and these typically have some limitations.…”

“…The review identified numerous studies of XRT sensor-based sorting [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]31]. It was found that XRT sorting was effective for a wide variety of ore types including coal, copper, rare earth elements, tin and zinc.…”

“…Numerous studies of sorting using optical/infrared imaging were identified within the review [19,22,24,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. It was found that optical and infrared imaging were suitable for sorting a wide range of ores including coal, copper, gold, lead, marble, mineral sands, rare earth elements, tin and zinc.…”

“…Another example of the implementation of class 4 sensor fusion was presented in the study by Assis et al [19], where particles of a sulfide gold ore were sorted using both XRT imaging and LASER reflection sensing. In this case, the sensors were used individually to sense different characteristics of the ore associated with gold enrichment.…”