A recent article in the July 2020 issue of CIM Magazine written by Herb Mathisen describes why analyzing data is essential when implementing your blasting strategy and reducing processing costs. DataCloud’s mission is to help mining companies capture, understand, and harness data in order to improve operations and production goals. We’re proud to be included in this article as a technological solution to looking at your operations holistically.
An excerpt from the article is below.
To zoom out on the effect blasting has on overall site costs, miners can use DataCloud’s MinePortal mine-to-mill software that plugs in data streams from each part of the operation and links them together in one place. “I think anyone can look at single-correlation factors, but it’s the interdependence between a number of factors that actually matters. It’s a lot harder for us as human beings to just look at data and see,” said North Jones, business solutions consultant with DataCloud.
“Basically, our first step is bringing everything together and then looking for cause and effect.”MinePortal can let miners track a problem in one stage of the process and work back to find a solution. For instance, it can identify a contaminant in ore from one area that is causing processing issues and let the customer seamlessly blend that ore with ore from another area to reduce the contaminant’s effects in the mill. “Instead of just spending money on the hopes that something has an effect down the road, we’re able to quantify whether that effect actually appeared or not,” said Jones.
A dashboard display lets users view their cost per tonne through each stage of the mining process. By spending a few more cents per tonne on blasting to fine-tune fragmentation, users may actually save five cents per tonne downstream. “In a lot of cases, there is still that siloing, so people are looking for individual savings and not necessarily looking at the bottom line of the company,” said Jones. “It’s nice to be the blasting manager and say you saved five per cent, but if you really cost the company more money overall, did you really achieve anything?”
Article excerpt from CIM Magazine, July 2020 - written by Herb Mathisen
To read the full article click here.
