CEEC’s Chilean Mining Energy Innovation forum was an outstanding success, attracting around 50 delegates in the lead-up to Procemin-Geomet 2017.
Thanks to strong participation by mining operators and leaders, industry experts, researchers and CEEC sponsors (such as Anglo American, Goldcorp, Metso, Hatch, Ausenco, Eriez and Donhad), professionals from South America and beyond helped share important insights and advances.
The highly interactive, half-day forum included keynote speakers Cleve Lightfoot (BHP) and Jaime Sepulveda (J-Consultants). Chaired by Romke Kuyvenhoven, the industry panel comprised leading experts from Goldcorp/Exeter, Lundin Mining, Metso, Hatch, Eriez, and a Chilean-based energy and water researcher.
Opportunities for South America – deliver value through energy and water efficiency
Delegates discussed unique challenges and opportunities across South America. The audience recognised a wide range of options for Chilean and other sites to deliver value through energy and water efficiency.
Strategies were highlighted to improve energy efficiency, water use, reduce costs, increase productivity and profit. Case studies were shared from South American as well as global operations showing different approaches to practical energy and productivity improvement.
Not only were improvements discussed, opportunities were shared of emerging advances for innovative and disruptive step-change.
Forum panellist Suzanne Lynch-Watson, Metso Global Consulting and Labs Manager, noted the challenges and opportunities facing the global mining industry. “Not only can we improve efficiency and productivity now but we face a challenge and an exciting opportunity to accelerate step-change to meet world demand sustainably in the future,” she said.
A senior industry leader encouraged delegates to challenge the “designs they love” and be open to new ideas. Delegates heard that the way the industry had approached mining and processing would fundamentally change during their professional lifetimes, with exciting new technologies and rapid advances emerging and being implemented around the world.
The audience noted there are already proven, low-cost and low-capex strategies that can be employed to improve energy efficiency and increase productivity – with many examples shared, inspiring take-aways back to sites and teams across South America.
Leaders encouraged all to embrace change and innovative practices, which was viewed as vital for our industry’s future and integral to step-change improvements in productivity. Opening our minds and actively exploring new technologies and approaches was seen as an important opportunity to proactively address high energy costs, the challenges of water restrictions and community support.
Free global benchmarking and improvement tools shared
Dr Grant Ballantyne from the University of Queensland’s SMI JK Mineral Research Centre presented the approach behind the comminution energy curves hosted on CEEC’s website, which are provided to all, free of charge. He shared six practical case studies demonstrating valuable insights that can be gleaned using these free global benchmarking and improvement tools, which now include around 60% world copper production, and many other commodities. This means Chilean producers can use these to plot and assess how they are performing compared to not only their Chilean peers, but similar operations around the world.
Participants agreed that a dual approach is needed to tackle declining productivity and deliver greater value: Implementing a range of existing, practical ‘incremental’ improvement solutions, and also investments supporting innovative technologies in comminution and mineral processing practice.
Bold targets, free resources and collaborative sharing of insights – for site solutions and to drive innovative step-change
CEEC’s CEO highlighted what organisations are doing around the world to set and strive towards bold new targets, and the importance of setting these performance targets was recognised to drive innovative step-change.
Delegate feedback confirmed the forum was an excellent opportunity to share insights and practical solutions to site-based challenges.
The forum also helped inspire support for innovative advances and create awareness of free resources available to support companies in finding out more about case studies of success, and improvement and innovation options for their sites.
Our sincere thanks to a fantastic and vibrant community in Chile, and to all involved
CEEC is particularly grateful to forum facilitator and panel Chair Romke Kuyvenhoven for her dedicated time as a volunteer to help make the event a success, and for the strong support and uptake by Chilean and other participants. We also thank five dedicated Chilean university students, who generously volunteered their time on the day to assist in registration and delegate welcome.
CEEC thanks the University of Queensland’s SMI ICE Chile for their generous technical and financial support of this event in Chile.
CEEC also thanks Gecamin for support of CEEC to run this event at the same venue, Hotel Santiago (Hyatt), in the lead up to their excellent Procemin-Geomet conference, an important global event showcasing South American insights, well worth attending.
CEEC proudly acknowledges our visionary sponsors, who support CEEC’s not-for-profit work and mission. Without this support, we would not be able to hold workshops and forums to help drive energy-efficient, productive solutions in mineral processing globally. Our sponsors make CEEC’s free resources, international workshops and global awards possible.
CEEC, a global not-for-profit company, is funded wholly by valued sponsorship from the mineral industry – Anglo American, Antofagasta Minerals, Ausenco, Barrick Gold, Bechtel, CITIC-HIC, CRC ORE, Donhad, Eriez, FL Smidth, Freeport McMoran, Gekko Systems, Glencore Technology, Goldcorp, Hatch, Metso, New Gold Inc, Orica, Oz Minerals, PETRA Data Science, Sandvik, Steinert, TOMS Institute and Weir Minerals.
CEEC: bringing global ideas from miners, METS and researchers together to drive energy efficient mineral production.
By the Industry. For the Industry.
PHOTO (Above): Jaime Sepulveda (J-Consultants) delivers his keynote address.
