Remember, if it can’t be grown, then it has to be mined.
Minerals and metals are building blocks of all new technologies,
and all, actually, existing technologies.
Reports estimate that mining comminution takes about 3-4% of the global energy budget.
So it’s a massive energy draw. It’s also, at the same time, very, very inefficient.
Developing new comminution processes is so expensive and the timeline for adoption so long
that very few people are bold enough to start the journey.
CanMicro is transformative because we use microwaves to transmit energy directly to the
desired location of breakage in rocks and to sort ores to remove barren material prior to grinding.
Lucky for us in mineral processing, valuable minerals typically heat well upon
microwave exposure, whereas low value minerals do not. So microwave treatment of ores results
in a differential thermal expansion of mineral grains yielding fracture along grain boundaries,
and also gives rocks containing valuable minerals a thermal signature.
In CanMicro we use these effects to reduce ore competency, selectively liberate valuable
minerals, and to sort ore particles so that waste rock can be rejected before grinding.
TCO2 is innovative in the sense that it uses a completely different principle
for breaking rock than traditional mechanical comminution. We formulated this idea where we
would put the rock in a chamber, we would inject CO2, we would compress the volume
inside the chamber. The CO2 would permeate through the rock rapidly because it's now in
a supercritical state. And then we rapidly decompress the chamber below the critical
threshold. That process of rapidly decompressing the chamber causes the CO2 to rapidly expand.
And that rapid expansion then permeates throughout the rock, and you shatter the rock from within.
Everybody has a heart to design more eco-efficient flow sheets.
But it is a very complex problem composed of multiple input variables,
extensive equipment options, and multiple flow sheet configurations.
This is what IntelliCrush will deliver. Artificial intelligence is about decision making.
COREM, IVADO, and BBA will provide years of comminution test data,
flow sheet designs, and A.I. algorithms know-how: a winning foundation for IntelliCrush.
We will use it to evolve optimal circuits, and we will use it to establish the best
sequence of tests and decisions to design eco-efficient flow sheets.
High pressure grinding rolls or HPGR use compression, the most energy efficient
approach to grinding currently known. Recently, this technology has been increasingly adopted by
the mining industry. However, it is mostly limited to primary grinding in replacement of SAG mills.
The ore is still brought to its final size by very energy inefficient ball mills,
which consume approximately half the grinding energy in a circuit.
We want to demonstrate that HPGR can also replace ball mills.
CMIC and its members identified energy in comminution as a key challenge and agreed
to collaborate and find a solution. A global technology scan identified 26 technologies,
with CAHM being the only one that showed remarkable potential
for significant energy reduction and readiness for commercialization.
The outer anvil ring has pockets at its inner surface. The inner hammer ring has
protrusions that mesh with the anvil pockets as the rings rotate in unison.
Ore feeds from both ends above the hammer and flows into the gap between the rings. Large
rocks are broken by point loading. Small rocks and fragments flow into the pockets and are crushed by
the hammers. Hammers then push fractured rocks through the bottom slot in each pocket and
into a collection chute. Gravity and hydraulic pistons apply the hammer rock breaking force.
Our innovation, SHOT, selectively weakens ore right at the boundary
between the valuable grain mineral and the waste-ore host rock gangue.
When minerals heat, they expand. And this expansion causes fracture at the grain boundary,
that can lead to reduced ore competency, and enhanced liberation. These mechanisms offer
the opportunity to reduce comminution energy requirements, increase throughput, increase
grind size, and increase valuable metal recovery. The Crush-It! Challenge was a great opportunity
to apply SHOT technology to specific Canadian ores. It was great to be able to demonstrate
the applicability of SHOT technology to Canadian miners.
I think one of the challenges with microwave technology is that you can't demonstrate energy
savings at the bench scale. You need to go big, you need to have high tonnage, you need to have
high power. It's a big jump from, you know, something that looks like a kitchen microwave
to one hundred and fifty kilowatts. So the influx of cash from NRCan allowed
us to advance the technology more quickly than we otherwise would have been able to.
We started off with this project as a team of 3 from Envisioning Labs, but over
the project, we were able to grow that team from 3 to almost more than 10 people.
It's really the Crush It! Challenge that really
provided that spark that allowed us to turn the idea into a project.
Great opportunity to advance our technologies but also as innovators,
we are very excited by what we've seen from the other projects.
I strongly recommend this model as applied to other areas in the mining industry
innovation ecosystem needing rapid and transformative change.