State of the art and challenges in mineral processing control

The objective of process control in the mineral industry is to optimise the recovery of the valuable minerals, while maintaining the quality of the concentrates delivered to the metal extraction plants. The paper presents a survey of the control approaches for ore size reduction and mineral separation processes. The present limitations of the measurement instrumentation are discussed, as well as the methods to upgrade the information delivered by the sensors. In practice, the overall economic optimisation goal must be hierarchically decomposed into simpler control problems. Model-based and Al methods are reviewed, mainly for grinding and flotation processes, and classified as mature, active or emerging. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.