Anglo American seeking startups for February visit

Anglo American, a British mining company, is looking for startups in bio technology, rapid access, improved recovery, dry processing, mining legacy, sensor fusion, and EPC disruption. The meetings will take place on Feb. 26 from 11am to 5pm and Feb. 27 from 11am to 5pm.

Bio technology

Problem statements

• Chemical leaching of sulphides continues to struggle. Can bio-leaching deliver a solution to access the value in waste / tailings and low-grade stockpiles?
• Bioleaching kinetics are not suitable to primary processing (our copper mines process 5,000 tph) - how can it unlock the $billions of metal in waste?
• What is the role of biotechnology in our pursuit of regenerative mining operations?

Relevant Technologies

• Bio-leaching of:
  • Tailings facilities
    • Low grade stockpiles
    • Prepared and conditioned heaps
• New bacteria to overcome sulphide passivation issues
• Pre-conditioning with biology to weaken rock: either underground or surface
• DNA/RNA modification / engineering
• Bio-treatment of water at our mine sites

Solutions will deliver:

• Legacy solutions to historic sites – generating value AND solving environmental issues
• Low cost, environmentally-benign leach solutions to maximise metal recovery

RAPID Access

Problem statements

• Discoveries take years to characterize, develop and build, how can we gain access and initiate extraction with minimal capital footprint?
• How can we drive access immediately into the orebody to understand and characterize the asset in real time during development?

Relevant technologies

• Remote sensing through rock (~10m) / complete sensory coverage while moving through rock
• Fast cutting with or without pre-conditioning of rock, materials science and applied engineering on cutting disks
• Pre-conditioning means: projectile weakening, microwave, thermal, high pressure water, high-V cracking, laser, plasma etc..
• Models of sub-surface hydrogeology
• Fracking in hard rock and safe lixiviants to deliver metal rich solute to boreholes (see bio-technology slide!)

Solutions will deliver:

• Extremely rapid tunneling, shaft sinking, 3-5x faster than current methods
• In-situ recovery solutions; drill to mine (drill cuttings are ore, not waste)

Improved recovery

Problem statements

• Most of our metal we ‘lose’ is transported, crushed, ground but simply not recovered using current methods – it’s there on surface in our tailings dumps and is worth billions of dollars – how do we get it?
• We are still grinding too much barren rock; how can we reject waste earlier in the value chain?

Relevant technologies

• Sensors that can accurately sort rock at ALL size fractions
• New separation technology that operates at ALL size fractions (e.g. dry separation) - CLASSIFICATION
• New reagents that deliver selective dissolution of metals
• Large scale, low cost metal recovery – passive, ionic, phyto separation
• New chemistry

Solutions will deliver:

• Total recovery of the target metal over time
• Reprocessing of tailings to deliver value and clean up legacy issues through removal of tailings dams
• Cheaper handling solutions for our tailings waste – making existing recovery options more economic.

DRY PROCESSING

Problem statements

• How can operations with increasing mineral endowments expand production when water is not available?
• A mining company’s water consumption is increasingly under scrutiny and most governments place mining at the back of the queue for water rights.

Relevant technologies

• CLASSIFICATION in a dry form – delivering tight size fractions
• DRY SEPARATION techniques that do NOT rely on the hydrophobicity of minerals, but other properties like density, magnetics, electrostatics
• Particle sorting based on mineral properties (not water dependent)
• New reagents / chemistry that deliver selective dissolution of metals

Solutions will deliver:

• Ability to guarantee 0% moisture material (slightly damp material is VERY difficult to process) – solar thermal to guarantee dry product and facilitate separation and handling
• Scalable dry classification of powders and fine sand to deliver feed for new separation techniques
• Dry processing techniques for concentrating ore without water
• Agglomeration of waste material to deliver dust-free storage or re-use.

Legacy

Problem statements

• How can mining improve it’s end-of-life performance?
• Mining operations need to deliver positive impacts to the environment or the local community on closure – how do we operate now to ensure this happens

Relevant technologies

• Tailings valorization – how can we access the billions of dollars of value in our tailings to profitably leave a positive legacy?
• Rehabilitation technology, monetizing polluted water
• Geopolymerisation
• Passive metal recovery
• Improved metal recovery
• Upcycling of waste rock and minerals

Solutions to deliver:

• Opportunities for both employment and remediation in the process of delivering sustainable value for the region
• New mine plans that deliver shareholder value from both the metals exploited in the primary mining but also from the disturbed land which is configured to deliver value.
• Economic models that outlines pathways for transforming legacy mines into regenenerative economic hubs

Sensor fusion

Problem statements

• Without knowing what is happening, how can we improve and optimise?
• Mining operations have designed whole processes based on not knowing in real time what they are mining or processing – we can know this information but we haven’t yet changed the process to take advantage of it…!

Relevant technologies

• Ore sorting through improved sensing:
  • XRF, neutron, optical, gamma, XRD etc..
• Low quality sensors on water chemistry – combined with machine learning to deliver trends and drive process control – why is NO-ONE doing this?
• Improved remote sensing technologies
• Data analysis and ML on equipment data to drive recovery improvements and improve availability

Solutions to deliver:

• A mine operating system that can deliver scenarios for different mining, processing or market conditions that, in turn, delivers:
• A dynamic mine plan that changes hourly as orebody information is confirmed / updated during mining.
• A transparent mine that knows ALL the time, in REAL time, where the metals/minerals are predicts accurately its performance

EPC Disruption

Problem statements

• How can we design the mine of the future if we are shackled by a legacy foundation?
• Traditional EPC companies provide minimal customisation and tend to over-engineer, seeking to apply “tried & tested” historical designs and specifications 
• Plants are high CAPEX, fixed assets that take years to construct and even longer to payback the investment.
• We value-engineer flexibility out of our plants and allow no opportunity for new technology ingress

Relevant technologies

• Applied data science and machine learning solutions
• Modular design and construction
• Prefabricated architecture and building elements
• Multiple low-risk production lines that ramp-up and pay-back quickly

Solutions to deliver:

• Apply cognitive computing to planning and construction, supplier and logistics support. Deliver project insights, but also providing optimisation solutions
• Effective utilisation of past project data and knowledge to apply that information on future projects and improve efficiency while mitigating risks
• A functional and fit-for-purpose shell that can house and support everchanging internals.

 

In your response, please 

• Explain concisely what you offer
• Your match with the company above and their interest
• Relevant usecases / customer stories 
• Your availability for meeting, see above.