Rio Tinto: taking science and technology as the guide to build intelligent mines

SMM: recently, Alastair Mathias, president of Rio Tinto Automation Center of Excellence, shared Rio Tinto's innovative practice of leading mining automation over the past 20 years at the Intelligent Mining Forum of China International Mining Conference in 2020. He also introduced Rio Tinto's future vision of using technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and low-carbon solutions to optimize the industrial chain and meet the key challenges of the industry.

How to position technological Innovation

Technology is at the core of Rio Tinto's business. Any enterprise that wants to create value and reduce risk through technology needs to have a very keen judgment on the ideal place, time and way of technology application. Technology is a source of opportunity, but its value will be limited if there is no talent to develop, deploy and support it.

Rio Tinto learns from a variety of industries, looking for ideas and opportunities that can be copied or improved. Rio Tinto has long been committed to the development of patented technology, spending more than $200 million a year on early research and development. More funds are used for the deployment and large-scale application of new technologies in real business.

Rio Tinto has a strong culture of innovation, world-class technical talent and an extensive ecosystem of partners. Rio Tinto has established centres of excellence in open-pit and underground mining, processing, orebody knowledge and automation. These centers provide centralized technical support, services and support for Rio Tinto's business, and are also excellent platforms for training technical personnel.

Lead mining automation

Rio Tinto has been using automation technology to carry out iron ore production and operation activities on a large scale in the Pilbara area of Western Australia for more than a decade. By the end of 2019, Rio Tinto operated more than 1800 km of fully automatic railway network, 183driverless autonomous trucks and 26 of the world's largest and most technologically advanced automatic drilling rigs in the Pilbara.

Rio's driverless trucks cost 15 per cent less than equivalent heavy-duty trucks. Rio Tinto's automatic drilling rigs increased productivity by 25 per cent and equipment utilization by 40 per cent.

Today, Rio's operations centre in Perth can integrate the Pilbara mining area, rail system and port 1500 kilometers away, including remote control of driverless trucks, automatic trains and automatic drilling rigs. Digitization promotes the automation of industrial chain

The transformation from mechanical automation to the digitalization of the whole industry chain contains great value potential. When every link in the industrial chain can obtain real-time information and be optimized, what will the mine look like in the future? Rio Tinto is already preparing for the future.

Since the beginning of this century, Rio Tinto began to develop mine automation system (MAS). Today, MAS has developed into a complex artificial intelligence and machine learning platform that can track almost everything in the entire production and operation network, including the transportation of materials per vehicle, stacking models, ore mixing parameters, etc., optimizing production and operation activities on a large scale.

MAS also brings together real-time drilling information, automatic rig and blasting design, automatic orebody model updates, multi-objective mining fleet optimization, and information collected by various sensors in production operations. No other commercial product can match MAS in the ability to digitally integrate mining data.

Data Analysis and artificial Intelligence to improve Productivity

Rio Tinto is taking productivity to new heights through the application of data analysis and artificial intelligence.

At the Collito (Kennecott) Copper Mine in Utah, Rio Tinto is using prediction models to improve copper recovery. In the past, factory operators relied on daily schedules to set their batching strategies. Of course, once the plan changes, it will bring challenges to production and production. By developing a machine learning model connected with real-time feed data, the optimal batching strategy can now be set accurately.

In Pilbara, Western Australia, Rio Tinto also used big data to identify unbreakable ores before they reached the crusher. This information will be fed back to the operators in real time, so that they can adjust the ore mixing strategy in time and improve the efficiency of ore processing. It has been proved that big data has reduced material handling problems at the Pilbara iron ore processing plant by 40 per cent.

Rio Tinto, (Port Alfred), of Alfred Port in (Saguenay), Sagne, Canada, is deploying an analytical model to better predict the arrival time of ships. This is expected to reduce demurrage costs by 20 per cent. Embrace technology to meet the key challenges of the industry

At present, structural changes have taken place in the whole industry, and in the new era of sustainable development, society's expectations for science and technology have been greatly increased. All industry participants must have effective ways to manage major risks.

Rio Tinto introduced global tailings standards in 2015. We are actively looking for better ways to minimize waste in operation and improve tailings management. One of the opportunities they have been watching is through the introduction of the tailings of Rio Tinto's borax mine in California, USA.

Then treat and recycle the by-products, so as to realize the reuse of the waste.

The use and recycling of water is another area in which Rio Tinto has made significant progress. Rio Tinto sets water targets for each mine and uses technology to minimize water consumption and maximize recycling.

Rio Tinto is also committed to energy transformation. Rio's aluminium business in Canada uses only hydroelectric power, with about 15 per cent of its electricity coming from wind at the Davik (Diavik) diamond mine, while solar energy is used in Australia's Vepa (Weipa) and Anlang (Amrun) bauxite operations. Rio is also working with equipment suppliers to look for opportunities to use hybrid and electric equipment.

Since 2018, Rio Tinto has also been working with Alcoa, Apple and the Canadian federal and Quebec provincial governments to develop ElysisTM carbon-free aluminum electrolysis technology. Sustainable development, partnerships and data will be the basis for all future work.

Rio Tinto's goal is to continue to set a precedent in the industry, and Rio Tinto is ready to meet this challenge.