The business drivers in the mining industry are evolving and there is currently more emphasis on productivity, energy consumption and the cost of operations.

As a result, General Electric (GE) Intelligent Platforms, a unit of US multinational conglomerate corporation GE Energy, offers the industry its Proficy MaxxMine solution to improve equipment performance and availability.

The company introduced its solution at the Mining and Metals Productivity Summit, held in Johannesburg last week.

GE Intelligent Platforms commercial product leader Derick Moolman stated that there was an increasing emphasis in the mining industry on remote operations and diagnostics, as well as on managing energy consumption and costs, while preparing for long-term growth and managing margins.

“The mining industry is healthy and there is significant growth projected ahead. However, mining companies are under pressure from costs and layoffs to contain costs, as well as low net profit margins. Proficy MaxxMine is a proven solution that improves equipment performance and availability and reduces maintenance costs,” he said.

The Proficy MaxxMine is an integrated real-time, 24/7 solution that enables mining companies to make quick and accurate decisions to ensure process performance is balanced with equipment health.

The solution increases operational visibility, which helps companies to fully capitalise on available resources and meet their production targets safely. It also increases equipment availability time to produce a good return on assets and it allows for quick, planned repairs, but only when needed.

Further, it offers increased performance by improving operating results through better asset and process performance, use and planning.

“For a milling circuit, for example, the Proficy MaxxMine solution calculates the optimal setpoints to stabilise and draw optimal performance of the circuit. Simultaneously, the solution provides real-time predictive anomaly detection and diagnostics to increase asset availability and reduce maintenance costs.

“The solution monitors the sump pump, electric motor and gearbox, and increases the lining lifetime. The solution can improve throughput from 1% to 10% within grind quality constraints, while also reducing specific energy consumption,” Moolman explained.

Platinum miner Lonmin automation manager for the Marikana smelter Percy French attested to the performance of the technology and stated that the operational staff regarded the solution as a real-time control system.

“Our objective at the smelter management group is to stay competitive and we had to explore all our options to improve our processes and equipment performance to improve productivity. With the Proficy MaxxMine solution, we can monitor our entire plant,” he stated.

The solution consists of a production management applications, with various modules and tools that offer offline and real-time multivariate process control, process-deviation cause analyses, advanced process control and control loop monitoring.

Abnormal process variations, causes of process variation in real-time and poor-performing control assets can be identified and visualised with the applications, which can be configured and customised for optimal use.

The customised applications include real-time displays and the use of a combination of advanced analytical techniques to properly account for the complexity of any process.

The Proficy MaxxMine solution uses a data-driven empirical approach that leverages existing instrumentation and information technology infrastructures. The software constantly samples data from companies’ data historians and analyses it to detect, diagnose and prioritise impending problems.

“Our advanced modelling sytem, protected by more than 40 patents, puts the normal operating relationships into context. The software does this automatically, continuously, and relentlessly, 24 hours a day. A typical early incident alert from the Proficy MaxxMine solution occurs between three and ten weeks before other systems. When it detects a problem, the Proficy MaxxMine solution sends a notification to the people who need to know, with a brief summary of the problem, key tags and values,” Moolman said.

He added that multiple alerts were combined into one diagnostic notification, which narrowed the range of potential problems and reported urgency. This drove productivity toward resolving pressing equipment issues to avoid more expensive challenges down the line.

The solution could be used in two ways. GE Intelligent Platforms could host the solution and provide monitoring services for the company remotely from its Availability & Performance Center, or companies could host the solution at their premises.

GE Intelligent Platforms’ Avail-ability & Performance Center provides optional, full and flexible support for large-equipment oper- ators worldwide, seven days a week. The centre currently does monitor more than 4 000 assets in the mining, power and oil and gas industries.

To ease implementation and inte- gration, GE Intelligent Platforms deploys the solution and maintains the models to help companies obtain value quickly and optimally.

Moolman noted that users of the Proficy MaxxMine reported a return on investments after six to twelve months – some much sooner – and more than 95% of clients renewed their subscriptions each year.