MINED ORE ANALYSIS AND CONTROL OF RELATED MINING AND EXTRACTION PROCESSES

摘要

In a surface mining operation, real-time ore composition analysis can be used to direct ongoing mining processes, and in blending ore feed streams to achieve a blended dry ore stream that meets operational specifications for downstream processing. Further, the analysis data can be used to control downstream processing steps, for example in determining appropriate volumes and temperature of water and chemicals added to the ore to form a suitable slurry composition for efficient operation of a downstream hydrocarbon extraction process, or to optimize specific processing steps in the extraction of hydrocarbons from oil sands ore, based on the analysis data. The ore analysis data can also be used to update a mine or reservoir map. Ore analysis can be accomplished by infrared reflectance analysis using NIR probes installed on ore transport or processing equipment that come into direct contact with the ore to be analyzed.