Those involved on commercial minerals processing and metallurgical operations: what are the things that consume most of an operator's/metallurgist's time & energy on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis?
This question is broad on purpose. Speak from your experience as much as possible.
Thank you in advance!
Comments
Hello, Niel.
Mineral processing processes are well studied and there are solutions for their automation.
I work with coal briquettes and the entire complex, from the supply of coal to the output of ready-made briquettes, can serve 3-4 people.
Their main task is to control the work and adjust it.
You must keep in touch with the operators to understand the problems and opportunities for improving the process.
Modern IT technologies allow you to get a lot of statistics, but they have little effect on the process itself.
A lot of manual work at the laboratory to check the quality of products.
If necessary, I can tell you in more detail.
I wish you success, Roberts.
Inventions =production time management
Hi
Your question is too general, can you be specific ? Main role of operator in the processing plant is to push tonnage in safely way and maximaze recovery to deliver feasible production. Pushing tonnage depending on the Plant availability and efficiency , so as operator he/She looking to deliver big result based on those criterial
Thanks for the reply, Shabani.
You have clarified to me what an operator's KPIs are, or what they are chasing. My question is about the actual tasks/work they focus on: what wastes an operator's time?
What should consume the time is:
Making sure everyone is working as a team
Ensure any problems are reported promptly and a solution is applied rapidly
Talk to operators on a shift basis so they will feel free to discuss operations, any problems and any possible ways to improve operations. If the operator does not feel that he will be listened to he will not give his opinion.
Keep operators informed of plant operations and how things are going. Give them suggestions to improve work and production
Ensure all safety equipment is functioning and spares items such as gloves are available.
Not all but enough to get started.
Ralph Stricklen
Thanks for the reply, Ralph!
Sounds like communication (in many forms) is a big common denominator here...
Petrovsky's Matrix allow me to do this work in a few minutes (hours) without a laboratory and experiments!
You need my "Mineral Benefication Information System" and "Petrovsky's Matrix"
https://gladiolus1.blogspot.com/2019/02/you-need-my-mineral-benefic...
This is a good question.
For example, a flotation experiment using the standard procedure takes 15 minutes. Some believe that 1 worker can do 32 experiments, but this is not so.
Preparation for the experiment may take about 8 hours (averaging, sampling, crushing, grinding, preparation, reagents, tidy ...).
After the experiment, another 8 hours (drying, extraction of the concentrate and sampling, tidy ...)
Further analysis, calculation, another 8 hours.
Then you need to conclude. It is still a lot of time.
If this is not a standard experiment, then preparation may take 1 month or more.
Hope that helped you.
Very good, thank you.