The ability of iron ore producers to maintain a consistently high ore grade and consistent functioning of their ore processing facilities is critical in maintaining their competitive edge. Plotlogic’s OreSense system was able to accurately and with high precision map the ore and waste boundaries along with ore grade to inform both mine operators and planners to achieve this goal. 

An iron ore operation in Western Australia was struggling to maintain the consistency of high ore grade more than 25 years of mining. The challenge was to identify type and grade of ore, and waste materials on the mine wall to improve the processing of ore and scheduling of the removal of ore and waste.

Plotlogic’s OreSense® system, uses hyperspectral sensors, LiDAR, and cloud-based computation to map key mineralogies with high precision thereby providing means to accurately and precisely define ore and waste. The OreSense® system was developed to meet the needs of the industry and is capable of acquiring, processing, and classifying hyperspectral data in the field in real time, mapped to terrain and geo-referenced for integration with mine maps, allowing for precise grade control. In addition to this the other significant advantage in is that it makes mining safer and healthier, as it reduces exposure of personnel to the active mine areas and can detect the presence of hazardous fibrous materials.

The OreSense system was deployed to the site for a 4-week period with the core objective to delineate and quantify the minerals of interest, hematite, goethite, limonite and clays from the hyperspectral data acquired from mine faces, stockpiles and samples. Measures of the hematite/goethite ratio, which contribute to the assessment of the quality of the iron ore, were also completed.

Photo by William Gaffney on Flickr.