To understand how industries are leveraging emerging technologies to improve operations and drive revenue, CIO South Africa spoke to Celenkosini Lukhele, senior manager: digital data transformation, group exploration at De Beers Consolidated Mines, who revealed that AI, machine-learning and drones are just some of the key technologies improving operations in the country’s mining industry.
According to Celenkosini, mining companies leverage emerging technologies such as AI throughout the mining value chain, resulting in safer, sustainable, and efficient operations.
“Exploration Surveys are first carried out using aircraft, the infilling (follow-up) was usually carried out on the ground,” he says. “However, in recent years exploration teams use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, to produce high resolution anomalies and targets.
“The data is processed at the edge (closer to the source) using high-end mobile servers. Also, instead of geos doing inversion and anomaly picking, these are done by machine learning (ML) algorithms which are capable of doing inversion much faster and more accurately than geos. The geologists just audit the results,” Celenkosi continues.
Drilling usually follows once targets (anomalies) are identified - during drilling geological, geochemical, and geophysical data is collected and analysed. “Once again, the sampling processing and core logging process used to be long and tedious. However, core-logging is now automated/assisted by AI-ML, with the geos auditing results. Multimodal AI robots are in the sorting process as junior sorting. Thus, sorters only work with highly concentrated samples,” he adds.
Connectivity and automation in mining
Mining operations often take place in remote areas, where connectivity can be a challenge. Celenkosi explains that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite technologies, such as OneWeb and Starlink, are enabling high-speed data transfers, improving collaboration between field teams and head offices.
Autonomous drilling and hauling have also been game changers in enhancing productivity and safety. “Most South African mining companies operate a mixed fleet of autonomous and manual drilling equipment,” he says. “However, autonomous hauling is still in its early stages locally. Many mining houses are also using advanced process control (APC) in their beneficiation plants. APC optimises plant operations by adjusting multiple parameters in real time, allowing process controllers to focus on more critical tasks.”
Digital twins: the future of predictive maintenance
With digital twin technology gaining traction in industrial operations, mining companies are integrating digital twins to enhance predictive maintenance and minimise unplanned downtime.
“Digital twins help mining companies where there is no sufficient existing/historical data to help create different scenarios/simulations,” Celenkosi explains. “Mining houses have created digital twins to aid in production planning, thus clearly understanding process parameters they can leverage to achieve desired/optimum production.”
He adds that digital twins are also valuable for equipment maintenance.
“They display the condition of components and when it is likely to fail, thus helping the team to organise spares and resources required. This has bolstered up-time, thus improving productivity in the mining operations. Also, condition-based monitoring is integrated into predictive maintenance, thus sweating the assets instead of replacing based on running hours,” Celenkosi concludes.
