Learnings From Five Years of On-Site Mla at Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation: (Myth Busters Through Quantitative Evidence…)

Abstract

The Bingham Canyon mine at Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation (KUC) has been operating for over 100 years. Over time certain operating facets became accepted as fact. This tribal knowledge became the excuse for poor performance without quantitative evidence. In 2005, KUC received a Mineral Liberation Analyser (MLA) and began monitoring the concentrator performance. This article highlights the value of an on-site MLA. The initial MLA results were met with scepticism as conventional wisdom was countered consistently with statistically sound evidence. Areas of potential improvement in the flowsheet were identified. Analysis of multi-year datasets showed ore definitions from the mine could be reduced from over 30 to 5 processing domains. Changes in concentrator operating conditions to optimise recovery could be made based on mineralogy. The knowledge gained from having an MLA at KUC will assist future processing as KUC moves into lower grade zones that are more difficult to recover.