Design And Implementation Of An Onoune Optimising Control System For Processing The Sadiola Hill Oxidised Gold Ore

Sadiola Hill mine is located in the sub-Saharan part of Mali. In its first two years of operations, Sadiola Hill mine had already exceeded expectations with respect to profitability, plant capacity, metallurgical recovery, cash costs and social integration into the area. The advanced control system installed by the authors has been a major contributor in the substantial throughput of the mill over the design tonnage with no loss of recovery. The run-of-mine ore at Sadiola consists of soft clays with a varying percentage of grit, producing a high viscosity slurry. The percentage of grit fed to the plant varies on an hourly basis. This combination was expected to have a large impact on the milling circuit and determined that the early installation of an expert mill control system would be advantageous. Svedala Cisa OCS©, was selected as the most suitable support software. The operational rules and control philosophy are housed in the OCS© graphic-oriented fuzzy expert system while a model­based Soft Sensor has the remarkable ability to detect the variations in grit in the feed. Designed during the second half of 1996, commissioning of the system began in March 1997, the OCS was fully on-line by September. With the implementation of the optimising control strategy a throughput of 5.0 million tons relative to the target of 4.4 million tons was achieved for the 1998-operating year. The Sadiola project confirms that advanced process control techniques are among the most cost-and time-effective methods of improving metallurgical plant performance. The recipe that worked at Sadiola is a mix of metallurgical expertise, proper software selection, adequate design of control philosophy, and excellent plant support and follow­up. The early decision, design and installation of the mill control system has resulted in an enhanced Return on Investment.