Recently, Alastair Mathias, President of Rio Tinto automation center of excellence, shared the innovative practice of Rio Tinto leading mining automation in the past 20 years at the smart mine forum of China International Mining Congress 2020.

Recently, Alastair Mathias, President of Rio Tinto automation center of excellence, shared Rio Tinto's innovative practice of leading mining automation in the past 20 years at the smart mine forum of China International Mining Congress 2020. He also introduced Rio Tinto's future vision in optimizing the industrial chain and coping with key challenges in the industry by using technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and low-carbon solutions.

How to position technological innovation

Technology is at the heart of Rio's business. Any enterprise that wants to create value and reduce risk through technology needs to have a very keen judgment on the ideal place, time and method of technology application. Technology is the source of opportunity, but without the talent to develop, deploy and support technology, its value will be limited.

Rio Tinto learns from all walks of life looking for ideas and opportunities to replicate or improve. Rio Tinto has been committed to the development of patented technology for a long time, with an annual investment of more than US $200 million in early research and development. More funds will be used for the deployment and large-scale application of new technologies in the actual business.

Rio Tinto has a strong innovation culture, world-class technical talents and a wide range of partner ecosystem. Rio Tinto has established centres of excellence in open and underground mining, processing, ore body knowledge and automation. These centers provide centralized technical support, service and support for Rio Tinto's business, and are also excellent platforms for training technical talents.

Lead mining automation

Rio Tinto has been using automation technology for iron ore production and operation in Pilbara region of Western Australia for more than ten years. By the end of 2019, Rio Tinto has operated more than 1800 km of fully automated railway network, 183 driverless automatic trucks, and 26 largest and most advanced automatic drilling rigs in the world.

Rio Tinto's driverless trucks are 15% cheaper to operate than their heavy haul counterparts. Rio Tinto's automatic rigs have increased productivity by 25% and equipment utilization by 40%.

Today, Rio Tinto's operations center in Perth is able to operate the Pilbara mining area, railway system and port 1500 km away, including remote control of unmanned trucks, automatic trains and automatic drilling rigs.

Digitalization promotes industrial chain automation

The transformation from mechanical automation to the whole industry chain digitization contains great value potential. When every link in the industrial chain can obtain real-time information and be optimized, what will the future mine look like? Rio is already preparing for the future.

Since the beginning of this century, Rio Tinto began to develop mine automation system (MAS). Today, MAS has developed into a complex artificial intelligence and machine learning platform, which can track almost all the situations of the whole production and operation network, including the situation of each vehicle transporting materials, stacking model, mixing parameters, etc., and optimize the production and operation activities on a large scale.

MAS also collects real-time drilling information, automatic drilling and blasting design, automatic ore body model updating, multi-objective mining fleet optimization, and information collected by various sensors in production and operation. There is no other commercial product that can compete with MAS in the digital integration ability of mining data.

Data analysis and artificial intelligence improve productivity

Rio Tinto is taking productivity to new heights by applying data analysis and artificial intelligence.

At the Kennecott copper mine in Utah, Rio Tinto is using predictive models to improve copper recovery. In the past, factory operators relied on daily schedules to set their batching strategies. Of course, once the plan changes, it will bring challenges to production and production. By developing a machine learning model linked to real-time feeding data, the optimal batching strategy can now be set accurately.

In Pilbara, Western Australia, Rio Tinto also uses big data to identify hard to break ores before they reach the crusher. These information will be fed back to the operators in real time, so that they can adjust the mixing strategy in time and improve the ore processing efficiency. Practice has proved that big data has reduced material handling problems by 40% in Pilbara iron ore processing plant.

At port Alfred in Saguenay, Canada, Rio Tinto is deploying an analytical model to better predict ship arrival times. This is expected to reduce demurrage costs by 20%.

Embracing science and technology to meet key challenges of the industry

At present, the whole industry has undergone structural changes. In the new era of sustainable development, the society's expectation of science and technology has greatly increased. All industry participants must have effective methods to manage significant risks.

Rio Tinto introduced the global tailings standard in 2015. Better methods are being actively sought to minimize waste in operation and improve tailings management. One of the opportunities they have been focusing on is to reuse the tailings from Rio Tinto's borax mine in California, USA, and recycle by-products.

Water use and recycling is another area where Rio Tinto has made significant progress. Rio Tinto has set water use targets for each mine and uses technology to minimize water use and maximize recycling.

Rio Tinto is also committed to energy transformation. Rio Tinto's aluminum business in Canada only uses hydropower, with about 15% of its electricity coming from wind power in the diamond mine of Diavik, and solar power in the bauxite mines of Weipa and amrun in Australia. Rio Tinto is also working with equipment suppliers to look for opportunities to apply hybrid and electric equipment.

Since 2018, Rio Tinto has also been working with Alcoa, apple and the Canadian federal and Quebec governments to develop the elysistm carbon free electrolytic aluminum technology.

Sustainable development, partnerships and data will be the basis for all future work.

Rio Tinto's goal is to continue to pioneer the industry, and Rio is ready to meet this challenge.