Decarbonising mining and mineral extraction with intelligent in-line sensors

矿物开采的采矿作业几乎支撑着全球经济的各个方面。如果没有这些原材料，产品制造业和依赖于它们的服务业就不会存在。尽管全球都在向可持续发展转变，但与采矿，特别是后续材料加工相关的碳足迹占全球排放量的很大比例。例如，将岩石粉碎成适合化学矿石提取的细粉末占全球能源消耗的8%。与这种加工相关的经济和工艺阻碍了对从地下提取的岩石的矿物学含量的实时测量，因此，在加工几乎没有矿物学或商业价值的岩石时，不必要地消耗了大量的能源。我们提出了一种在线的最先进的传感器系统，该系统将使工厂操作员能够以前所未有的速度和准确性访问矿物含量信息，这种技术将允许在处理周期的早期拒绝不经济的废料，从而大大提高工厂操作员的效率，并大大减少与该行业相关的二氧化碳排放。

Mining operations for mineralogical extraction underpins almost every aspect of the global economy. Product manufacture, and the services which depend upon them, would not exist without these raw materials. Despite a global shift towards sustainability, the carbon footprint associated with mining and, particularly, onward material processing accounts for a significant proportion og global emissions. For example, crushing of rocks into a fine powder suitable for onward chemical ore extraction accounts for an enormous 8% of global energy consumption. The economics and processes associated with such processing preclude real-time measurement of the mineralogical content of rocks extracted from the earth, and so a very large amount of energy is needlessly consumed in processing rock of little mineralogical or commercial value. We propose an in-line state-of-the art sensor system which would give plant operators access to mineralogical content information with unprecedented speed and accuracy, Such technology would allow uneconomic spoil to be rejected early on in the processing cycle, thus conferring significant efficiency improvements on plant operators and enormous reductions in CO2 emissions associated with this industry.