By Hennie Colyn, direct sales executive: process automation at Schneider Electric.
Process automation plays a vital role in making the mining industry more sustainable. It enhances operational efficiency, while reducing environmental impact. By leveraging advanced automation systems, mining companies can optimise resource utilisation, minimise energy consumption, and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Process automation contributes to sustainability by enabling precise and data-driven decision making. It delivers real-time monitoring and control of mining operations from a central location that allows for immediate response and adjustments to changing conditions. This ensures that processes are running at their most efficient levels, minimising waste and unnecessary resource usage.
Importantly, process automation facilitates predictive maintenance, which can assist in identifying and addressing mining equipment issues before they escalate into costly breakdowns. This proactive approach not only minimises downtime but also extends the lifespan of mining equipment, reducing the need for frequent replacements and associated resource consumption.
Sustainable mining with process automation
An important differentiator of process automation is its ability to be used in selective mining, targeting high-grade ore deposits with precision. This reduces the amount of overburden that needs to be removed, minimising the environmental disturbance, and preserving surrounding ecosystems.
According to research, as much as five tons of overburden can be produced for every ton of productive material extracted, depending on the mining method used. Minimising overburden is therefore a major advantage for sustainability.
Automation can also help streamline mining operations, eliminating inefficiencies that can negatively impact the business and the environment. For instance, analytics solutions can help identify areas where an organisation is producing excess waste, enabling mining organisations to take actions to mitigate it.
Process automation offers the following important benefits to mining operations:
• Safety: Direct exposure to mining processes and equipment operations poses a significant risk to miners. By automating a process, companies can take the necessary steps to alleviate potential injury to their operators. Furthermore, certain parts of the mining process can be automated, exposing fewer workers to hazardous areas.
• Transparency of consumption: Energy visibility is the starting point for decarbonisation. Obtaining insights from across the value chain is vital for measuring what you use and controlling what you measure.
• Precise and data-driven decision making: This removes any bias or subjectivity from the process. By relying on data and analysis, mining organisations can make decisions based solely on facts rather than personal preferences, previous experience or opinions.
• Predictive maintenance: This seeks to prevent equipment failure and downtime by connecting IoT-enabled enterprise assets, applying advanced analytics to the real-time data it delivers, and using the resultant insights to inform educated, cost-effective and efficient maintenance protocols.
Ultimately, process automation offers precise, data-driven analytics that can assist mining organisations in reducing resource consumption, improving safety, while meeting sustainability requirements and targets.
AI data centres, nature and innovation Schneider Electric South Africa
IT in Manufacturing
Artificial intelligence is driving unprecedented demand for data centre capacity, with liquid cooling now central to managing the heat generated by high-density GPU clusters. Schneider Electric examines how next-generation data centres can balance performance with environmental responsibility.
Read more...Decarbonising the energies and chemical industry without the risk Schneider Electric South Africa
Electrical Power & Protection
Schneider Electric argues that decarbonisation in Africa’s energies and chemical industry need not compromise production or profitability. A phased, digitally enabled approach, starting with energy efficiency improvements, can reduce emissions while strengthening competitiveness.
Read more...How to navigate the high-stakes economics of AI infrastructure
IT in Manufacturing
Nearly 60% of data centre operators are expected to adopt liquid cooling within five years as AI workloads drive demand for higher rack densities. Understanding the full financial picture of liquid cooling, from capital investment to long-term operational savings, is now essential.
Read more...Protecting the digital mine RJ Connect
IT in Manufacturing
As mining becomes increasingly connected and automated, cyber threats are emerging alongside the benefits of digitalisation. RJ Connect and provides rugged networking, edge computing and cybersecurity technologies from MOXA to help protect critical mining operations from evolving attacks.
Read more...The rise of software-defined brownfield automation Schneider Electric South Africa
PLCs, DCSs & Controllers
Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Automation Expert is enabling brownfield operators to modernise incrementally, decoupling control logic from hardware to bridge legacy equipment and future-ready operations without disrupting production.
Read more...Predictive maintenance is the critical enabler for AI data centre liquid cooling systems
IT in Manufacturing
As liquid cooling becomes essential for AI data centres, predictive and condition-based maintenance are emerging as critical enablers of thermal stability. Schneider Electric argues that the infrastructure is already generating the data needed and the question is whether operators are equipped to use it.
Read more...Siemens software scales with Simple Energy EV development Siemens South Africa
IT in Manufacturing
: Simple Energy, an Indian electric two-wheeler manufacturer, has expanded its use of Siemens Xcelerator software to manage complex vehicle variants and enterprise-level bills of materials, accelerating product development as its EV portfolio scales.
Read more...ESG as a growth lever RS South Africa
IT in Manufacturing
Leading organisations are treating ESG not as a compliance obligation but as a practical tool for operational efficiency, supply chain resilience and business performance, with data and collaboration central to unlocking its value.
While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained herein, the publisher and its agents cannot be held responsible for any errors contained, or any loss incurred as a result. Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers. The editor reserves the right to alter or cut copy. Articles submitted are deemed to have been cleared for publication. Advertisements and company contact details are published as provided by the advertiser. Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd cannot be held responsible for the accuracy or veracity of supplied material.
printer friendly version