Episode 5 - CEEC Medal Series - Insights with Dr Grant Ballantyne from Ausenco and 2020 CEEC Medal Winner

In today’s episode of the 2020 CEEC Medal insights series, CEEC Director Joe Pease interviews Dr Grant Ballantyne, Head of Technical Solutions with Ausenco after the presentation of his 2020 CEEC Medal for outstanding work.

Grant shares exciting technologies key to reduce mining’s footprint, including options that can reduce water, tailings or energy by 50%. As we strive towards net zero design and operation of processing plants, we must account for embodied energy in ancillary equipment such as steel grinding media and conveyors, which can add 30 to 50 per cent more energy use.

Topics covered in this podcast include:-

• An overview of Grant’s Medal Winning paper Quantifying The Additional Energy Consumed By Ancillary Equipment And Embodied In Grinding Media In Comminution Circuit
• Grant’s work on developing CEEC’s Energy Curves project with the Sustainable Minerals Institute
• Why you need to consider the bigger picture of the energy footprint
• What’s involved in designing an energy efficient comminution circuit
• Ways to reduce media consumption
• The origin of the drive to go to embodied and ancillary equipment
• Core separation as one way to reduce energy and water consumption
• Benefits of coarse particle flotation or other coarse separation technologies.
• New technologies coming in that complement the bulk ore sorting and coarse particle flotation
• Assessing the NPV of major projects
• The benefits of staging implementations for de-risking
• Modeling different technical techniques
• The future of copper mining
• Getting a higher grade feed to the processing plant to make it more economic
• Why sag and ball milling are not the enemies many people think that they are
• What we can learn from work that was done in the 1950’s
• Equipment around dry comminution
• Eriez Hydrofloat separator at the Cadia operation in NSW
• Technologies and strategies that can result in reducing energy, water and tailings by 50%
• Addressing the financial implications of new technologies
• The changes that industry needs to be adopting the next 10 years
• The biggest challenges facing mines