Video Sampling for Mine to Mill Performance Evaluation,

Model Calibration and Simulation*

By
+

J.A. Herbst and S.L. Blust ++

+

J.A. Herbst & Associates, LLC, Kealakekua, HI

++

National Steel Pellet Company, Keewatin, MN

This paper is to be published by SME in the proceedings of Control 2000 Symposium to held in
conjunction with the 2000 SME Annual Meeting and Exhibit, February 28-March 1, Salt Lake City, Utah.

ABSTRACT
Optimizing blasting, crushing and grinding operations is filled with challenges.
One of the more difficult tasks is accurately sampling and determining the size
distributions of blasted and crushed materials at a reasonable cost. The task is difficult
because of the large size of fragments and the tonnage involved. However, the size
distribution measurements are necessary for models that predict the performance of mine
through mill operations. This paper is concerned with the use of video sampling for this
task at National Steel Pellet Company's operation in Keewatin, Minnesota. Data
gathering, data analysis, model building and mine-to- mill simulation are all described.

Video Sampling for Mine to Mill Performance Evaluation,

Model Calibration and Simulation
J.A. Herbst+ and S.L. Blust++

INTRODUCTION
Mining companies around the world are seeking ways to optimize performance.
In recent days a great deal of attention is being paid to optimizing the mine/mill interface
(Morrell, 1998). A principal challenge in carrying out such an optimization is to measure
the performance of blasting operations, crushing operations, and primary grinding
operations reliably and inexpensively. Measuring fragment size distributions at each
stage of the size reduction process is critical in order to establish a baseline for predictive
simulators to use in calibration, and for evaluation of process improvements.
Unfortunately, fragment sizes in muck piles, trucks, crusher dump stations, and on
primary mill feed conveyors are large and highly variable making conventional sampling
and screening at least expensive, and in some instances impossible.
National Steel Pellet Company (NSPC) is continuously seeking to optimize its
mine/mill performance through ore blending at the mine and adaptive fine-tuning through
control. The company operations are located in Northern Minnesota in the town of
Keewatin. Annually it processes about 18 M tonnes of taconite ore to produce
approximately 5.35 M tonnes of iron ore pellets. The ore characteristics for different
locations in the NSPC Pit are quite variable. The flowsheet for mining and grinding
portions of the operation are shown in Figure 1. Blasting is currently accomplished using
ammonium nitrate emulsion-based blasting agents. Ore is loaded into trucks (eight 240tonne, four 205-tonne) and hauled about one mile to two 1.524 m x 2.59 m (60" x 102")
primary gyratory crushers driven by one 600 kW (800 hp) motor and one 675 kW (900
hp) motor. The crushed product is conveyed to a 220,000 tonne coarse ore storage barn.
In turn, the ore in storage is conveyed to ten 8.23 m x 5.49 m (27' x 18') SAG mills which
are each driven by two 2625 kW (3500 hp) motors.

J.A. Herbst & Associates, LLC, Kealakekua, Hawaii

++

National Steel Pellet Company, Keewatin, Minnesota

Loading

Blasting
Drilling

Hauling
Crushing

Storage
Primary Milling
Figure 1. NSPC mine-to-mill operations.

NSPC working in conjunction with J.A. Herbst & Associates has recently been
evaluating the use of video sampling to measure blasting, crushing, and grinding behavior
of different ores. The sampled images are analyzed with transformed video image
software. The resulting fragment size distributions are used to calibrate a mine-to-mill
flowsheet simulator. This paper describes the video sampling process and the simulator
calibration. Finally, some illustrations of the potential usefulness of the data and
simulator are presented.
VIDEO SAMPLING
Video sampling was accomplished using a JVC Mini Digital Video Camera (GRDVM5) with a 100X zoom. Truck contents were sampled by collecting video images of
material in the bed of four separate trucks over the entire time each truck was dumping
into a primary crusher. A reference size for truck images was established based on the
known width of truck tires. Products from the two crushers were sampled by placing the
camera over high-speed conveyors carrying the crushed material to a tripper system for
distribution in the ore storage barn. Finally, SAG feed was measured by placing the
camera over three of the primary mill feed conveyors. Reference sizes on conveyor belts
were established using wooden dowel pieces cut to a length of 25 mm each. A shutter
speed of 1/500th of a second was used for all sampling. Natural light was used for
outdoor taping of the trucks at the crusher while auxiliary artificial light was provided for
indoor taping.
Raw images were transferred from tape to an IBM 385XD laptop through a Video
Port Pro frame grabber. The raw images were then analyzed using the OPSA Software
developed at University of Utah (Miller, 1999). This software makes a series of
enhancements and transformations on each image. The first of these enhancements are
4

shown for the case of one image obtained at the beginning of a dump of truck 4292. Here
the raw image captured from the videotape is enhanced by brightening. See Figure 2a and
2b. Edge finding is then used to prepare the image for chord length distribution
measurements shown in Figure 2c. The resulting surface chord length distribution is
shown plotted in Figure 3. The OPSA software then makes the stereological
transformation from the linear chord distribution to the volumetric distribution of
particles in the exposed or surface layer of the truck as shown in Figure 3. The
transformation from the volumetric distribution of the exposed layer to the desired
volumetric distribution of particles in the bulk of the truck is also shown in Figure 3.

Original Image

Brightened Image

Separated Image

Figure 2. Processing steps in T-VIS.

100

100
Truck 4292 at beginning of dump
Measured chord length
distribution for surface

80

Transformed volume (weight)

distribution for surface

60

60

Transformed volume
distribution for bulk

40

40

20

20

0
1

10

100

Number % Finer

Weight % Finer

80

0
1000

Size, mm

Figure 3. Transformation of chord length distribution to volumetric size distribution for the bulk.

Since each image contains only a finite number of fragments, the statistics of
counting are important. For this reason, five separate raw images from the beginning of
the dump were analyzed and the resulting size distributions averaged. This procedure
was repeated for five images in the middle of the dump and five more at the end of the
dump. The overall average of the beginning, middle and end images is shown in Figure
4. The differences between the average size distribution for the bulk at the beginning,
middle and end are relatively small. In contrast, the overall size distributions of the four
trucks from different loading locations varied strongly as shown in Figure 5.

100
Truck 4292
80

Percent Passing

Beginning
Middle

60

End
Avg
40

20

0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 4. Size distribution of single truck from average of several images during dump.

100
Truck 4292

Percent Passing

80

Truck 4296
Truck 4298

60

Truck 4293

40

20
0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm
Figure 5. Variation in size distribution from truck to truck.

The image analysis methodology for the conveyor video sampling was identical
to that for the trucks described above. However, the overall analysis of conveyor size
distributions did differ, because there are fewer fragments per image as is seen by
comparing Figure 6 and Figure 2. The standard deviation of any counting procedure is
inversely proportional to the square root of the number of things counted. Figure 7 shows
a plot of estimated standard deviation versus 1 N for different numbers of images (N)
on the belt. Due to the unfavorable statistics of counting conveyor images, the overall

conveyor size distributions were determined by averaging 80 images rather than the five
used for trucks.
100
Crusher

Percent Passing

80
60
40
20
0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 6. Crusher product image and transformed size distribution.

40
N=80

N=20

HTG

N=5

SX

30

Rock

20
Fines

10

0
0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3
N

0.4

0.5

0.6

-0.5

Figure 7. Effect of number of images on standard deviation of mean size distribution measurements.

The results of the size distributions determined in this fashion from Crusher 1
(which had a worn mantle) and Crusher 2 (which had a new mantle) are shown in Figure
8. Even though the two crushers were operated with "identical" open side settings of 200
mm (8") the products are seen to be quite different.

100
Crusher #1

Percent Passing

80

Crusher #2

60

New mantle

40

Worn mantle

20
0

10

100

1000

Size, mm
Figure 8. Evaluation of performance differences between crushers.

The discharge from either crusher is distributed into 10 piles by two trippers in the
ore storage barn. Each mill receives feed from its own pile with one or two pan feeders
emptying onto the conveyor belt. Figure 9 shows that after averaging 80 images there are
significant differences in the average size distribution to each mill. Figure 10 shows
moving average values calculated from images on one line. The data indicates that each
mill experiences significant variations in the feed size distribution over time. These
observations are particularly important, since it is known that some media pieces in the
feed (+100 mm) are required to achieve to good SAG throughput, while a large amount
of hard-to-grind (50x 100 mm) in the feed limits mill capacity.
100
Line 2
Line 4

Percent Passing

80

Line 7

60

40
20
0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm
Figure 9. Comparison of size distributions for 3 SAG feed lines.

40

50
Minus 25 mm

40

50 x 100 mm

20

30

10

Weight %

Weight %

30

20

Plus100 mm

0
0

30

60

90
Time, min

120

150

10
180

Figure 10. Time variation of rocks, hard-to-grind and fines in SAG feed to one mill.

With regard to accuracy of the size distributions (i.e. how closely they match
screen size analyses), Figure 11 shows that the screen analysis of a four ton sample of
SAG feed is very close to OPSA/T-VIS* volumetric distribution determined for the bulk.
100

Cumulative % Passing

80

60

40
Sieve Analysis (Bulk)
OPSA/T-VIS (Bulk)

20

0
1

10

100

1000

Particle Size, mm

Figure 11. Confirmation of T-VIS size distribution measurement by sieve analysis.

T-VIS is the commercial name of the video imaging system containing OPSA software sold
under license by J. A. Herbst & Associates, LLC.

MODEL CALIBRATION
Important models for the simulation of the NSPC mine-to- mill interface are an
explosive breakage model, a primary crusher model, and a SAG mill model plus auxiliary
transport and storage models. The models used in this investigation were selected from
those provided in the dynamic flowsheet simulator MinOOcad (Herbst & Pate, 1998).
Most of the parameters for these models are the physical variables such as equipment
dimensions and settings that are known. The ore variables are the only ones that must be
estimated from performance data. MinOOcad provides a set of reference or default
parameters for a "typical" taconite ore. Using these parameters as starting values, model
calibration is relatively easy, involving the adjustment of a single calibration constant for
each unit operation; e.g. an explosive index, EI; a crusher index, CI; a SAG rock
competency index, SRI; SAG hard-to-grind index, SHI; and SAG particle index, SPI.
Figure 12 illustrates the calibration procedure for the explosive breakage model.
The adjusted value of EI = 9.5 kWh/MT gives good agreement between the experimental
size distribution of the fragments from truck and the calibrated explosive model and is,
therefore, deemed the best estimate for this ore. Figures 13 and 14 show similar
comparisons of experimental distributions from video sampling and the corresponding
MinOOcad model fits for the explosive breakage model and the crusher model.
100

Blasting for Truck 4296

80
Percent Passing

PF = 0.177
EI = 10.5

60
EI = 9.5
40
EI = 8.6

Measured

20

0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 12. Procedure for calibration of explosive breakage model.

10

100

100

Model, EI = 9.5 kWh/mt

Percent Passing

Percent Passing

Truck 4296

Truck 4292

80
60
40

80
60
40

20

20

0
1

10

100

Model, EI = 9.5 kWh/mt

1000

10

Size, mm

100

1000

Size, mm
100

100

Truck 4293

Percent Passing

80

Percent Passing

Truck 4298
Model, EI = 8.1 kWh/mt

60
40

80

Model, EI = 14.2 kWh/mt

60
40
20

20

0
1

10

100

1000

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Size, mm

Figure 13. Best fit explosive breakage model size distributions for 4 ore types.

100
Crusher #2
Percent Passing

80
Measured
CI=9.4 kWh/mt

60

40

20

0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 14. Best fit of crusher model for blended ore feed.

ILLUSTRATION OF SIMULATOR USE

The overall MinOOcad flowsheet used to simulate NSPC mine-to-mill operations
is shown in Figure 15. Before using the simulator, it was necessary to confirm that it
resulted in realistic predictions of flowsheet behavior. Figure 16 shows one such
11

confirmation in which predicted and measured feed and products from the crushers are
compared for a mix of the four ore types.

Figure 15. NSPC flowsheet configured in MinOOcad simulator.

100

Percent Passing

Predicted Product
80

Measured Product
Predicted Feed

60

Measured Feed

40

20

0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 16. Test of predictive capability of simulator.

12

To illustrate the use of the simulator for mine-to-mill optimization, consider a

case in which it is desired to achieve more capacity in the SAG mills by using a
combination of ore blending and control. The following options were evaluated:
1) Process each ore type separately (each of the four trucks represents a
separate ore type.
2) Process a blend of ore types (in this case the average of the four trucks).
3) Change blasting and crushing practice [vary Powder Factor = PF = (kg of
explosive/MT of ore) and Primary Crusher Open Side Setting = OSS =
(mm)].
4) Change SAG mill control practice.
In each case, the MinOOcad simulator was used to predict performance variables
from mine-to-mill, including SAG mill throughput and energy consumption. Steady state
simulation results for Options 1-3 above are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1.

Option 1: Four ores crushed/ground separately

(PF = 0.177 kg/MT and OSS = 200 mm)

Ore Feedrate
MTPH

Total Energy
KWh/MT

285

18.7

287
312
326
334

18.6
17.1
16.4
16.0

326
326
326

16.5
16.4
16.3

Option 2: Four ores blended at crusher

(PF = 0.177 kg/MT)
OSS = 150 mm
OSS = 175 mm
OSS = 200 mm
OSS = 225 mm
Option 3: Four ores blended at crusher
(OSS = 200 mm)
PF = .200 kg/MT
PF = .177 kg/MT
PF = .100 kg/MT

One of the real advantages of the simulation evaluation is that results can be
understood in fundamental terms. Blending obviously reduces variations in tonnage,
making it unnecessary to cap tonnages for soft ores which can overload downstream
processes, or to run equipment very near power limits when hard ore is processed. The
net result is that at the same crusher setting (OSS = 200 mm), the blend can be processed
at 326 mtph rather than the average of 285 mtph when processed separately. The effect
of increasing the crusher OSS may at first seem counter intuitive (more finely crushed
feed requiring more energy in the SAG mills). However, the reason becomes apparent if
one examines Figures 17 and 18. Here we see that coarser crushing provides more rocks
13

and associated media pieces (+100 mm) relative to the intermediate, hard to grind (HTG)
fractions (50 x 100 mm) and fines (-50 mm). As the ratio of hard to grind pieces to
media rocks in the mill becomes more favorable (lower), the grinding rate increases,
yielding a higher feedrate at the same filling (26.7% volume filling of ore and balls). The
simulations predict that this benefit becomes marginal as the crusher is opened beyond
225 mm probably because media rocks begin to take up too much space in the mill.
100

Percent Passing

150 mm
175 mm
200 mm
225 mm

Crusher Product

80

60

OSS

40

20

Fines

HTG Rocks

0
1

10

100

1000

Size, mm

Figure 17. Effect of open side setting on crusher product

340

Throughput, MTPH

320

310
300

290
280

Tons HTG/Tons Rocks

Primary Mill

330

270
260
125

150

175

200

225

0
250

Open Side Setting, mm

Figure 18. Effect of open side setting on throughput and ratio of hard-to-grind to media pieces.

Figure 19 shows that given the current estimated blasting and crushing
efficiencies, one should probably minimize the amount of blasting while keeping in mind
14

that blasted material must be small enough to be loaded and fed to the crusher. In
addition, it cannot be so coarse as to exceed the power draw of the crusher. In any case,
the reductions in total energy are quite small and therefore other factors may dominate
the decision on blasting practice.
0.7
Energy, kWh/mt

0.6

Total Energy

0.5
0.4
Blasting Energy

0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
0.00

Crushing Energy
0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

Powder Factor, kg explosive/mt ore

Figure 19. Tradeoff between explosive breakage and crushing.

It may be possible to decrease total energy even more by programming the

powder factor according to the hardness of the ore being blasted. This possibility is being
explored.
Finally, as noted earlier the time variations in SAG feed even for blended ores are
quite large (see Figure 10). Dynamic simulation with MinOOcad allows us to ask the
question "how much additional tonnage might be available through supervisory control of
the SAG mills?" Figure 20 shows actual (unsupervised) feedrate, the associated hardness
estimates from a softsensor (Herbst and Pate, 1998) and the model-based prediction of
the highest feedrate at each time over a two-hour period. The simulation suggests that
model based supervisory control could provide an additional 5-7% in SAG capacity by
adapting to unavoidable disturbances.

15

820

5200

800

5000

780

4800

760

4600

740

4400

Meas Power

Est Power

Meas Brng Press

Est Brng Press

4200

720

Bearing Pressure, psi

Power, kW

5400

700
0

60

120
Time, min.

180

25

240

38

20

36

15

34
Estimated Ore Filling, %

10

32
Estimated Ball Filling, %

5
0

60

120

180

Angle of Repose, deg

Filling, %

Estimated Angle, %

30
240

Time, min.
450

0.15

Feedrate, ltph

350

0.12

Feedrate

250

150

0.09

0.06

Grindability, [kWh/lt]-1

Model Based Feedrate

Estimated Grindability
50

0.03
0

60

120

180

240

Time, min.

Figure 20. Softsensor estimates of SAG mill variables with predicted model based control performance.

16

CONCLUSIONS
This paper has examined video sampling as a tool for mine-to-mill optimization.
It was found that video samples of mine trucks, crusher products and SAG feed materials
collected at National Steel Pellet Company's Keewatin operations provided valuable
insight into the workings of the mine/mill interface. Image analysis of the video samples
provided accurate size analyses for mine-to-mill performance evaluation and also
produced useful input for the calibration of blasting, crushing and SAG milling models.
These calibrated models were in turn used in a mine-to-mill simulator to help identify and
evaluate promising alternatives for increasing throughput given current ore conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to thank NSPC management for permission to publish these
findings. The assistance of Mr. Don Healy and Mr. Phillip Murr during video sampling
and the help of Dr. William T. Pate and Mr. Richard T. Herbst during image analysis are
also gratefully acknowledged.

REFERENCES
Herbst, J.A. and Pate, W.T., Dynamic Simulation of Size Reduction Operations from
Mine to Mill, Mine to Mill 1998 Conference, AusIMM, October 1998, p. 243.
Herbst, J.A. and Pate, W.T., Object Components for Comminution Systems Softsensor
Design, 9th European Symposium on Comminution, Prints Volume 2, p.741.
Lin, C.L. and Miller, J.D. Plant-site Evaluations of the OPSA System for Online Particle
Size Measurements from Moving Belts, Preprints Annual SME Meeting, Denver,
Colorado 1999.
Scott, A. and Morrell, S., 1998 Mine to Mill Conference, AusIMM, October 1998.

17