The objective of process control in the mineral industry is to optimise the recovery of the valuable minerals, while maintaining the quality of the concentrates delivered to the metal extraction plants. The paper presents a survey of the control approaches for ore size reduction and mineral separation processes. The present limitations of the measurement instrumentation are discussed, as well as the methods to upgrade the information delivered by the sensors. In practice, the overall economic optimisation goal must be hierarchically decomposed into simpler control problems. Model-based and AI methods are reviewed, mainly for grinding and flotation processes, and classified as mature, active or emerging.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.