{"id":36642,"date":"2018-11-13T20:19:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T01:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/barrick-mining-data-for-gold\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T20:40:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T01:40:10","slug":"barrick-mining-data-for-gold","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/barrick-mining-data-for-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrick \u2013 mining data for gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gold mining started more than 5,000 years ago1<\/sup> and has been historically a conservative industry where miners relied mostly on skills and experience. Currently, most of the gold is produced by industrial giants such as Barrick, the largest gold miner in the world, with more than 150 tons of gold churned out in 20172<\/sup>. Given its scale, global presence and more than 25-year expertise, Barrick is one of the leading companies in terms of technological development \u2013 most of the company\u2019s operations are highly automated (see Exhibit 1 for images of automated control over the operations) and the company continues to pursue full process automatization in the coming years. However, the recovery in processing gold ore remains around 86-92%2<\/sup> meaning that the remaining 10% of the mined gold is being lost during the extraction of gold from the ore. This implies that out of almost 20 mln tons of ore processed annually 2 mln tons are yielding zero output despite the salient costs of mining these 2 mln tons associated with excavating 10 mln tons of rock. Fortunately, there seems to be a way to address this issue with the advance of data storage and machine learning technologies.<\/p>\n

Exhibit 1 \u2013 examples of Barrick\u2019s control room and available real time data [Source: Barrick public materials3<\/sup>]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Gold processing stage consists of the set of complex mechanical and chemical processes aimed at the extraction of gold from surrounding other materials \u2013 usually gold content is only 2-3 gr per ton of ore processed. Every operation (see Exhibit 1 for processing stage illustration) during this extraction process is regulated by multiple control parameters such as mills loading, temperature and pressure in flotation tanks, an intensity of applied reagents (cyanide, sulfites, acids, etc.) and others.<\/p>\n

Exhibit 2 \u2013 example of gold mining process stages [Source: Barrick public materials3<\/sup>]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Currently, each of these parameters, although automatically monitored and most often remotely controlled, is set by operators who are prone to multiple human errors, biases, and drawbacks comparing to machines, most common of which are:<\/p>\n