Imaging Process Control for Mining and Cominution of Construction Materials
Extraterrestrial mining activities will at first be concerned with the production of construction materials. Rock and earth materials can provide the strongest and most cost effective solutions. Scarce resources (energy, human intervention) in extraterrestrial mining operations, will limit many types of activities. At the same time, construction materials need to be processed, including blasting, crushing, screening, and milling, to exact specifications. Automation is the key to minimizing resource utilization, and optical sizing is crucial for these tasks, enabling automated process control without requiring excessive human quality control strategies.
Automated Online Optical Sizing Analysis
Optical fragmentation sizing has been in widespread use for many years now. It is now being used in the explosives, mining, and materials handling industries for the purpose of evaluating the efficiency of the comminution process, whether by blasting, crushing, grinding, or inadvertently by materials handling processes. On examination, there can be many inaccuracies with these methods, and the results do not always match screening results. Neitherless, there are many benefits to using optical sizing, as there is normally no feasible alternative to optical sizing. This paper discusses the limitations of such systems, the common errors that are made when implementing such systems, as well as the benefits and the proper way to use these systems, including some examples of applications.
A review of image analysis techniques for measuring blast fragmentation
Abstract This paper discusses the growing interest in developing more reliable quantitative methods to characterize the size distribution of blasted rock in both surface and underground mines. The results of such work can form important input for blast design optimization and mine production control. The evolution and nature of image analysis techniques applied to the photography of blasted material are reviewed. Adopted procedures and experiences arising from field research are then presented, based upon projects undertaken at producing mines in Canada, Africa and the U.K.