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.
Toward the improvement of primary grinding productivity and energy consumption efficiency. Part 1: Investigation of the feed ore size effects
Abstract This paper summarizes part of the research into the study of the full and semi-autogenous grinding mills toward the improvement of productivity and energy consumption. While the feed ore size effect on SAG/FAG mill performance is the main subject of this paper, the 2D imaging vision system for feed ore size analyses is described. The ability of the system to produce on-line reliable results is illustrated. Particular attention is paid to the development and extraction of valuable size indicators with regards to the grinding mill mechanisms and energy consumption aspect. Finally, the investigation of the feed size effects at three grinding mills is discussed while extensive data are intensively processed in order to extract significant correlation between the primary grinding performance and some developed size indicators.
In search of optimum chest radiography techniques.
A nation-wide study of chest radiography in Sweden had previously revealed a large variation in the physical and technical factors involved, in particular the radiation dose. In this study the image quality could not be assessed unambiguously. The aim of the present study was to try to establish a correlation between visual grading of radiographs and physical and technical factors in order to find the optimum chest X-ray system. The physical and technical performance of 24 chest units was evaluated. Radiographs were taken of an anthropomorphic chest phantom supplied with test structures simulating various pathologies. Image quality was assessed by visual grading analysis of the radiographs. The physical and technical parameters of the units rated best were used to exemplify good radiographic practice. The results were in agreement with the recommendations issued by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC). It was also shown that low radiation dose is compatible with high-quality radiographic imaging of the chest.