Machine Learning Algorithms for Semi-Autogenous Grinding Mill Operational Regions' Identification

Energy consumption represents a significant operating expense in the mining and minerals industry. Grinding accounts for more than half of the mining sector’s total energy usage, where the semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) circuits are one of the main components. The implementation of control and automation strategies that can achieve production objectives along with energy efficiency is a common goal in concentrator plants. However, designing such controls requires a proper understanding of process dynamics, which are highly complex, coupled, and have non-deterministic components. This complex and non-deterministic nature makes it difficult to maintain a set-point for control purposes, and hence operations focus on an optimal control region, which is defined in terms of desirable behavior. This paper investigates the feasibility of employing machine learning models to delineate distinct operational regions within an SAG mill that can be used in advanced process control implementations to enhance productivity or energy efficiency. For this purpose, two approaches, namely k-means and self-organizing maps, were evaluated. Our results show that it is possible to identify operational regions delimited as clusters with consistent results.