Optimising our precious mineral and energy resources with aligned R&D Dr J Craig Mudge FTSE FAICD CSIRO craig.mudge@csiro.au 0417 679 266 12 June 2014
SA minerals endowment for the lasting benefit of future generations The Olympic Dam project, and other mining projects, will generate a large amount of royalties for South Australia and once started, will continue to flow over the next several decades. N 2
SA minerals endowment for the lasting benefit of future generations The Olympic Dam project, and other mining projects, will generate a large amount of royalties for South Australia and once started, will continue to flow over the next several decades. An aligned centre of excellence N Ad hoc projects Mining and Petroleum Services Centre of Excellence (Paul Goiak, 2014) 3 Norway or UK?
Steps in minerals extraction and processing Blast load haul grind - flotation Rio Tinto in Mongolia The 100,000 tonne-per-day concentrator began processing ore at the beginning of 2013, from Oyu Tolgoi's open pit. Copyright 2009 Rio Tinto
Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) Mill Copyright 2009 Rio Tinto
Flotation cell at Rio Tinto OT Copyright 2009 Rio Tinto
ICT across the entire minerals value chain
Trends in information and communications technology
Google-style computing 50,000 computers in each warehouse-sized data centre Spread across the globe, linked by the Internet Services (compute and storage offered over the Web) Google, Dalles Oregon Microsoft Azure, Chicago 9
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/tech/2 10
Massive scale of data centres, and sharing overheads, delivers 4 9X cost reduction and energy efficiency Air flow 11
The Petabyte age: data taking over from algorithms and theory? 1. Machine translation of language 2. Driverless vehicle 1. 2005 ARPA Grand Challenge 7 miles, 7 hours 2. 2011 hundreds of thousands of miles We don t have better algorithms, we just have more data -- Peter Norvig, Google www.pacific-challenge.com 12
Data collection, aggregation - high volumes of complex heterogeneous data Continental-scale water management Data integration/ data fusion Data use gateway Wireless networks with sensors 40 mm satellite River data: from sensors (both mobile, moored) Existing data bases Weather Aquifer River Irrigation Organisations (water, government, regulators, market operators, and researchers) will mine this data. Sensors -- 10 years On 2 AA batteries Historical photos etc Craig Mudge 13.9.2010 24.9.2010 www.pacific-challenge.com
Distributed high temperature sensors for furnace monitoring Multiple gratings at different pitches allow for distributed sensing Gratings can be small (1-8mm) Commercial gratings limited to ~200 o C, after which the grating rapidly degrades
Thus, important Informatics trends for the minerals industry are 1. Cheap computing at massive scale 2. Analysis techniques enabled by massive data 3. Sensors 4. Sensor networks
Collaboration between universities and industry
R&D as a % of sales a measure of innovation P&G 4% www.pacific-challenge.com 2/10/2009 17
Innovation ecosystem miners NICTA CSIRO Universities AMIRA Technology development NICTA Mines min AMIRA In-house Mines min Tech Tech firms firms IT firms capital Craig Mudge
Australia s poor record on collaboration (Industry.gov 2013-2011) 19
South Australian Universities - the gap between ICT capability and applications in minerals and energy The capability gap doesn t seem to lie so much in the lack of individual ICT skills as well as in a proven capability to combine the relevant individual capabilities into convincing application demonstrators specifically for the minerals and energy sector. -- main conclusion from An Inventory of Relevant ICT Capabilities at South Australia s Universities, Professor Bart Follink, June 2013. ICT Roadmap for Minerals and Energy Resources Project. www.dmitre.sa.gov.au
Reward structure for Australian university researchers Publications in top journals ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia) Different colored money means that government, not industry funding is preferred Some due to rules on federal block grant Others have no logical reason
Decline in degree completions in IT South Australia Australia (David Lloyd, 2014) UniSA Adelaide Flinders 22
Where we can do better 1. IT Degree completions 2. Gap:- ICT capability and application in mining 3. Premier s Science & Industry Council 4. Reward structure in universities 5. Collaboration -- joint research 6. Innovation in industry
Innovation ecosystem miners NICTA CSIRO Universities AMIRA Technology development NICTA Mines min AMIRA In-house Mines min Tech Tech firms firms IT firms capital Craig Mudge
Thanks craig.mudge@csiro.au 0417 679 266 25