Rovjok, co-founded by former Mining Industry professionals, digitalizes raw material value chains to help them become more efficient. They work with some of the largest and most technologically ambitious metals and mining companies both within Europe and globally. Rovjok’s portfolio includes large multi-national clients throughout the raw materials value chain, located across four continents. “We design, develop, and implement digital transformation and optimization solutions for our clients, providing actionable intelligence and improved operational efficiency.” Explained Simon Zieleniewski, Rovjok’s Chief Technical Officer.
Rovjok’s team is developing a machine learning system to optimize the performance of milling circuit in large-scale copper mines. According to Zieleniewski: “The milling, or comminution process, is the most energy-intensive aspect of large-scale mining contributing up to 4% of global energy usage. By improving operational efficiency, we can reduce energy usage and increase productivity, which will drive both economic and environmental improvements.” Milling performance is impacted by a complex range of variables, including material hardness and fragmentation, as well as machine settings. Rovjok’s system will allow for the easy analysis of all variables to decipher the key drivers of performance to optimize the mill configuration for the ore feed it receives.
With the ELISE grant, Rovjok is developing a test system for piloting in an operational environment. This involves building the standardized data ontology for key mining data systems to simplify the initial data integrations. They will then develop the machine learning optimization algorithms and build a front-end user interface for controlling the system.
“Our system will help improve the performance of copper producers by reducing their energy consumption and increasing their throughput. This will ultimately contribute to the reduction of what is a significant level of energy usage globally” says Zieleniewski.
“At the end of the ELISE project, we hope to pilot our system at a client site, before further development to build a marketable product that we can sell to operating copper mines worldwide” he adds.
After four years Rovjok hopes to have the product as a market-leading advanced analytics optimization system used by companies across the world. For regular consumers, this means an economic efficient and environmentally safe supply of copper for electronic devices we rely on in our daily activities and more cost effective development of renewable energy sources, among other benefits.
Visit Rovjok’s website to find out more!
More about the ELISE 1st Open call and awarded companies is available here.
