Bulk and spatially resolved chemical on-line analytics in mineral-processing – a rocky road to success?

The manifold and extremely elaborate and energy as well as material consumptive process steps to separate valuable minerals from ores should prepare an ideal breeding ground for sophisticated chemical on-line analytics. Success stories are well known, but not as obvious and frequent as anticipated by scientists and entrepreneurs developing such analytical technologies. Bulk analytical methods dominate the sampling and analysis systems in operation.
Geometallurgy, often defined as the science of adapting mineral processing to mineralogy and microstructure of a particular raw material allowing to improve efficiency with existing technology, uses microanalytical methods with sophisticated spatial resolution as workhorse analytics.
We analyse the causes for this contradictory trend. Using typical mineral processing schemes we define the most promising assignment locations of chemical on-line analysis systems, prospective input of chemical data into up- and downstream control of the raw material as well as for quality control of intermediate and final products. On the other hand we will show how the actual state of the art of mineral processing technology precludes the efficiency of prospective spatially resolved chemical on-line analysis systems.