The questions processing managers, metallurgists and sustainability leads ask in the first meeting, answered as plainly as we can, including where the answer is planned rather than done.
Illustrative scenario: Line 1 · SAG and ball circuit, rougher bank 2 · copper porphyry blend, one shift, one approval gate
Twelve questions. If yours is not here, ask it.
Yes, but only within an explicit tag allow-list with per-tag rate and magnitude limits, inside the operating envelope for the blend, and only at the autonomy level your plant has set. Design partners start in shadow mode, where Orebex writes nothing. Reagent-scheme changes stay supervised by a named metallurgist until the ore type is characterised.
Control returns to the APC or DCS last known-good state. Orebex is a supervisory layer on top of the control systems and interlocks you already run, never a replacement for them, so an outage degrades the circuit to its current way of running, not to a stop. The edge is designed to run fail-safe through a network outage.
Advisory recommendations start from the twin and the shift plan in the first weeks. Froth, grade, recovery and grind-response prediction improve as circuit history and assay-labelled outcomes accumulate per ore type. The compute plan sizes training at 2,000 to 8,000 GPU-hours per commodity model family once partner data exists, a design target.
Only if you choose cloud training. Ore-body data, geometallurgy models, reagent schemes, process models and recovery records are isolated per tenant and never used to train another customer's models. A fully on-prem deployment at the plant edge is available for remote and IP-sensitive sites, and federated learning across sites is planned and waits on data-rights agreements.
You are, the same as with any control strategy, which is why every write is policy-checked, bounded, logged and reversible, and why anything above your risk threshold waits for a named approver. The audit log records the request, the evidence, the envelope applied and the human decision.
A paid pilot of 90 to 120 days on one grinding or flotation circuit, scoped to a single wedge with a success metric written into the order form: recovery gain, energy per tonne saved, water reduction or reagent per tonne. The first weeks baseline recovery, energy and water in shadow mode from your own assays and meters.
The one that is costing you the most. The three wedges we propose are froth-vision grade and recovery control, grind-size energy optimisation, and reagent-dosing optimisation. Each has a metric a concentrator already measures.
Reagent schemes, flowsheet and geometallurgy specifications, mining and environmental standards including ISO and ICMM material and tailings and water governance documents, and your recovery and genealogy procedures. Retrieval is tenant-isolated and every answer cites what it used. Knowing a standard is not the same as holding a certification, and we do not claim one.
No. Dashboards report. Orebex perceives, decides and acts inside limits you set, and writes the record. The review console exists so metallurgists can approve, correct and feed back, and those corrections train the models.
Usually not to start. Most concentrators already have froth cameras on some banks, online analyzers, particle-size sensors, mill telemetry and a DCS. Orebex fuses what is there. Camera and analyzer coverage varies by plant and is confirmed per site.
The Circuit tier is $20,000 per grinding or flotation circuit per month for comminution or flotation control or grade sensing. The Concentrator tier is $130,000 per month for the whole plant. Enterprise is priced per agreement for multi-site mining groups, landing between $900k and $12M in annual contract value.
No. Orebex is a product company building its own software. Integration with your mill, flotation, analyzer, APC and MES systems is part of deploying the product, not a services business.
Every Orebex run is an ordered, inspectable sequence. This is run_4b9e27 on Line 1 · SAG and ball circuit, rougher bank 2 · copper porphyry blend. Scenario completes in 10 steps with one approval gate. P80 held at 148 µm as the blend hardened, froth stability recovered on rougher bank 2 after an air trim, a collector-dose change was approved by the shift metallurgist, predicted recovery held inside the plan, lot C-20931 released with full genealogy.
Concentrator Orchestrator · Pulled the shift plan from the concentrator MES: copper porphyry blend B-14, P80 target 150 µm, concentrate grade at or above 25% Cu, recovery target per the geometallurgy model, energy and water budgets. Locked the operating envelope for the blend.
Concentrator Twin · Simulated 32 candidate grind, air and reagent schemes on the as-run twin for the hardening blend, ranked on predicted recovery, concentrate grade, kWh per tonne and water per tonne. Two candidates breached the thickener bed limit and were discarded.
Crush-and-Grind · SAG-1 feed trimmed 3% and cyclone water raised as load and power signatures read a harder feed. P80 from the particle-size analyzer held at 148 µm against the 150 µm target; mill power stayed inside the energy budget.
Grade-and-Froth · Twelve froth cameras and the online XRF on rougher bank 2 fused at the edge. Froth stability on cells 3 and 4 fell as the blend hardened; predicted recovery drifted 0.4 points below plan. Early warning published to the control agents.
Concentrator Orchestrator · Scheme #7 raises collector dose 6% on rougher bank 2, above the standing reagent scheme. Reagent-scheme changes stay supervised on this blend, so the step was held for the shift metallurgist and approved at 07:19:44.
Float-and-Reagent · Approved collector dose applied with an air trim of 4% down on cells 3 and 4 inside the envelope. Froth stability recovered within eight minutes; predicted recovery returned to plan with concentrate grade read at 25.6% Cu.
Separate-and-Classify · One cyclone brought online in cluster 1 as feed density rose with the hardness change, holding overflow size and circulating load inside the plan.
Thicken-and-Dewater · Tailings thickener TH-2 flocculant dose trimmed as bed pressure rose; underflow density held and overflow clarity stayed inside the water-recovery target.
Throughput-and-Recovery · Whole-plant targets recomputed for the hardened blend: feed rate, P80, air and reagent targets handed to the control agents with recovery, grade, energy and water inside the budget. The losing candidates and their scores are in the run record.
Quality-and-Conformance · Concentrate lot C-20931 released: genealogy written (blend, grind record, reagent and air moves, froth and grade reads, approvals, dewatering record, assays as they land) and dispositioned against the concentrate spec with cited evidence for the metallurgist's sign-off.
A concentrator does not go from manual to unattended in one step. Orebex makes the level explicit, auditable and reversible at any time. The first release runs shadow mode, then assist mode, then bounded autonomy on low-risk grinding and flotation loops. Reagent-scheme changes stay supervised until the ore type is characterised.
| Level | What the agent does | What the human does | Where it sits in a pilot |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 · Shadow | Reads froth, analyzer, particle, mill, flotation, dewatering, robot and MES signals; predicts and recommends; writes nothing | Runs the circuit as today; compares predictions to assays and metallurgist outcomes | Shadow mode, baseline measured first |
| L2 · Assist | Proposes grind, reagent, air, froth and dewatering moves with evidence, confidence, envelope and rollback path | Approves each action in the review console | Assist mode, the remainder of a 90 to 120 day pilot |
| L3 · Bounded | Executes pre-approved low-risk grinding and flotation loop moves: feed, water, air, level, flocculant, cyclones online, inside APC, DCS and envelope limits | Approves reagent-scheme changes and lot release | Graduated autonomy, after audited accuracy and ROI |
| L4 · Constrained auto-control | Supervised reagent-scheme adaptation for characterised ore types, across circuits and sites | Sets the envelope; reviews the shift record and the evaluation results | Planned; after golden-dataset evaluation, twin validation and metallurgist sign-off |
Orebex writes to production equipment. Every capability is scoped, every write is policy-checked against the operating envelope, and every action is written to an append-only audit log the plant owns.
| Item | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type I | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, first 6 months |
| SOC 2 Type II | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| SSO and RBAC | Console and approvals | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months |
| Environmental and water assurance packages | Recovery, energy, water and tailings evidence | QUEUED Planned, 6 to 12 months; not a certification claim |
| Standards-cited reasoning | ISO, ICMM, tailings and water governance documents | RUNNING In the design, every answer cites its source |
| Per-tenant and ore-body isolation | Ore data, schemes, models, memory | RUNNING In the design from day one |
| On-prem and plant-edge deployment | Remote and IP-sensitive sites | RUNNING Design option |
Land on one workflow with a measured baseline. Expand by circuit, area, concentrator and autonomy level. Outcome components are available on recovery, energy, water and reagents. Annual prepay carries a 15 to 20% discount.
Comminution or flotation control, or grade sensing, for one circuit. For concentrators validating ROI on the wedge.
The whole plant: crush and grind, float and reagent, separate and classify, thicken and dewater, grade and froth, throughput and recovery, circuit and takt, robotic handling and the twin.
Multi-site mining groups standardising on Orebex, with custom ore, mineralogy and recovery models.
Start with one grinding or flotation circuit and one measurable baseline. A paid pilot on froth-vision recovery control, grind-size energy or reagent dosing shows the number before you commit further.
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