Digital enablement casts the intelligent mining dream of miners

In the digital economy era, cloud computing, big data, industrial Internet and other digital technologies are deeply integrated with the real economy, enabling the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and becoming an important engine for economic development.

In the mining industry, the construction of smart mines has accelerated. In May 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Natural Resources jointly issued the "Guidelines for the Construction of Intelligent Mines in the Non-ferrous Metal Industry (Trial)" to encourage non-ferrous metal intelligent mines to adopt the cloud, edge, and end architecture based on the industrial Internet platform and establish a full-process intelligent production control system for "ore flow". Promote the transformation and upgrading of mines, high-quality development, and comprehensively enhance the comprehensive competitiveness and sustainable development ability of enterprises.

After working in Shandong Jinxincheng Gold Mine (hereinafter referred to as: Xincheng Gold Mine) in 2008, Sun Baoqing, director of the digital transformation Office of Xincheng Gold Mine, profoundly witnessed the development process of Xincheng Gold Mine's digital transformation and the realization of green and smart mine construction. As a miner, how to add wisdom to the mine construction, truly and effectively promote the digital transformation of the mine, and promote the sustainable development of the mine, Sun Baoqing shared the experience and story of the New City Gold mine.

Digital enablement casts the intelligent mining dream of miners

Digital transformation has hit a "bottleneck"

Xincheng Gold Mine, founded in 1975, is located in Yantai City, Shandong Province, with an annual profit of more than 150 million yuan. It is a large-scale state-owned gold production enterprise with comprehensive production capacity of mining, beneficiation and smelting. It is also the only "national environmental friendly enterprise" among the mining enterprises in China, and ranks among the "Top Ten gold production mines in China" and "Top Ten Gold Economic Benefits Mines in China". As of February 2022, the accumulated gold production of Xincheng Gold Mine has reached 100.006 tons, becoming the fourth gold mine in Shandong and the sixth gold mine in China with a cumulative gold production of more than 100 tons.

Sun Baoqing introduced that in recent years, Xincheng Gold Mine has continuously introduced a large number of mechanized equipment to replace the original mining methods, constantly realized the automation of production to solve dangerous jobs, and also achieved the efficiency improvement of office posts through the construction of information systems, but there are still some problems in the process of digital transformation:

Decentralized system construction brings difficulty to transformation. Digital construction lacks unified top-level design and planning, from construction, production to management, lack of unified guidance and normative constraints, low interoperability and poor integration between production and operation management systems, and different systems implement different data standards, unable to play the value brought by data integration.

Digital transformation construction is lagging behind. At present, there are problems such as weak digital foundation, insufficient technology accumulation, and lack of digital integration talents, which make the digital transformation of Xincheng Gold mine lag behind.

The degree of mine digitization independent development is low. China's non-ferrous metal industry software from design, construction to production implementation, process control of the use of industrial software is highly dependent on foreign, three-dimensional design, simulation analysis software is mostly monopolized by foreign countries, resulting in high construction costs, difficult system maintenance and other problems.

The sustainable development of Xincheng Gold mine is under great pressure. At present, China's ecological environment protection situation is still severe, as a resource-based and labor-intensive industry, Xincheng Gold mine faces challenges in sustainable development, it needs to improve economic efficiency through digital transformation, enhance enterprise competitiveness, and achieve optimal allocation of resources and sustainable development.

Most of these problems are the common problems faced by many mines in China.

Take on the responsibility to find breakthroughs in digital transformation

As the director of the digital transformation Office of Xincheng Gold Mine, Sun Baoqing often thinks about how to play a leading and exemplary role as a key enterprise of Shandong Gold Mine to find a suitable way for the digital transformation of Xincheng Gold Mine.

"The solution provided by Inspur Industrial Internet takes the actual needs of Xincheng Gold Mine as the starting point, integrates advanced information technology, realizes the deep integration of digital technology and mining business, and provides a new road for the digital transformation of Xincheng Gold Mine."

Sun Baoqing said that Xincheng Gold mine digital mine construction, relying on the core technical capabilities of Inspur Yunzhou Industrial Internet national "double span" platform, for the safety, production, operation and other problems of Xincheng Gold Mine, based on the platform of artificial intelligence, Internet of things, cloud computing, big data and other capabilities, Fully build a smart mine with real-time interconnection, comprehensive perception, dynamic prediction, collaborative control, and scientific decision-making.

At present, the "smart mine based on the Industrial Internet platform" project jointly created by the two sides has completed the construction task of the first phase of the project, and the second phase of the project is advancing in an all-round way.

Digital empowerment to create a smart mine model project

"The cloud, network, edge and end collaborative integration service capabilities of Inspur Yunzhou Industrial Internet platform provide technical support such as iot perception, big data, digital twin and artificial intelligence for our smart mine construction. Through visualization, application development and other ways, we have built an integrated platform that highly integrates security control, production control and operation control." Sun Baoqing said.

Taking the mine production process as the main line, realizing the real-time and comprehensive perception of "ore flow". Build a 3D visual management and control platform, establish a 3D model of the plant, production process, key equipment, etc., and integrate the data of the production automation control system, monitoring system, video surveillance, six systems of safety avoidance, production management information system, energy metering automation system and other systems to achieve unified data access and break the data island of the chimney system. At the same time, the data is integrated with the three-dimensional model after access to realize the monitoring and analysis of various production analysis data, dynamic control data, safety risk early warning analysis and other relevant data based on "ore flow", and realize the panoramic visualization and transparency of mine production operation and safety control.

Based on the digital twin technology, the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies are integrated to establish a digital twin mineral processing platform for the key process in the ore flow -- beneficiation, precipitation of expert knowledge and experience, combination of mechanism model and machine learning algorithm, establish an innovative digital twin of the edge process, and deliver a verified model to the control system. Achieve data-driven lean control to continuously improve costs and quality.

Sun Baoqing said that after completion, the mine production and operation efficiency and safety control capacity will be greatly improved, the mine production efficiency can be increased to more than 13%, office efficiency increased by 30%, safety accidents reduced by more than 90%, comprehensively improve the efficiency, efficiency and mine essential safety, and become the pioneer and benchmark of mine intelligent construction in the group. It provides construction experience and solutions for intelligent mine construction of the group.

As a partner of Xincheng Gold Mine's digital transformation, Tian Ming, deputy general manager of Inspur Group's Inspur Industrial Internet, introduced that Inspur Yunzhou further promotes the construction of smart mines, applies a new generation of information technology, realizes the accurate positioning and comprehensive perception of all production factors such as human, machine and environment, ensures safe production, helps the production to be less humanized and unmanned, and realizes the integration of business system data. Contribute to safe, efficient, economical and green mining. The successful construction of Xincheng Gold Mine's smart mine will help Xincheng Gold Mine achieve "operation automation, intelligent management, and intelligent decision-making", form an application demonstration model, and effectively promote the digital transformation and development of the non-ferrous metal industry.

Tian Ming said that in the next step, Wave Yunzhou will deepen cooperation with Xincheng Gold Mine, create a model case of "industrial Internet + smart mine", and promote the safe, green and high-quality development of the mining industry. In addition to the New City gold Mine, Inspur also helped Shanxi TiSCO and Xishan Coal Power to carry out digital intelligence transformation and create a "smart new mine", so that more miners can enjoy digital wisdom achievements.