Ballantyne, Powell & Tiang (2012) found that about 36% of a mine’s total energy use is consumed by crushing and grinding. Which means the biggest climate win in mining isn’t in the pit — it’s in the mill building.
The climate fight in mining doesn’t start at the haul trucks or the tailings dam; it begins in the breakage circuit.
I’ll never forget standing beside a 26-ft SAG mill at a site in Red Lake and feeling the floor shake.
You don’t have to be a hardcore energy modeller to know what that vibration means: a considerable amount of power is being converted into heat, noise for rock breakage.
That was the moment it clicked for me: Carbon-neutral mining isn’t just a fuel problem or a fleet electrification problem. The real leverage is in how we physically break the rock.
And that’s why the I-Rox electrical-pulse concept caught my attention.
Instead of squeezing rock to failure, it fractures the grains from the inside out, and the rock basically falls apart. “Tensile failure takes less energy than compressive crushing.”
If that truly scales, we’re not talking “incremental improvement” territory. This would rewrite mineral processing flowsheets. A WIN for the mining industry, especially decarbonization champions.
References:
- Ballantyne, G. R., Powell, M. S., & Tiang, T. (2012). Proportion of Energy Attributable to Comminution.
- Jeswiet, J., & Szekeres, A. (2016). Energy Consumption in Mining Comminution. Procedia CIRP 48:140-145.
- I-ROX Technology – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vWx-P2YvIc
