28 Jan 2020 09:52
an active role in the energy transition such as PGMs, manganese, and vanadium, South Africa is uniquely placed to drive commercialising of new battery technologies. If widely rolled out, these new uses could fuel demand, increase prices and eventually lead to increased exploration.
Similar sentiments were shared by Dr. Richard Viljoen, Technical Advisor, VM Investments\Bushveld Minerals, who says most growth opportunities lie in turning away from bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore, and towards battery materials.
In revitalising the mining industry in South Africa, attention should and already is to an extent be turned to materials used in battery and related technologies, he says. South Africa has, in the world famous Bushveld complex (besides most of the worlds resource of chrome, platinum and palladium) 50% of the worlds vanadium resource.
As a consequence of the growing demand, he adds, the exploration for and mining of vanadium is expanding in the same way as platinum and chromium mining did several decades ago. The Bushveld also contains significant amounts of tin, tantalum fluorite and other rare metals including lithium.
While these new minerals provide a lucrative opportunity, developing appropriate extraction methods is also crucial in the industrys progression.
From sunset to sunrise
The need to update South Africas mining technology was voiced at this years Joburg Indaba. Held in October, delegates general consensus favoured the industrys renewed focus on technology and innovation, both in-house and downstream.
Speaking with a mining professor who wishes to remain anonymous, he says the current methods and processes followed by operations are costly and inefficient.
The majority of mining methods in South Africas resources sector are still very labour intensive, and require hard physical work to extract the minerals leading to low productivity and high injury possibilities, he says. For the resurgence in the mining industry to be possible, much more money needs to be spent on research for new technologies to ease the extraction of the minerals, productivity and safety.
It is essential that new mechanized mining methods for the narrow reef undergrounds are developed, he adds, otherwise the vast ore-reserves will be left behind because the conventional mining will become uneconomical (high labour cost) and a lot of reserves may be lost.
Similarly, Rossouw says using technology to improve the labour-intensive practices in conventional operations is integral for future development, particularly in the extraction of gold.
New technologies to extract less waste and more gold reef from underground, in a safer and more cost-efficient way, could make deep level gold mining competitive again, he says. Investment in new technologies and into the commercial application of them in mining could revive the gold industry and provide new opportunities for the PGM sector.
A good example of the use of technolog
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