BHP Group Collaborates With Microsoft To Enhance Copper Recovery With Artificial Intelligence

Illustration of the BHP Group copper mine. (photo: twitter @bhp)

JAKARTA - BHP Group has partnered with Microsoft Corp to enhance copper recovery from the Escondida mine in Chile, the world's largest copper mine, using machine learning and artificial intelligence. This was announced by the company on Tuesday, 30 May.

BHP estimates that the world needs to double the amount of copper production in the next 30 years to keep pace with developments in decarbonization technologies such as electric vehicles, offshore wind power plants, and solar farms.

Finding and building a new mine is expensive, difficult, and can take more than a decade, so miners are looking to the next generation of technology to extract more metal from existing mines and processes.

"We expect the next big wave in mining to come from the use of advanced digital technologies," BHP's Chief Technical Officer, Laura Tyler, said in a company statement, quoted by Reuters.

By using real-time data from ore processing plants combined with artificial intelligence-driven recommendations from Microsoft's Azure platform, plant operators will have the ability to adjust for variables affecting ore processing and grade recovery, BHP said.

BHP, the world's largest mining company, is the majority owner of Escondida and operates the mine with its partners, namely Rio Tinto and Japan's JECO Corp. Escondida produced more than 1 million tons of copper during the financial year ending in June.