Seeking to reduce process time and ensure even more efficiency in final results, Samarco continues to invest in technology and now has a robot for the iron ore pelletizing process in its operations.

Last Wednesday (20/07), the mining company Samarco shared some of its innovations in the production processes in the segment and announced that it is using a robot for the pelletizing process of iron ore since June at plant 4 of the Ubu Complex, located in Anchieta, Espírito Santo. In this way, the company continues to adopt technology to ensure more efficiency in the result of its production and optimize the time spent in the process.

Iron ore pelletizing process at the Samarco plant in Espírito Santo has a robot to optimize time and ensure more efficiency 

Although it is one of the largest sectors of the Brazilian economy, mining is still a technologically underdeveloped segment and, in recent years, several large companies such as Vale and Samarco have been investing in technology in their operations. Now, the company Samarco has announced that it is using a robot in the iron ore pelletizing process at its plant in the Ubu Complex, located in the state of Espírito Santo. 

The company recently announced that it has been adhering to the technology since June of this year and is seeing great results in optimizing the process. The step that relies on the help of the robot is the measurement of moisture in iron ore fines and the mining company stated that the process brought agility and efficiency to the moisture measurement process, reducing the time to deliver the result to the control room by one hour and thirty minutes.

In this way, what used to be done in hours and demanded a great effort from the team, is now done in just thirty minutes. 

“The robot collects the sample of iron ore fines — the pellet feed — weighs the wet material, and takes the sample to the infrared dryer. At the end of drying, the robot searches for the sample and places it on the scale for a new weighing, now the dry weight. Then the plant's control system, which orchestrates all the equipment in the robotic cell, calculates the humidity according to the difference in weight,” commented Samarco's automation engineer, Luciano Rocha.

Mining company begins to reap the results of investments in technology at its plant in Espírito Santo with optimization of iron ore pelletizing 

The use of technology in mining production processes ensures not only more efficient results, but also more speed and agility in the production chain. This is the main highlight of the use of Samarco's robot in iron ore pelletizing, since the company highlighted that technology has been collaborating strongly to optimize the process. 

In addition, Luciano Rocha highlighted that there is also the benefit of greater repeatability and maximum reproducibility of moisture results, since the influence of different operators is null. In this way, the Filtration Control Room team is able to achieve a higher quality result in less time. 

Finally, Samarco pointed out that the use of technology in iron ore pelletizing also contributed to more information for the advanced control system at this stage of the pellet production process in Ubu. The entire partnership for creating and applying the robot in Samarco's production process was carried out with the company Robotics and the mining company intends to continue investing in the segment.