Every Ore Body Is a New Puzzle for Engineers, with Darian Orozco at Mariana Minerals

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The mining industry presents a unique set of engineering challenges because every ore body is distinct, requiring a bespoke solution rather than a standardized design. Unlike the oil and gas sector, where refinery designs have remained largely unchanged for decades, each mineral deposit possesses different mineralogy and chemistry that necessitate a custom flow sheet. This inherent uniqueness makes it difficult to capture economies of scale, which is why Mariana Minerals is focusing heavily on software and machine learning. The goal is to break down complex processing requirements into modular unit operations that can be modeled effectively and assembled like a plug-and-play library, allowing engineers to adapt quickly to the specific characteristics of each new project while maintaining efficiency. A second major hurdle involves the dynamic nature of ore bodies, which change composition as mining progresses, creating a need for real-time adaptability. The company is currently working to close the loop between live instrumentation that measures ore composition and the refinery's processing capabilities. By feeding this data forward immediately, the system can model the optimal way to process the current ore and dynamically adjust the refinery operations on the fly. Successfully implementing this closed-loop control system within the next six to twelve months represents a massive challenge but is essential for capturing the full benefits of processing variable feedstocks without significant downtime or inefficiency. Scaling these advanced technologies faces a significant barrier in the form of a severe talent shortage, particularly when compared to nations like China. While China has built a massive industrial base that funnels thousands of new professionals into mining annually through university programs and government sponsorship, the United States struggles with an aging workforce and very few graduating engineers from specialized schools. This demographic shift means that automation is not merely a luxury but a necessity for the industry's survival and growth. To scale operations in such a complex environment, Mariana believes that autonomy and advanced software are the key unlocks required to make every remaining worker significantly more productive and capable of managing diverse, unique mining challenges.

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So, recognizing we're speaking to an engineering audience today, with your engineer cap on, what are some of the most interesting problems that you've been able to tackle in your role? And what are the ones that have evaded you, right? That that you hope that you will be able to keep working on and and solve going into the future. >> Yeah, I think what's what's really exciting about the mining industry and you know, I I started my career in petrochemicals with Exxon before really getting interested in like how a chemical engineer at the time could could get involved in the energy transition and kind of stumble on this minerals problem. I think what's really exciting is that like minerals and and mining problems are, you know, every single project is bespoke. You know, when when you build a a steam cracker to make ethylene, you know, you have a feedstock and a design your your refineries in the oil and gas space that, you know, nothing on their designs have really changed in the last, you know, 50 or 60 years. But every ore body is actually different and requires a different flow sheet, the mineralogy is different, the chemistry is different. And so, I think that's like one of the core challenges is like how do you capture economies of scale when when really every new problem is a bit bespoke. And so, we we think a lot about how software and machine learning can do that where it's like can we define, you know, sets of unit operations that we can get, you know, really good at and build good data sets and get good at modeling and kind of create a library that we can use to plug-and-play. So, even though the flow sheets are different, we're trying to break them down into like modular unit operations that can be scaled to try and capture some of these economies of scale. So, I think that that's really challenging part is that every ore body is unique. And you know, on the flip side, you know, I mentioned is, you know, even within an ore body, you know, that ore body is actually changing as you're mining. I think that's the problem that, you know, we're we're working to demonstrate and solve right now, but still have a ton of work to do is how can you actually, you know, close that loop from, you know, the point at which you mine the ore to get live instrumentation to say this is the composition of that ore. I'm going to feed that forward to my refinery. My refinery is now going to model the most optimal way to process that ore and I'm going to start to dynamically adjust my refinery to be ready to receive that and capture that benefit. So, trying to close that loop is is really a massive challenge that that we're going to be facing over the next, you know, 6 to 12 months at our site. >> Very interesting. I mean, that sounds hard. How do you How do you see, you know, Mariana and the company and Mariana and the technologies that you guys are developing and putting in the market scaling up? I heard from Abigail there's a huge problem here, right? A huge market to to address and and solve and and onshore, what's the route road to scale given it it's it's so complex? >> Yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, it it has to be the software in our opinion cuz if you look at the industrial base that that China has created, it's like why why is China succeeding, you know? They have a massive industrial base of of universities and training programs of companies and government sponsorships that they're funneling, you know, quite literally thousands of people that thousands of mining and mineral property professionals into the workforce every year. And if you look at the US, you know, I I didn't even know mining was an option or an industry when I was in college. At no point in in my four years of college did anyone ever talk to me any I mean, in the US, you know, you maybe have like four mining schools that are graduating maybe 30 professionals each into the industry. So, there's a massive talent shortage. The industry's aging out. And so, you know, when we talk about autonomy, we're we're not geared up automated with anyone's job. It's actually like a necessity cuz when you have a dwindling workforce, the only way you can scale is actually if you make everyone more productive and autonomy is going to be the way to do that. And so, that's what we see as the key unlock.