AI Solution for Increasing Sustainability

Client

Country

Industry

Technology

Situation

Minsur is the fourth largest tin producer in the world, belongs to Breca Group, a conglomerate that has been operating for more than a hundred years in Peru, generating value by transforming mineral resources.

In order to extract minerals, they use water in their operations and consider it very important to return the water to nature properly treated and in ideal condition for reuse. The treatment to make possible the return of the water generates white foam, which is a direct product of the chemicals used to remove impurities.

Challenge

They needed to control this entire process by making sure that it was completed properly. Through cameras placed at the landfill point, the company visually monitored the process to ensure that the treatment was suitable, according to pH measurements and controls.

This task was a manual repetitive process with a certain margin of error.

Solution

To verify that the treatment is complete and finishes at the correct location, Arkano proposed a solution for automating the process with AI, using Azure video analytics and cognitive services to identify and alert those in charge of the plant when there is foam present in the water, replacing the manual process.

“One of the main benefits of adopting Microsoft Azure video analytics was automating a process which seemed to not have much chance of improvement and turning it into an instantaneous process"

Implementation

Since Minsur didn’t need to add any servers to the plant, the entire project was completed in approximately 45 days using cloud services and existing cameras and infrastructure.
One interesting detail of this implementation was that Arkano used cloud and digital collaboration technologies to allow external resources located in Chile and Uruguay to support Minsur remotely because the mine is more than 1,400 kilometers from Arkano’s offices in Lima.