TOMRA Mining Advances Underground Rock Salt Sorting

TOMRA Mining, in partnership with K+S Minerals and Agriculture, has reported strong results from an underground pilot project at the Zielitz mine in Germany. The installation of a TOMRA X-ray Transmission (XRT) sorter underground has successfully removed barren waste before it reaches the surface, reducing stockpiling, improving ore grade of hoisted material, and easing the load on the main shaft. The project is viewed as a significant step toward more efficient and sustainable potash mining.

The pilot plant, commissioned in 2022, processes 50 tons per hour and removes up to half the mined material as waste underground, with part of this used as backfill. The concentrate, with a higher potassium grade, is then hoisted to the surface. Building on these results, TOMRA and K+S are now investigating scaling the system and introducing AI-powered technology to further enhance separation precision and throughput
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“Our vision of what can be achieved in a further stage, introducing more sorters with OBTAIN, is to sort as many tons of ROM as possible. The sorted waste, which is about half of the sorter feed, is used for backfilling, and the remaining amount of high-grade product is conveyed to the shaft,” said Jens Michael Bergmann, Global Segment Manager Industrial Minerals at TOMRA Mining.

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