Future Automation Systems in Context of Process Systems and Minerals Engineering

The mining industry is confronted with a number of technological challenges along the entire production value chain. There is a need for innovative production solutions to bring the next digital generation to the raw material field. Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are today the mega trends in the field of process automation. In this paper the architecture of the plant automation is studied emphasizing on the future automation systems in context of minerals engineering. The state of the art applications of the new technological tools in mining industry are presented and discussed. The paper is concluded with a discussion on new research directions in process system engineering motivated by system architectural innovations and Industry 4.0. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.