Machine learning in the mining industry -- a case study

Recently we attended the Unearthed Data Science event in Melbourne. A gold mining company -- Newcrest Mining -- provided operating data for a number of its plants, with the aim that some of the teams attending could provide useful solutions grounded in Data Science. One particular system caught our eye -- the autoclaves. This ore is rich is sulphide minerals (sulfide if you're American) such as iron pyrite (FeS2) (aka "Fool's Gold"). Sulphides inhibit the processing techniques used to extract gold from ores, so it's ideal if you can get rid of them.