Engineering & Mining Journal

JAN 2014

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MINE & PLANT DESIGN Designing Mines with Data in Mind The industry's need for 'more iron' is matched by its need for more information By Russell A. Carter, Managing Editor One of the most perplexing challenges facing the global mining industry is how to handle the increasing volume of… everything. As mines mature and stripping ratios increase, as new deposits are found at greater depths, and as rising consumer appetites require more raw materials, the methods, equipment and technological scope of today's industry will have to adapt accordingly to meet tomorrow's demands. To capsulize the problem, let's just say these challenges involve all phases of mining, from dirt to data. For starters, the typical volume of material that has to be moved from one point to another—either on-site or site to site—as part of normal production activity has increased dramatically in recent years. This trend, for example, puts pressure on the major bulk-materials handling equipment suppliers who are typically chosen to provide systems for large-scale hard-rock mining projects. Thomas Gramling, managing director/ executive vice president at Tenova TAKRAF in Denver, Colorado, told E&MJ; that capacity requirements for the company's overland and yard/plant conveyor systems have increased noticeably every few years for the past decade or more. "Fifteen years ago we commonly saw system capacities in the 7,000 metric-ton-per-hour range; now, 10,000 to 13,000 tons per hour is common," he explained. "It's required us to take a whole new approach when it comes to conveyor and crusher dynamics." TAKRAF, for instance, has recently been involved in two very large capacity 42 E&MJ; • JANUARY 2014 conveyor and bulk-materials handling projects, both in Mexico—a 21-conveyor overland and plant installation at Grupo Mexico's Buena Vista del Cobre mine (formerly Cananea) in Sonora, and a 13,000 mt/h waste rock spreader system at Goldcorp's Peñasquito mine. It has partnered with ABB to develop gearless-drive conveyor applications for several projects, and also is refining its chute and hopper design elements to accommodate anticipated higher crusher throughput requests from customers. It's also finding more instances where extremely high-tension conveyor systems are necessary, demanding belts rated up to ST10,000. Looking at problems from a new perspective isn't an unfamiliar activity for TAKRAF, said Gramling. "Most of our projects are of a size and nature that don't lend themselves to off-the-shelf solutions. We take a fresh look at each of them. But the scope has changed. In the past, we were mostly focused on getting material from the mine to the yard or stockpile. Now, we have to look at a bigger design picture—basically, getting the right-sized material from the mine to the start of the flotation circuit." It's a challenge that requires new engineering approaches, and adaptation of the latest technologies, said Gramling. More Equipment = More Information The industry's need for "more iron" is matched by its need for more information—to manage and understand the equipment and processes that will allow it to move more material farther, faster and safer. With a mine operator's money riding on the reliability and performance of possibly fewer, but larger-capacity systems, comprehensive operational data and predictive analysis capabilities will continue to grow in importance, and the industry will need to apply sharper focus to future data management demands. The ever-increasing pace of data collection, analysis and application strategy is a given in today's business environment as banks, retail chains, social networks and other commercial enterprises look for ways to leverage the massive volumes of information harvested from "mining" their transactional data. But inside this global technological whirlwind, the real business of mining—involving rocks and dirt, large machines and often, physical risk—and its growing high-tech sophistication tends to be obscured by consumer-side developments. Nevertheless, the mining sector is steadily bulldozing ahead through many operational obstacles on its way to becoming an increasingly technology-rich industry. As an example, Rio Tinto's CEO, Sam Walsh, recently commented that the company's growing autonomous truck fleet had moved more than 100 million mt of material at its iron ore operations in Australia's Pilbara and while doing so had provided double-digit improvements in maintenance, tire life, fuel savings and environmental performance. Another report from the Pilbara indicated that Rio Tinto's increasingly autonomous operations there were generating almost 2.5 terabytes of data per minute. A terabyte of data is roughly equal to 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. For mine operators, whose historical focus has customarily been on the gritty business of finding and exploiting valuable mineral deposits, success requires mastery of the mechanics of minimizing a project's capital costs per ton of product while keeping other related factors, such as labor costs and energy usage, in check. That hasn't changed, but the industry's traditional approach toward the software-based www.e-mj.com

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