Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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Vermeer, the Vermeer logo, Equipped to Do More and Terrain Leveler are trademarks of Vermeer Manufacturing Company in the U.S. and/or other countries. © 2015 Vermeer Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Atacama Desert in South America is prob- ably the closest thing to Mars found on Earth. That's not an exaggeration. NASA has tested instruments in the desert for use on Mars mis- sions, and fi lm crews have used it as a stand-in for the red planet. The Atacama Desert, which stretches approx- imately 600 miles (965.6 km) from northern Chile to just south of the border with Peru, is considered to be the driest place on Earth. Parts of it have never received any recorded rain, resulting in an extraterrestrial- like landscape void of plants and animals in those regions. While a Mars rover may not be roaming the desert fl oor, Vermeer mining equipment is. That's because Atacama is rich in minerals, including copper and sodium nitrate. Also prevalent are reserves of caliche, which is a sedimentary rock composed of hardened deposits of calcium carbonate cemented together with other material. The caliche mineral reserves in Chile are the largest source for commercial extraction and isolation of iodine in the world. Among the most extensive of all Chilean caliche forma- tions is Aguas Blancas, which covers more than 45,000 acres (18,210.9 hectares). Iodine production began there in 2001, pri- marily by use of traditional drilling and blasting techniques. Today, however, that has switched to an innovative surface mining approach using a machine manufactured by Vermeer, based in Pella, Iowa (USA). According to Jose Huenche, mining operations manager with Atacama Minerals Chile, the Vermeer T1255 Terrain Leveler ® surface ex- cavation machine (SEM) is more effi cient and effective, and eliminates the additional pro- cessing steps and equipment often required to standardize irregular particle size resulting from blasting. "The Vermeer surface excavation machine is an effi cient one-pass process," Huenche says. "It produces a more consistent particle size that we can better control. Drilling and blasting results in irregular and unpredictable particle sizes. Also, the useful material often gets pol- luted by other caliche impurities from blasting, so there is a lot of dilution in the process." That's a signifi cant advantage because the biggest challenge in any mining operation, especially in a remote location like Atacama, is the cost of producing the mineral. "We have found the Terrain Leveler SEM to be the most cost-effective and effi cient way to mine the caliche," Huenche says. "Since we began using the excavation machine, our pro- duction rates have increased signifi cantly with less equipment and reduced expense." Another benefi t of the Vermeer Terrain Leveler SEM is improved safety. Eliminating the extra steps needed to haul particle to crushers re- duces the risk of an accident. Plus, there is no drilling and blasting. "There are no explosives, no fl ying rock and minimal ground disturbance," Huenche says. "Working with explosives is dangerous. It makes us feel good knowing our workers don't have to be exposed to that." Vermeer and its surface mining technology were recently inducted into the International Mining Technology Hall of Fame MINING IN CONDITIONS AS TOUGH AS MARS SURFACE MINING MACHINE IMPROVES EFFICIENCY, SAFETY