A brand new open-pit gold mine in northeastern Ontario has turned to automation — together with practically 300-tonne hauling vehicles that drive themselves — in a bid to extend productiveness and employee security.
The Côté Gold venture close to Gogama, midway between Sudbury and Timmins, is predicted to provide round 440,000 ounces of gold a 12 months over the following 18 years.
To extract the valuable metallic, huge Caterpillar mining vehicles will haul greater than 30,000 tonnes of ore on daily basis to allow them to be processed.
The mine at present has 14 of the mining vehicles, which might carry round 200 tonnes of ore in a single load, and can have 23 when manufacturing absolutely ramps up.
Toronto-based IAMGOLD, which operates the mine, has leaned on data from Caterpillar and the Alberta oilsands — the place autonomous vehicles have been used for a number of years — to construct Ontario’s first mine to make use of the automated automobiles.
Consistency in automation
“The entire mine website has been designed round autonomous [vehicles], and that is going to make the final word operation that rather more environment friendly,” mentioned Graeme Jennings, IAMGOLD’s vice-president of investor relations, in a telephone interview.
Sarah Loomis, Caterpillar’s supervisor of worldwide autonomous operations, mentioned a few of their clients have seen a 30 per cent enhance in productiveness utilizing autonomous mining vehicles.
Loomis mentioned the largest profit the automobiles present is consistency. They’re going to at all times take probably the most environment friendly path to the ore deposit to maximise time and gas utilization.
“With people, there’s a variety of variables, proper?” Loomis mentioned in a Zoom name.
“You could need to drive as quick as you presumably can to get beneath that shovel and skim a e book, or it’s possible you’ll take the slowest attainable route since you’re bored at this time otherwise you had a nasty sleep.”
Caterpillar deployed its first absolutely autonomous mining vehicles for the Fortescue Metals Group in Australia in 2013. Since then, Loomis mentioned, the expertise has superior significantly.
New varieties of jobs
The vehicles use a mixture of GPS, radar and lasers, with mild detection and ranging (LIDAR) expertise, to orient themselves.
When IAMGOLD constructed the Côté Gold venture, engineers needed to work round 50 Wi-Fi and mobile towers surrounding the open pit to make sure the vehicles, and a fleet of autonomous drills, have been at all times related to their native community.
“These items should have communication on a regular basis,” mentioned Bryan Wilson, the mine’s common supervisor.
They impart with a management centre the place a number of staff observe their areas and set the overall routes the vehicles ought to take to achieve the ore deposits. However as soon as the routes are set, the vehicles deal with the remainder on their very own.
Francis Letarte-Lavoie, the mine’s operations supervisor, mentioned throughout a tour of the mine {that a} small staff will be capable of monitor and information a fleet of 23 autonomous vehicles.
“So there might be one controller, one builder,” he mentioned. “There is a little bit of technical assist and there is usually some operators within the pit.”
Wilson mentioned utilizing the vehicles hasn’t decreased the quantity of people that work for him on the mine, no less than thus far. Nevertheless it has modified the character of the work with a larger concentrate on expertise.
“I feel it is serving to with attracting a variety of our workforce — they need to come right here and work with these items as a result of it is new, it is leading edge,” he mentioned.
Some staff who beforehand labored as surveyors have been retrained to be what are referred to as builders, and use their data and expertise to create the paths the vehicles comply with to ore deposits.
Telecommunications specialists are additionally wanted to keep up the networks that maintain the gear operating day and night time.
Whereas some duties have been automated, there are nonetheless staff within the open pit who function the loaders, change the bits for the automated drills, keep the gear and do a wide range of different duties.
The autonomous vehicles are given the correct of approach within the open pit, however Wilson mentioned there are a selection of security measures to make sure there are no accidents.
Security measures
Every car within the pit, whether or not it is driving itself or by a human, has a console that’s continually beaming its GPS co-ordinates. The autonomous vehicles are capable of see each different car on the community and can routinely cease in the event that they get too shut.
Each employee additionally has an digital badge they name an A-stop, which permits them to cease each self-driving truck inside a sure radius, if there’s a problem.
Wilson mentioned decreasing the variety of staff within the open pit will make the operation safer.
Along with the vehicles, the venture additionally has a fleet of autonomous drills made by mining gear producer Epiroc.
The drills routinely comply with a plan, despatched to them from the management room, to drill a sequence of holes down into the rock so staff can plant explosives.
The explosives filter out items of ore which can be hauled again to course of the gold inside.
“The drill at this level will not be deciding which gap to drill subsequent,” mentioned Chris Graves, Epiroc’s enterprise line supervisor for floor drills in Canada, in a telephone interview.
“That is determined by the engineering staff and the operator particularly. We’d get to a degree the place the drill will optimize its productiveness by really determining which gap it ought to drill subsequent.”
As for the way forward for mining, Wilson mentioned he would not know what that can entail, however he expects extra mines will need to usher in automation to enhance effectivity.
