Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd. has developed tele-remote know-how that allowed it to mine at its underground Lanigan web site with out operators needing to be in hazardous location.
(Photo credit score: Nutrien Ltd.)

CALGARY – Forget concerning the canary within the coal mine – consultants say the day is coming when there received’t even be a necessity for a human.

The international mining business has come a great distance for the reason that days when coal-blackened miners would carry a fowl underground with them in hopes its misery would alert them to the presence of poisonous gases.

Today, firms are using all the things from driverless haul vans to remote-controlled and robotic drilling machines to take away human labor from a few of their most hazardous operations.

Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd. – which has been working to develop tele-remote know-how at its community of six potash mines in Saskatchewan – efficiently mined a whole manufacturing wing at its underground Lanigan web site final fall and not using a single human setting foot within the space.

Using a mix of radar, cameras, superior sensing methods and cutting-edge applied sciences powered by synthetic intelligence, Nutrien was capable of function one in every of its huge potash boring machines from a management room just a few hundred metres away from the energetic mining face.

“It was just a huge success for us,” stated Shannon Rhynold, Nutrien’s vice-president of potash engineering, know-how and capital. “Traditionally in potash mining, you’ve got these 250-tonne, massive pieces of equipment. There was always an operator sitting in the cab, running the joysticks, watching for various geological markers. And one of the big challenges has been, ‘how do you remove them from that machine?”‘

The feat – the results of a number of years of intensive engineering work and experimentation – was an organization first, with the objective of creating potash mining safer by eradicating employees from essentially the most hazardous underground areas.

“Let’s be honest, when you’ve got a 250-tonne machine that’s cutting into rock, there’s noise, there’s dust, there’s heat, there’s vibration,” Rhynold stated. “And because you’re opening that new ground, you’re always at risk of what’s in the ground above you, what’s on the walls on the side of you.”

Mining has at all times been a harmful occupation. The dangers are most important in underground operations, the place employees face the potential of all the things from cave-ins and fires to floods and toxic air.

But open-pit mines, too, include potential hazards – together with collisions and heavy gear rollovers. Statistics from the Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada present there have been 51 office fatalities within the mining, quarrying and oil and fuel extraction industries on this nation in 2021 alone.

That’s why security has been one of many essential drivers behind an ongoing, huge transition in the direction of automation within the business, due to current advances in AI and digital and distant know-how.

At the Boddington gold mine in Western Australia, human drivers have been changed by a totally autonomous haulage fleet of 36 vans. In Chile, mining large BHP is putting in autonomous drills at its Spence copper mine. Chinese telecom agency Huawei has been putting in 5G know-how to permit underground mine employees to get replaced by machines operated from the floor.

Here in Canada, Teck Resources Ltd. is already utilizing an autonomous haulage system at its Elkview steel-making coal mine in British Columbia.

“Automation is changing where a mine actually gets controlled – it doesn’t have to be at the mine site,” stated W. Scott Dunbar, head of the mining engineering division on the University of British Columbia.

Productivity is one cause mining firms are making the transfer to automation. A tele-remote operated mining machine, for instance, doesn’t have to take breaks, and doesn’t have to pause for shift modifications.

At an investor presentation earlier this 12 months, Imperial Oil CEO Brad Corson stated the corporate’s fleet of autonomously operated heavy-haul Caterpillar vans at its Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta is demonstrating 10 to fifteen per cent larger productiveness than staffed vans.

“(An autonomous truck) can start reversing much, much more quickly than a staffed truck could do. And they can also pass by each other much more closely than you would ever allow with staffed trucks,” Corson stated. “So it really enables much faster loading.”

The swift tempo of automation is altering the sorts of jobs out there at mine websites, in some circumstances making software program expertise extra invaluable at some firms than the flexibility to drive a truck.

Language within the present collective settlement between Teck Coal Ltd. and United Steelworkers Local 7884 – which comprises a whole part about “technological change” and lays out the employer’s obligations within the occasion that “mechanization or automation of duties” results in job losses – illustrates the nervousness some workers could really feel concerning the prospect of remote-operated gear and driverless vans.

But Nutrien says its tele-remote mining program has not eradicated any jobs in any respect – it’s merely moved gear operators from a hazardous bodily location to a protected management room setting.

Imperial, too, says its former truck drivers haven’t misplaced their jobs, however have been redeployed to different components of the group or retrained to function different gear.

In truth, Rhynold stated he believes distant and autonomous know-how has the potential to make mining a extra inclusive business that’s extra enticing to ladies, older employees, the bodily disabled and extra.

“When you can work in an air-conditioned room, and here’s the bathroom and here’s the coffee maker and here’s your nice ergonomic chair . . . I think that opens it up to much more diversity,” he stated.

“It potentially makes mining interesting to a wider range of people.”

Mark Crouse, business account government for mining with software program large SAP, stated he’s been listening to mining clients discuss concerning the potential for distant and autonomous know-how for greater than 20 years.

While the business has solely lately began transferring extra quickly on this course, Crouse stated, he believes a day is coming when nobody must go underground in any respect to mine the earth’s sources.

“Remember how not that long ago people were using flip phones, and how quickly things shifted? It’s not that far off,” Crouse stated. “The capabilities are already there. The technology already exists.”
www.nutrien.com
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