PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified giant Rio Tinto on Tuesday reported that it would further its Mine of the Future programme by developing and testing new technologies in underground tunneling and mineral recovery.

The miner is expanding trials of new shaft and tunnel boring systems, aimed at significantly reducing the time taken to excavate underground, with the announcement of a second tunnel boring trial.

Rio is working in partnership with Atlas Copco on the trial, which will start in 2013 at the Kennecott Utah copper mine near Salt Lake City, in the US.

The Atlas Copco tunnel boring system at Kennecott Utah is expected to allow Rio Tinto to tunnel more than 10 m a day – nearly twice the rate of conventional methods.

The first tunnel boring trial would begin at the Northparkes copper-gold mine in New South Wales, Australia, this year. Locations were currently being considered for a shaft-boring system trial, said Rio’s head of innovation, John McGagh.

“More mining is moving underground as deeper orebodies are identified and openpits come to the end of their lives. Constructing underground mines can be technically challenging, expensive and a slow process,” said McGagh.

“These trials mean we can test the technology to allow us to mine deeper and more safely, with the potential benefits of greater efficiency and speed of underground mine construction, which would increase the value of the projects.”

Meanwhile, the mining giant was also working on ways of improving rates of ore recovery from mature and complex deposits.

As part of the mineral recovery programme, Rio was taking its cue from nonmining industries in the development of mineral sorting technology by forging a partnership with global automated sensor-based systems supplier TOMRA Sorting Solutions, to develop commercial-scale systems for separating minerals from rock waste.

This work would include scaling up Rio’s iron-ore and copper sorting technologies, which extract saleable ore from waste rock, to sort up to 1 000 t/h of rock.

Rio was also partnering with UK-based e2V to develop machines to improve the efficiency of mineral recovery from previously discarded ore. The machinery uses large-scale microwave and radio frequency generators and is expected to set a new world standard in mineral recovery.

The partnership would enable Rio to scale up its mineral recovery technologies such as Copper NuWave, which is expected to be trialled later this year at Kennecott Utah.

“We are developing machines that use digital and sensing technologies to detect and separate the mineral from rock waste so that we can improve rates of recovery from what is currently being treated as waste rock. This technology has the capability of being a potential game-changer in the mining industry,” said McGagh.

“There is increasing minerals demand around the world - especially from emerging markets. As minerals become harder to mine, from deeper mines in more remote areas, it’s innovation from modern science and technology that’s the key to meeting this challenge in a safe and environmentally-friendly way.”

On Monday, Rio Tinto announced it is investing $518-million on a long-distance heavy-haul rail network in Western Australia. This driverless train formed part of the AutoHaul programme under its Mine of the Future initiative.
 

To subscribe to Mining Weekly's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.