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Mine mechanisation helping to tackle safety, cost and productivity issues

3rd May 2013

By: Joanne Taylor

  

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The recent focus on South Africa’s platinum and gold mines has intensified owing to labour problems and this has, in turn, brought into sharp focus the bloated mine work-forces, which surprises the international mining community, as most overseas mining companies have moved towards mechanised mining methods.

Part of the reason for South African mines’ large workforce is that labour is plentiful and has been low-cost for years. Further, there is no easy path to mechanisation and workforce reduction, either technically, socially or politically.

While, overall, there have been substantial workforce reductions and productivity improvements over the years in the South African mining industry, more needs to be done to reduce the workforce still further so that more marginal operations can survive in a higher-labour-cost environment. This may not be socially acceptable in South Africa, with its high unemployment rate, which is what mine operators, their workforces, the unions and politicians take into account.

The intensified international scrutiny of the local mining sector has, not doubt, highlighted other issues the industry is grappling with, such as health and safety.

Since the first accidents were reported in 1904, more than 54 000 South African mineworkers have died in mine accidents and many more have died from exposure to hazardous dust, gas and fumes.

Trade union Solidarity reported in December that the death toll in 2012 was higher than the death toll in 2011. But the Chamber of Mines (CoM) estimates that there were only 110 fatalities in 2012, a 9% reduction on the 123 fatalities that occurred in 2011.

According to Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) statistics, 95 mineworkers had died by November in 2012. The department has yet to publish a final fatality figure for 2012.

“The economic and health and safety challenges have made the mining industry realise that innovative thinking will be required to ensure the sustain-ability of the industry,” says Solidarity advocate of occupational health and safety Paul Mardon.

The ‘innovative thinking’ that Mardon refers to includes mine mechanisation, which aims not only to improve safety, but also to reduce direct costs and increase productivity.

But the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Mechanised Mining Systems (CMMS) warns in a study entitled ‘Human factors in mine mechanisation’ that, without understanding the human factors affecting the successful implementation of mechanised mining, the mechanisation tech- nology is likely to fail.

Deep-level gold major Gold Fields has already embarked on mechanisation to remove its employees from dangerous areas and says that successful imple- mentation requires that mines take into account considerations such as the attraction of workers to mines, union involvement, operator requirements, selection, training, managing change and setting realistic production targets.

Current successful products in mining mechanisation include underground mining machinery manufacturer Joy Mining Machinery’s continuous miners, which employ a multimotor concept, with outboard access to motors, gear cases, controllers and other major components. The machines have individual motors, with direct-drive transmissions to power the cutter, traction, gathering and hydraulic systems.

Mechanised mining is a predominantly South African initiative in the mining industry worldwide and mining companies operating in areas outside the Southern African region are recognising the benefits of mechanised mining.

At the Stillwater mine, in Montana, US, for example, more than 80% of the mining is mechanised. Mining companies investing in mechanised mining in South Africa are also committed to developing mechanised mining in their overseas operations. Gold Fields is a prime example, with additional mechanised operations in Australia and Peru and plans to expand mechanisation further afield.

CSIR Innovations
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) says that the South African government, for its part, has increased its funding towards research and development (R&D), as it recognises the need for mining research to secure the long-term sustainability of the sector, particularly when it comes to safety.

The CSIR is continuously working on innovations to improve excavation support, optimise layouts, improve drill and blast technologies, and develop mechanical rock breaking and orebody formation.

In the council’s mining competence area, five projects are being developed to address the CSIR’s research axes – the Nederburg Miner, Stability Pillar Removal, Smart Mine, Optimal Miner and Glass Rock projects.

The Nederburg Miner is a machine the size of a wine bottle that is controlled remotely. It is designed for narrow stopes and extracts narrow reefs that are not economic for conventional mechanised stopes.

“The success of the Nederburg Miner will depend on its ability to convert up to 20 000 t of gold from resource to reserve, valued at more than R3-trillion,” says CSIR strategic research manager Dr Declan Vogt.

The gold in reefs are too thin to mine economically using conventional methods. A vast increase in local gold reserves would preserve jobs in the local industry and provide a solid foundation on which to build a high-tech mining supply industry.

Deep-level gold and platinum mines and, to a lesser extent, coal mines are still managed as they were 100 years ago – through a system of observation, recording in notebooks and daily or weekly reporting to managers. The CSIR’s Smart Mine philosophy aims to change this by collecting data using cost-effective and simpler technology and converting it into information to facilitate quicker and more accurate decision-making.

CSIR research is also concentrating on the communication link from in-stope sensors to the nearest wired infrastructure, as well as the condensing of vast quantities of data into knowledge by applying cognitive science techniques, such as neural networks and genetic algorithms.

Vogt explains that Smart Mine makes the application of process improvements in mining possible in a way similar to that of minerals processing. Such improvements will lead to lower costs, which will keep the South African industry competitive as it continues to mine deeper, more technically demanding orebodies.

The Stability Pillar Removal project is researching ways to remove stability pillars in places such as the Witwaters-rand, which will open up substantial reserves of gold and secure thousands of mineworker jobs for another 10 to 20 years.

The Glass Rock that the CSIR is developing is aimed at assisting in predicting rock formations and providing information with respect to what lies ahead so that the rock can be mined more effectively and will enable geological, geophysical and geochemical tools to provide better knowledge of the orebody, which will improve safety and provide cost and operational benefits for the mine.

Meanwhile, the CoM is working towards achieving a zero-harm environment for mineworkers by cooperating with its tripartite partners in government and the labour unions.

The CoM participates in the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC), which implements the Tripartite Action Plan on health and safety, which was agreed on in 2008. The plan aims to eliminate silicosis and noise-induced hearing loss and its major objective is to ensure that no new cases of silicosis are diagnosed in previously unexposed workers after December 2012.

The plan also aims to ensure that no deterioration in hearing that is greater than 10% is reported among exposed workers after December 2008 and, from this year, that noise emitted by equipment does not exceed 110 dB at any location where there are workers.

The DMR manages the MHSC, which oversees a yearly research programme budget of R40-million and is funded through a levy that mining companies have to pay. The research undertaken pertains to health and safety risks.

According to the DMR, the sector fosters a culture of care, dignity and respect. To assist in this process, the MHSC is developing a culture transform- ation framework under the theme Changing Minds, Changing Mines.

A group of national and international experts conducts the research that is the foundation for this framework, which deals with leadership issues and systems that enable and sustain a culture of zero harm.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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