Australian mining technology company Emergent Mining Technologies (EMT) launched its Reduced Energy Mining System (REMS) in May to increase the energy efficiency of opencast coal mines.

The technology is meant to dramatically reduce mine operating costs, improve productivity and prolong the economic life of opencut coal mines, says EMT director Brian MacDonald, adding that the company has been developing this new mining technology for the past 10 to 15 years.

“After many years of traversing the research and development, technical, operational development and review phases – including plying through the international patenting processes – we have now managed to launch the product.”

MacDonald says REMS was first introduced to the market in Australia in a soft release and sounding process.

He says EMT will soon start a major international media launch of the technology, and will also participate in conferences and technical and commercial presentations within the next three to six months.

Research and Development
MacDonald says that, with more mature opencut coal mines approaching substantial depths in their operational configuration, the rationalisation behind the technology was finding a more efficient mining method.

Therefore, the entire opencut mining process, in terms of energy use and efficiency, without taking established operational paradigms into consideration, had to be investigated.

“It is not necessarily the case that the same methodology deployed at the start of the mine’s operations will be the most applicable during its entire life cycle,” he notes.

He says the work that underpins the method began with a research analysis project looking at energy use in opencut coal mines.

“From this purely theoretical approach, the deployment of resources in opencut coal- mining activities is largely focused on relocating a particle of valuable material, in this case, coal from its resting position some distance beneath the surface of the earth – and some distance away from the coal processing plant – to the coal processing plant on the surface of the mine,” MacDonald explains.

He says, essentially, these processes involved incorporating multiple elements of material elevation and translational movement, as well as subelements that include all forms of energy system transference and loss.

“This includes transference between kinetic and potential energy systems, and vice versa, and includes losses, such as in thermal energy balance, noise and heat; frictional losses in the form of rolling resistance and motion; and in other mechanical and related efficiency losses,” MacDonald elaborates.

He adds that the analysis was quite fundamental and excluded overall methods, but included, for example, equipment type and fleet systems analysis.

The results from the systems’ analysis were then applied to the constraints of the available equipment of suitable scale and capacity to suit the mining operations, acknowledging the capital constraints that inevitably affect opencut mines once they reach the more mature stages of their reserve depletion, MacDonald elaborates.

He says deploying efficient elevating or lifting devices to lift material and efficient translational devices to translate material lies at the heart of the method.

“It sounds simple in concept, but it is not in reality. This is where the deployment of complex computational three-dimensional (3D) mine simulation software has proved invaluable,” MacDonald states, adding that the process of energy use optimisation in a multipath mass movement system could not have been undertaken in the absence of such software.

He says this provides the capability to accurately model the mining equipment within the 3D geometrical constraints of a mine’s reserve model to reduce and optimise the energy that is input into the whole mining process.

“Essentially, the method and analysis techniques are all about minimising the energy applied to the mass movement of material involved in uncovering the coal and relocating that coal to the processing plant,” says MacDonald.

He adds that, by minimising the energy involved, the mine’s input costs are also minimised, which can deliver significant cost reductions.

However, he points out that each mine has different characteristics in terms of its equipment specifications and its coal and overburden reserves, adding, however, that this can all be input and analysed using the software tools and techniques to produce the optimised mining outcomes.

“And the outcomes can be quite profound, with direct cost reductions of up to 20% and more having been demonstrated from the initial studies undertaken to date.”

Expression of Interest
MacDonald tells Mining Weekly that EMT is in discussions with several mine operators, who have expressed interest in the technology following its initial soft market soundings.

He says no operations currently deploy the technology, as it has been introduced to a limited number of potential customers.

“Given the obvious advantages, those parties that we have spoken with to date have expressed great interest.

“However the technical analysis that is required to be undertaken before the implementation of the technology on any mine site is quite comprehensive, so even if we achieve a high early-stage success rate, we expect that this will roll out over a few years,” he elaborates.

MacDonald says EMT has secured international patent rights to protect its innovation. The company hopes to license it throughout those countries and regions to which it will be exported and “South Africa is a key target in this context”, he concludes.