Abstract
Mine sites around the world, including Canada, are achieving extended life by mining at greater depths. This in turn has necessitated the development of technological innovations to address the challenges presented by longer transit times to the face, increased time to receive manually recorded operational and maintenance data, and higher demands on ventilation.
In the underground drilling space, three areas of development have been running concurrently. Firstly, automation to permit operator-less equipment. Secondly, digitalisation to support live operation-critical data to the surface, and thirdly electrification to support the economics of mining depth.
Several examples will be presented that demonstrate the use of automation, digitalisation and electrification across underground drilling applications.
At New Gold’s New Afton site, the use of automation with a DS412iE rockbolter for ground support installation has delivered sub 2 minute resin rebar installation cycles. At an Agnico Eagle site, the introduction of remote control to mobile raise bore drilling has removed the operator from the Rhino 100 drill for most of the operation. With the addition of automation and tele-remote control, the DD422i development drill with integrated bit changing has increased face utilisation. This increase in face utilisation has resulted in a development rate increase of 10%.
As part of the digitalisation journey, seamless transfer of DL422iE production drill digital drill plans will be reviewed. Remote equipment monitoring and wireless rig access to support remote maintenance strategies will also be detailed.
Finally, on electrification, an overview of battery-electric underground drills will be given. Even though underground drills are a small contributor to the exhaust emissions in an underground mine, the transition from diesel to battery-electric supports the reduction in heat and emissions when mining at depth.
The examples will show that the journey to adopting technological innovations is not without its challenges as there are many moving parts to automation, digitalisation and electrification. However, with adequate support from stakeholders, these innovations can be adopted by any site mining at greater depths.