Editorial Getting an edge from technology

In other words, mining today involves a lot of expertise beyond drilling, blasting and mucking.

In some businesses, technology translates directly into greater revenue. Invent a better mousetrap, they say, and the world will beat a path to your door.

But in mining, the relationship between improved technology and better profits isn’t so direct. You can’t “improve” a pound of copper or an ounce of gold, but you can reduce the costs of producing the commodity. So while mining may not be considered a “high tech” industry, it’s those high te ch advances that allow a mining company to keep its costs down and sometimes even reduce costs. Making use of technology allows mining companies to weather the low end of the economic cycle so that they may prosper during the good times.

That’s not true just of major mining companies, but of the smaller, one-mine companies, too. In fact, start-up situations are often the ones that make use of the latest in technology and, if they can overcome the perennial problems posed by Mother Nature herself, those technological tools can make the difference between profit and loss.

Mines that have been in production for years are often faced with the difficult task of adapting to new standards and new techniques. It’s far easier to take those technological advances into consideration when starting a new operation. The changeover from Imperial measure to metric is a case in point.

And sometimes technology is not as glamorous as one might believe. One example was recently provided by Craig Tedmon, senior vice-president of technology at Noranda Inc., speaking at a mineral economics symposium sponsored by the Mineral Economics Committee of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

“In some of our mines, air contamination from diesel exhaust and maintenance of diesel engines are the largest contributors to down-time,” says Tedmon. “By adopting diesel particulate traps developed elsewhere to our equipment, we expect to have savings in excess of $1.5 million next year on one mine alone.”

Avoiding diesel altogether may be a viable alternative in some cases. With ramp mining becoming more popular as a method of “pay-as-you-go mining” that avoids the high front-end capital costs associated with sinking a shaft, Inco and Atlas Copco are two manufacturers that have devised electric trucks powered by overhead cables — trolleys, really — that offer some interesting advantages. Atlas Copco’s Kiruna truck, now at work in two Canadian mines, can haul a 50-ton payload up a 12% grade at 20 km per hour using only electric power. Inco’s, still in the development stage, will feature a 70-ton payload.

Tedmon gives another example of technology being put to use by mining companies. By applying sophisticated 3-dimensional modelling techniques to the problem of identifying the shape and location of an orebody, more efficient mining methods can be employed with reduced dilution.

“A $1-per-ton improvement is worth more than $20 million per year,” he says.

The need to discover the base metal deposits necessary to maintain Canada’s position of leadership in the mining industry and the challenges posed by production from other countries where labor costs are often much lower are well known. If we are to continue as the world’s largest mineral exporter, technology is one lever we must use to our advantage.

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