Digging for data

The company – Mining TAG Powered by Epiroc – is one of the pioneers in the rush to incorporate digital technologies into Chile’s mining industry.  Acquired by Epiroc, the business was founded by three Chilean partners just over a decade ago when they spotted a gap in the market.

 

A huge rockfall in northern Chile trapped thirty-three miners several hundred meters underground.  It took rescue teams weeks of drilling through solid rock to confirm that they were still alive and then to dig a tunnel wide enough to pull them to the surface. The story of their dramatic rescue was broadcast around the world (and later turned into a movie starring Antonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche).  In Chile, the accident brought a new focus on safety in one of the world’s largest mining industries where dozens of workers died each year.

 

Authorities quickly identified one of the biggest challenges: that mining companies had little way of monitoring which miners were at work and where they were in the mine. Workers usually signalled their presence by hanging an identity tag on a hook at the entrance.  But the rudimentary method was unreliable (hanging one’s tag could be forgotten), time-consuming and imprecise – once miners were in the mine there was no way to monitor where they were.

So the partners imported a technology deployed in Norway’s offshore oil industry (where safety is primordial). Through electronic tags carried by each employee and portals on the threshold of each work area, mining companies can monitor in real time how many people are onsite and where. “It’s super simple,” explains Mining TAG’s technical manager Sebastián Salinas. “Each time you pass, it is detected by the portal and the information

recorded.”

 

In an evacuation, rescuers would immediately know exactly how many people were still underground and where they were.  The system is extremely robust and reliable with a detection rate of close to 100%. Even with a packed bus rumbling through the mine, it will detect the identity of each passenger as they enter or leave.  As the business has grown, Mining TAG has moved from importing equipment to manufacturing some devices in Chile, including the screens and tags.  More than 24 000 of Mining TAG’s tags and 500 detection antennas have now been distributed to workers at mines in Chile and Peru.  But Mining TAG thought they might be overlooking an opportunity. If their tags could indicate location, perhaps they could be modified to measure other variables.

It’s a trend that is sweeping the industry, explains Peter Strimaitis, Epiroc’s vice president of Strategy and M&A – Digital Solutions division. As companies strive to boost productivity to stay ahead of rising costs, they are increasingly turning to data to better understand their operations and spot where improvements can be made.  Data which improves safety can improve productivity, which in turn boosts sustainability.  “It’s hard to just plot one (improvement) thread. They all intertwine with and build on each other,” Strimaitis notes. As well as vehicle location, they want to know how fast it is moving, how much fuel it is consuming, and the pressure in the tires, data which can suggest whether a vehicle is running well or is about to break down.

A new enhaced tag was designed to collect more information as well as a heavy-duty touch screen for the cabin where workers enter additional information.  Attached to the arm of a power shovel, these tags can show how many loads it makes during each shift, or how many holes a drill rig bores.  The gains can be immediate and big.  At one mine in Chile, after deploying Mining TAG’s devices, managers discovered that trucks would not begin hauling ore until an hour after the shift had begun. Once the issue had been brought to workers’ attention, productivity in the haulage operation soared by over 40 percent, with a significant impact on the mine’s bottom line.  Despite the potential gains, mining lags far behind other sectors in harnessing the power of data, says Mining TAG’s Technology Manager Francisco Casals, who used to work in tourism and e-commerce.

 

“With lives at stake, you can’t experiment. It’s got to be tested,” he notes. The scale of investment in the industry also tends to slow the adoption of new technologies.  But now mining companies are seeing the potential, they are rushing to incorporate digitalization into their operations, through autonomous vehicles, integrated operation centres and realtime monitoring of equipment. New acquisitions like Mining TAG are allowing Epiroc to provide a suite of interlocking technologies to help mining companies bring their operations into the 21st century.  Together with Mernok Elektronik  and automation specialists RCT, companies also acquired by Epiroc, Mining TAG is a key part of a deal between Epiroc and Chile’s Codelco to incorporate digitalization at its El Teniente mine, the largest ever signed by Epiroc’s Digital Solutions division.  “You’ve got to be able to connect all of these pieces like individual instruments in an orchestra all coming together,” explains Strimaitis.

At the cutting edge, mining companies are even turning to machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze all this data to understand and see how their operations could be run better.  “One of our aims here is to provide insights.  Not just information, but how it can help you,” notes Casals.  There are potentially hundreds of improvements to be made in any business operation as long as the people in charge can access the data.

That’s easy in a factory. Less so in an underground mine where conditions are harsh, and personnel can be separated by hundreds of meters of rock. To keep track at staff at El Teniente, Mining TAG installed almost one hundred portals to keep tabs on personnel moving through thousands of kilometers of tunnel.

 

“The challenge is how to make this work when there is no communication inside the mine,” Villanueva notes. So Mining TAG has now begun work on technology that allows its tags to store data until a reliable connection is achieved.  Following its acquisition by Epiroc, the Mining TAG team is thinking big.  “Now we’ve got financial backing and a world of contacts. Suddenly we could have clients in Africa,” explains Salinas.

 

MiningTAG technology supports Codelco operations at the El Teniente mine. Please elaborate.

 

“This technology allows us to control production in detail by registering each shovel load of ore that the LHD loaders haul in each part of the underground mine. Block caving must follow a series of operating criteria, such as extraction speeds and expansion rates, and this allows us to stay on top of all that.”

How important is digitalization to Codelco’s mining business?

 

“Digitalization is just the beginning for us, and we have already digitalized many mining processes.  This generates online information that is critical to the management of the mine. We are now taking the next step, which is to automate these processes, beginning with production equipment. But we want to advance some service equipment at least to the level of remote operation. We hope that MiningTAG can help us in this challenge and reduce the number of people exposed to risks in the underground operation.”

 

How important is the collaborative nature of the relationship with Mining TAG?

 

“This contract with Mining TAG seeks creative and innovative solutions, not just transactional products and services. This service requires long-term and lasting collaboration, where Mining TAG understands the needs of the operation and seeks and delivers effective solutions; for example, in discipline management, people tracking, and so on.”