Open Cut Mining Priorities
Improved Health & Safety
The industry is looking for direct or indirect improvements in health and safety across all mining operations. Areas of focus and interest for open cut mining are:
- Personal back and joint damage. A number of improvements have been seen in the areas of seating, suspension and vehicle ride, but continued development and new approaches are required to further reduce injuries of this type.
- Protection and removal of personnel from potentially hazardous situations such as working under highwalls and during loading of trucks where the use of remote control is of interest.
- General improvement to the safety of mining and maintenance operations through novel procedural, operating, or equipment changes.
- Manual handling aids or alternatives for ground engaging tool (GET) replacement.
- The development of simple, applied and practical behavioural safety management tools/approaches tailored for application in the Australian coal industry. This applies equally to the coal processing and underground areas.
Increase The Productivity Of Mining Systems
A reduction in unit costs of production is a key driver for the industry. Some specific issues are:
- Implementation of automation for production and other machines. Proposals will need to offer improvement in health and safety, decreased production costs and increased productivity.
- Improved sensing to improve production and control.
- Enhancements to major mining equipment to enable improved cycle times or improved utilisation.
- Innovations in operating techniques.
- Lower cost ways of fragmenting ground for optimum diggability and bucket filling.
- Development of training tools to transfer the benefits of improved techniques to operators.
- Development of innovative methods to improve coal recovery.
- Geotech stability of very high spoil piles and highwalls.
Improvement In The Efficiency & Reliability Of Equipment & Services
The industry believes that working with OEMs is of significant value and would also welcome projects that are supported by, or integrate with, OEMs:
- Reliability engineering.
- The development of practical methods to understand and reduce the negative impact of operational practices.
- Condition monitoring and its effective and useful integration.
- Innovations that help mine operators improve tyre life.
- Advances that help relate duty to work done across a range of equipment to define maintenance needs.
- Improved methods for predicting catastrophic equipment failures.
- Technologies that improve energy efficiency across the mine.
Improved Geological Definition Of Coal Deposits
For economic assessment reasons, it is essential that we have the best possible understanding and definition of the resources and reserves underpinning any mining operation.
- Development of advanced techniques to process and interpret geophysical data and the further development of geophysical tools.
- Development of techniques to better and more accurately determine the quality and quantity of the coal resource/reserve particularly in near surface to moderate depth targets.
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