Open Cut Mining Priorities
IMPROVED HEALTH AND SAFETY
The industry is looking for direct or indirect improvements in health and safety across all mining and exploration 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.
- General improvement to the safety of mining and maintenance operations through novel procedural, operating, or equipment changes.
- Manual handling aids for operational and maintenance activities including elimination of human intervention through automated technologies.
- Innovative processes to assist in the management of operator fatigue. This applies equally to the coal preparation and underground areas.
- 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 preparation 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 systems.
- Enhancements to major mining equipment to enable decreased cycle times and increased utilisation.
- Innovations in operating techniques.
- Lower cost ways of fragmenting ground for optimum diggability and bucket filling.
- Development of innovative methods to improve coal recovery.
- Geotech stability of very high spoil piles and highwalls.
- Assessment of operator training effectiveness.
- Improvements in mine planning optimisation and visualisation tools.
IMPROVEMENT IN THE EFFICIENCY and RELIABILITY OF EQUIPMENT and 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:
- The application of alternative materials to high maintenance areas.
- Reliability engineering, including whole of asset approaches.
- 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 reducing 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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