Assessing the Truckless Conveying Option in Mines

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As with all mobile or re-locatable equipment, space is limited. While the ideal design retains all electrical equipment on board, site specific requirements can result in equipment either not fitting on-board or becoming too heavy to allow relocation of equipment. Some designs have shifted equipment to off-board, pontoon-mounted switch rooms. Previous factors such as ease of relocation and power connection then apply to these as well.

Horizon Relocation – What to Do If the Edge of the Pit is Reached

Once a bench system has progressed to the pit extents, the IPCC system will generally require removal to a new horizon to continue operation. While system components should already be suited to relocation due to regular conveyor track-shifts, both machines and conveyor drive heads/restraints may need to be trammed over long distances and potentially steeper grades than encountered in regular track shifting. As pit design needs to cater for this, it helps to have mine planning and materials handling design teams working closely during design phases.

How to Achieve Flexibility With Truckless Conveyor Systems

Continuous mining systems such as IPCC’s have a long and successful history in European and La Trobe Valley Australian coal mines due in no small part to the homogenous nature of these deposits. These systems are suited to long, regular benches and strip-mining techniques.

As attempts are made to apply IPCC systems to more varied deposits, their flexibility in managing irregular bench heights, shapes and distributions of material must be considered. The link between mine planning and engineering study teams in the earliest stages of the project is critical. The two groups should not work in isolation. The materials handling system directly influences the options available to the mine planning team and vice versa. This link has not been as significant when implementing truck and shovel systems so requires a change in mindset from both clients and design teams.

Particularly hard material may require crushing through a different machine than regular material. Jaw and gyratory crushers can handle the hard material but struggle to provide the higher capacities demanded of the overall system. Swapping different crushing rigs in and out of a given face operation is possible but can create difficulties:

Even the largest jaw crushing systems tend to have smaller dimensions and feed hoppers than larger mobile sizing rigs. Different excavators may be required.

Smaller excavators may require bench heights or face operations to be reconsidered in localised areas.

Gyratory crushers haven’t historically been

mounted in mobile rigs.

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