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WHAT IS IPCC?
IPCC is an alternative to the use of trucks for the removal of waste and/or mineral (ore or coal) from a mine. IPCC is the use of fully mobile, semi-mobile or fixed in-pit primary crushers coupled to conveyors and spreaders (for waste) or stackers (for ore) to remove material from a surface mine. The crusher type used depends on rock properties but options include gyratory, jaw, sizer, double rolls or the new hybrid. Figure 1 shows an example of a spreader working on a waste dump and Figure 2 shows an example of a semi-mobile in-pit crusher.
Diesel fuel prices have recently been at historical highs and Many countries are experiencing ongoing labour shortages, There is high potential to simplify IPCC by automation
(which will keep manning levels much lower than a traditional truck operation). incidents by reducing the number of trucks operating on haul roads. For example, in 2008 three out of four surface mining fatalities in Western Australia were truck related. Already in 2009 there have been two truck related deaths in surface mining across Australia. IPCCs low emission profile attractive.
INTRODUCTION
Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (Snowden) and Sandvik Mining and Construction (Sandvik) have collaborated on 15 in-pit crushing and conveying (IPCC) studies spread over both open pit hard rock mines and open cut coal mines over last 18 months. Generally, Sandvik would manage these studies with some independent mine planning and scheduling carried out by Snowden as a subcontractor to Sandvik. Sandvik would also provide design and engineering input for the IPCC layouts, suitable equipment specifications, capital and operating cost estimates. Invariably the studies were based on comparing an IPCC option with truck and shovel optimised pit designs and schedules. Although IPCC was economically competitive with truck and shovel in all but two of these studies, the designs and schedules were not well suited for IPCC.
The potential impact of emissions and carbon trading makes The efficient usage of energy and finding of the most cost
effective path to an energy efficient, CO2 neutral and sustainable mining industry, is important for all mining industry stakeholders.
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MAusIMM, Principal Mining Engineer, Sandvik Mining and Construction, 60 - 62 Qantas Drive, Brisbane Airport Qld 4007. Email: doug.turnbull@sandvik.com MAusIMM, Principal Consultant, Snowden, PO Box 77, West Perth WA 6872. Email: acooper@snowdengroup.com
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Discharge boom
Transfer Bridge
Tripper Car
50m >50m
FIG 1 - An example of a waste spreader.
Belt 2
high operating cost driven by: fuel (diesel) and lubricants, tyres, and labour (maintenance and operator) availability (the mining
industry average age is getting older) and skill level.
In fully mobile IPCC systems, the shovel directly feeds the crusher thus eliminating all trucks except perhaps a cleanup fleet.
The crusher is mounted on tracks and moves with the shovel. Connecting the crusher to the main conveyor requires the use of mobile connecting conveyors (that is, belt wagons or grasshopper conveyors and crusher). The shovel and crusher could be replaced by a continuous miner but this paper will not cover this option. Semi-mobile IPCC systems (Figure 2) are located near the working face but because the haul is short, smaller truck fleets are required. To stay close to the working face the crushers need to relocate regularly, up to twice a year. Fixed IPCC systems are located away from the mining face, perhaps on the pit rim (or a short distance from the pit rim say ex-pit). They may be relocated but generally remain in one location for several years at a time. Because of the large distance from the mining face to the crusher, the truck savings realised will be smaller. In general, the more trucks displaced by the IPCC system the greater the financial benefit. Fully mobile IPCC systems should therefore have greater financial potential than semi-mobile or fixed IPCC systems. However, implementation complexity is lower for fixed and semi-mobile IPCC systems. Semi-mobile IPCC is of particular interest because it can be retro-fitted into existing open pit operations without major redesign or rescheduling of the pit.
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IN-PIT CRUSHING AND CONVEYING (IPCC) A TRIED AND TESTED ALTERNATIVE TO TRUCKS
Throughput TPH
50
100
150
200
250
FIG 3 - Crusher throughput versus rock strength for different crusher types.
geometry to locate crusher stations and transfer points. These types of design optimisations are typically not taken advantage of in preliminary assessments of IPCC viability.
Pit geometry
Open pit mining stages for a typical truck-shovel operation are designed based on several criteria including:
maximising the project value or net present value (NPV), balancing waste to ore stripping requirements, maintaining ore presentation and facilitating ore blending
requirements, and
Tunnels are usually only applicable where the topography presents an impediment to the use of trucks or the alternatives. Dedicated conveyor ramps are suitable for fixed crushers, but in the case of semi-mobile setups these have been found to be difficult to design and implement. Although dedicated conveyor ramps can be much steeper than haul roads they still require access for maintenance. In open pits with both trucks and an IPCC system the situation always exists where the IPCC conveyor and a haul road cross over. In order to maintain traffic flow either a conveyor bridge or a conveyor tunnel is usually required. In the conveyor bridge application, the conveyor is elevated to a height to clear a fully loaded truck. In some instances short conveyor tunnels can be constructed from preformed concrete sections and buried in order for the conveyor system to travel under the road. When an IPCC conveyor is retro-fitted to an existing haul road, some compromises are required. The haul road width needs to be increased by around 7 m to 9 m to accommodate the conveyor corridor. However, one compensating factor is that the traffic volume will be reduced significantly (to about 20 per cent) as most of the ex-pit truck haulage is no longer required. Figure 4 shows an example layout suitable for Caterpillar 793 trucks fitted to a 39 m wide road.
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Crusher Station
Catch Berm
Conveyor Bridge Permanent Ramp System Up to Crusher Station & Waste Dumps
Temporary crusher location on side of haul road with access off haul road to tip head
For this layout, the crusher is temporarily located along the pit side of the haul road with access to the tip-head off the haul road (Figure 7). The crusher station is located on the inside of the haul road. Trucks access the crusher off the haul road and under a conveyor bridge (or over a culvert). After the crusher has been relocated, a temporary ramp is built to facilitate removal of the crusher pad. The disadvantage of this system is that the removal of the crusher pad would be slow and expensive and limited to two normal benches.
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IN-PIT CRUSHING AND CONVEYING (IPCC) A TRIED AND TESTED ALTERNATIVE TO TRUCKS
Shovel Face
CrusherStation
TEMPORARYRamp
Shovel Face
Conveyor Bridge
Ramp Conveyor
Crusher Station
Waste dumps for IPCC do not need to be located immediately adjacent to the pit exits because the incremental haulage cost of conveyors is minimal. This can be particularly beneficial for pits with minimal waste storage areas near the pit and long hauls to ex-pit waste facilities. Unlike a truck dump, an IPCC dump does not generally require construction height restrictions due to the risk of crest failure. A waste spreader can be designed to stand well back from the dump edge (50 m to 175 m). It is a mobile piece of equipment and can be relocated to a safe area in the event of an impending failure. Waste dumps are often developed in semi-circular arcs with track shiftable conveyors in order to minimise the amount of movement required by the spreader (slewing or non-slewing). For any given track shiftable conveyor position, the spreader can normally dump below itself, walk around the head pulley and dump above itself before needing to relocate the conveyor.
Carbon emissions
Carbon emissions (greenhouse gases) have gained significant attention in recent times and most large mining companies have stated a desire to reduce carbon emissions. IPCC3 can offer reduced carbon emissions compared to conventional truck and shovel mining systems.
3.
IPCC reduces emissions by about 50 per cent when power is generated by hydro-electric power stations and 30 to 40 per cent when generated by gas or coal fired power stations.
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each litre of diesel combusted generates 2.6 kg of CO2; a 240 t truck generates an average of 425 kg of CO2 per hour,
which equates to 3070 tonnes of CO2 per truck per year;
Is energy usage efficiency a key for your mine? What is the mine life?
Conveying is more efficient than other mine haulage transport. IPCC is capital intensive and requires a long life operation in order to take advantage of the reduced operating costs and to realise the investment saving. (Need at least five years to pay back capital and more than ten is ideal.) Need at least 10 Mt/a (prefer 25 Mt/a) per stage as small movements dont justify the investment. Electricity price ($/kWh) should ideally be less than 25 per cent of diesel price ($/l) (approximately 4 kwhr of electrical power equivalent is produced from one litre of diesel). Multiple material types reduce the effective throughput of IPCC systems and increases codisposal dump development complexity. If rock strengths are less than 70 MPa then the use of sizers or Double Rolls Crushers (DRC) makes IPCC cheaper in both capital and operating costs. The new hybrid DRC can process up to 180 MPa average rock strength, in a similar sized envelope. issue? At least 100 m cut-back width is needed for an IPCC system installation. IPCC dumps can be formed at much higher heights in a single pass and with less ancillary equipment needs. An average of 6.5 persons per truck is saved using IPCC.
at a carbon trading price of US$30/t CO2 this equates to an this would add around US$0.04/t to typical haul costs.
Clearly, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, IPCC can offer a significant cost benefit and at the same time improve a companys environmental performance.
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3.
Consequently, pits optimised for IPCC typically make use of larger stages than pits optimised for truck and shovel systems. Reasons why truck and shovel schedules tend towards the use of smaller stages include:
historical reasons we have always designed stages this it is frequently assumed that productivity and costs will not
change with stage size and therefore there are no cost savings to drive a change in design practice.
EVALUATING IPCC Key questions to ask when evaluating IPCC What is the average truck haulage cycle?
Average truck cycle time of more than 25 minutes are likely to be economic for IPCC.
IPCC lends itself to easy automation and significantly reduces large dump truck vehicular incidents. (In 2008, three out of four surface mining fatalities in WA were truck related. In 2009, there have already been two truck related deaths in mining across Australia.) Are minimising dust generation and lowering water usage of high priority? IPCC generates less dust and uses less water than an equivalent truck operation.
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IN-PIT CRUSHING AND CONVEYING (IPCC) A TRIED AND TESTED ALTERNATIVE TO TRUCKS
Conveyors can generate power on downhill runs. moved? Without operational acceptance, IPCC may never get off the ground as the mine planning requirements are different from those of a traditional truck and shovel operation. IPCC will not tolerate poor planning whereas truck/shovel will tolerate poor planning (some people call this flexibility). Moving the crushers more than twice per year creates a lot of system downtime and negates some of the advantages offered by IPCC. When the truck replacement schedule is taken into account, IPCC is generally capital cost neutral compared to truck and shovel operations. However, the IPCC system requires the availability of capital upfront.
incremental mining rate steps for truck and shovel are based on the smallest loading unit size and mobility. For example, a Cat 994 loader has a capacity of 1200 to 1800 t/h and is very mobile. By contrast, a semi-mobile crusher can have a long term average throughput capacity of 10 000 t/h and is not mobile to the same degree. Consequently, the vertical advance must be varied in order to keep the crusher operating at full capacity. An IPCC schedule therefore requires flexibility in vertical advance rate, otherwise effective utilisation of IPCC can be lost.
CONCLUSIONS
IPCC has received renewed interest and is being reviewed by mining companies worldwide for the following reasons:
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NOTES
Sandvik and Snowden have no formal alliance but have worked together very effectively for a number of mine operations over the last 18 months. These studies have shown how an IPCC mining operation would function and have resolved the practical issues associated with implementing IPCC systems.
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