TELF AG talks about technological advancement in the mining industry
Innovation and the mining sector, an ancient bond
The link between the mining industry and innovation, over its long history, has allowed this sector to establish itself globally as one of those most involved in the technological and technical advancement of production processes. Even today, amid an energy transition fueled by raw materials, the mining industry appears more dependent than ever on the level of technological progress that allows it to thrive through more efficient and sustainable processes.
It is not difficult to understand the origin of this close link between the mining sector and procedural innovation: mining operations do not represent isolated actions, disconnected from everything else, but are instead an integral part of a complex system made up of different technologies and interconnected, each with its specific function. We refer to the technologies necessary to drill into the subsoil, explore it, transport the extracted material, and speed up the processes. The final product of Mining, therefore, represents the fruit of a complex process, which usually requires high-tech equipment in every single phase, from exploration to final transport. Nowadays, technological innovations in the sector are gradually introduced into an existing production system that includes technical, social, and organizational aspects. In most cases, they contribute to a large extent to the speeding up of the entire process and the quality of the result.
Automation, modernization, and artificial intelligence
But what are the most interesting technologies in the global panorama of the mining sector? From this point of view, the industry seems animated by a fervent innovative drive that continues to provide new technologies and equipment to improve and modernize the companies’ approach towards underground raw materials. Many companies, for example, have already had the opportunity to introduce artificial intelligence into their production processes: one of these, in the ore sorting technology sector, is Tomra‘s Mining, which separates the most valuable minerals from the waste material in the initial stages of the production process. This innovation has already added varying degrees of value in the production stages where it has been applied, as happened at the Australian Mt Carbine mine. Its use has contributed to obtaining high-purity tungsten, making considerable cost savings possible. The same technology, in 2015, contributed to the discovery of one of the largest diamonds ever in Lucara’s Karowe mine in Botswana.
Very often, innovation and technology coincide with the automation of processes. This also applies to the mining industry, and one of the latest innovations produced by Rio Tinto is there to demonstrate it. The core of this innovation is represented by autonomous drilling and haulage. The so-called Autonomous Trains, the AutoHauls, soon became the first autonomous rail operators in the world to transport iron ore from the Pilbara, Western Australia. In this specific case, the service was operated by approximately 200 locomotives covering a route of 1700 km. With its 26 autonomous drilling rigs, Rio Tinto currently has one of the world’s largest drilling fleets in this sector. Other types of technologies can be helpful in the exploration phase: the Core Imaging Spectrometer, created by Terra Core, is able to reveal alterations in minerals that the human eye cannot see, creating highly precise mappings and allowing the advanced development of drilling programs.
