CJY Zinc Mine launched Remote Control System

Mining Remote Control creates not only Safety, but also Economic Benefits!

There's no doubt that underground mining has always been a very dangerous job. Of course, every mining company is also trying to ensure the safety of mine operators. Thus many mines chose to abandon the ore in the absolute danger zone. However, it will result in great economic loss. 

What if the radio remote control system can solve this problem?

Hebei Caijiaying Zinc Gold Mine adopts segmented openstope method to do mining, when backstopping, for safety reasons, the LHD will not enter the mined out layer to do mining, resulting in a large amount of ore remaining in the stope. When mining the lower layered ore, the remaining ore in the upper layer will enter the lower layer. However, permanent loss will occur when backstopping the last layered ore.

The mine has counted the remaining ore in the mined out layer in recent years, and the mined out layer formed before 2009 has been basically filled. That is to say, the ore remaining in the mined out layer has been permanently lost. As data analyzed, a lot of minerals remain in the empty area every year, which can not be shovel out, it not only reduces the recovery rate of resources, resulting in the loss of resources, but also has a certain impact on the economic efficiency of the mine. Therefore, in the case of proper increase of tunneling, a method of using remote control LHD to mine ore is put forward and implemented.

In September 2011, the mine installed radio remote control system on 2 LHDs in service, one for use and one for spare. After the installation and debugging, the operators were trained and then tested the LHD. The test result satisfied the mine owner. After the use of remotely operated LHD, although a small amount of ore remains in the mined out area. But relative to the use before, it has greatly reduced the loss of resources. According to mine statistics, drawn ore tonnage of a remote control LHD can reach about 180t. From October 2011 officially use the remote LHD, only work the day shift, do other work on the rest time. The mine has calculated the actual situation of the remote control LHD work for 5 months.

Nonetheless the remote control Load-haul-dump machine has been used for only 5 months, the market value of the recovered ore has reached RMB 5,674,000. The cost of ore transportation and ore process is RMB 1,140,400. However, the installation cost of the remote control system and other auxiliary expenses are far smaller than the market value of the recovered ore.

In the following 6 years after above project, we have been improving the system all the time. Now it’s far more advanced.

1) The handle of the remote control adopts the imported handle of Germany, Liquid crystal display using OLED which can work in harsh environment.

2) The designed system has the ability of long-term stable operation, high safety and reliability, and sufficient anti-interference ability.

3) Fully considering redundant backup of critical equipment, critical data and logical link, as well as the system automatically fault detection, discovery, alarm and recovery function, which greatly improve the reliability of the system.

4) The system adopts an open architecture, standardized interfaces and protocols, it has good scalability and is in compliance with national and industry standards and regulations. Considering the possible expansion and upgrade of the system in the future, the main equipment and systems have good interconnection and interoperability.

5) The system adopts international advanced technology and idea to design, and uses hardware equipment from domestic or international famous manufacturers, which make the technical scheme of the system maintain the advanced status in a long time, and can adapt to the future development of science and technology.

The system adopts international advanced technology from Australia, which can be applied to various famous brands both in China and abroad, such as Sandvik, Atlas, Caterpillar, Doosan, etc.

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