New Afton uses automation to deal with the danger of mud and sand inrush

New Gold's New Afton mine is located in south-central British Columbia. This is the only mine in Canada that is mined by natural caving method, and 18,500 tons of ore are mined every day.

Recently, with the help of a brand-new automatic ore drawing solution, the mine has been able to reduce the risk of mud and sand influx and improve productivity. In less than two months, the mine recovered the investment.

With the continuous expansion of the mine scale, more and more ore drawing points become loose and wet. The assessment in 2016 showed that one fifth of the ore drawing points in the mine were classified as high risk. In order to ensure the safety of operators, New Afton stopped manual ore drawing at these ore drawing points and began to enable remote ore drawing within sight range.

However, when the ore that needs to be cleaned by remote control reaches 20%, the mining capacity may not be full of the processing capacity of the subsequent mill. At this time, New Afton needs a new way of working.

Bob Garner is a technical expert with decades of experience in natural caving mining, who is in charge of equipment operation and is responsible for training the operators of AutoMine system.

TJ Williams, an electrical instrument technician, has rich technical expertise and is responsible for the installation of all electrical systems, which is complementary to Garner in technology.

Garners said: "We need to plan the infrastructure, set up the wireless network, determine the distance between the antenna placement point and the antenna, and then teach the scraper the path to walk and improve all other parts to ensure its efficient operation."

Sandvik provided the initial engineering assistance, and started the system implementation from the west mine, and then Williams copied it in the east mine.

During the one-week debugging period at the end of 2017, the first of the two automatic sandvik LH410 ordered by the mine proved that its efficiency was much higher than that of the in-line-of-sight remote control solution.

NEW AFTON has used sandvik LH410 in the ore-drawing operation at the ore-drawing level. Ore drawing level is one of the five main underground levels of natural caving mining method. The average transportation distance between ore drawing point and chute is only 75 meters, which limits the advantages of automation.

Although the horizontal transportation distance is short, the circulation speed of sandvik LH410 automatic equipment is almost twice as fast as that of the scraper with remote control in line of sight.

In addition to recouping the investment cost of the automatic scraper in less than two operating hours, New Afton realized the benefits of healthy equipment to the mine's profit. AutoMine controls the scraper with high accuracy, and its anti-collision function helps to eliminate the risk of damage while maintaining high speed, thus accelerating the overall circulation speed.

Compared with other types of 10-ton scrapers in mines, the tire life of sandvik LH410 automatic scraper has also been prolonged by 30%.

New Afton successfully upgraded from remote control equipment within sight range to automatic ore drawing solution, which improved cleaning efficiency and alleviated the danger of mud and sand inrush. Now, New Afton is considering expanding the application of automation.