An automated system for monitoring mining vehicles, developed by VIST Group, has been deployed at EVRAZ’s Kachkanarsky mining and ore processing plant (KGOK) operation in Russia, the Zyfra Group subsidiary confirmed.

The iron ore at KGOK is mined in four open pits: the Glavny, Zapadny, Severny and Yuzhny deposits. The ore is removed from the pits by BELAZ trucks and delivered to the crushing plant by rail. Pit machinery includes heavy-duty 130-t dump trucks, modern NP-1 locomotives and 12 m² capacity excavators.

Some 58.5 Mt of ore was mined at the KGOK operations in 2018, which was processed into 3.5 Mt of sinter and 6.5 Mt of pellets, according to EVRAZ.

Work on the autonomous investment project, which required $1.23 million in funding, began in November 2017. So far, 19 communication towers have been installed around all the operations, while 30 excavators and 35 BELAZ trucks have been equipped with sensors and navigation antennae, as well as smart displays in the driver’s cabs, VIST said.

“Thanks to the joint efforts of specialists from KGOK and VIST Group, a sophisticated and up-to-date system for managing mining vehicles has been deployed at the EVRAZ plant,” Alexander Bondarenko, Business Unit Director at VIST Group, said.

“Following Phase 2 of project implementation, which will cover rail transportation and quality control of ore arriving at the plant from the shipping sheds, the system will be the most sophisticated in the Russian ore mining sector,” Bondarenko said.

The VIST Group system tracks and displays real-time information on the locations and operating conditions of dump trucks, dozers, excavators, automatic loaders and “mobile canteens”.

Using the Wi-Fi network installed in four mines, all data on the vehicles’ speed, mileage, fuel levels and rock loads, as well as the locations of the “mobile canteens”, are transmitted in real time to the computer terminals of the plant’s dispatchers and chief specialists. “The data is also seen by the excavator operators and dump truck drivers on smart displays in their cabs,” VIST said.

Thanks to a modular geological model of the ore deposit integrated into the system, it is possible to analyse the quality of the iron ore and control the movements of the dump trucks and excavators, according to VIST.

And, in the event of an unforeseen stoppage, the system redirects the BELAZ truck to be loaded by another excavator.

Denis Novozehnov, Vice President of EVRAZ and Head of the company’s Urals Division, said: “The switch to an automated monitoring system has helped us to reduce ore losses and ensure more reliable quality. We’ve also been able to improve the productivity of the quarry dump trucks.”