Tag Archives: All-electric

FIRSTGREEN Industries launches ROCKEAT, the electric, cabinless skid steer loader

17th April 2024Automation, Environmental, Mining equipment, Mining services, Power supply for minesAll-electric, automation, FIRSTGREEN Industries, Marcus Suess, ROCKEAT, skid steer loaderDaniel Gleeson

FIRSTGREEN Industries, the manufacturer of what it says is the first and only commercially available all-electric, zero-emissions skid steer loader, has launched ROCKEAT, the company’s newest line of electric, cabinless skid steer loaders.

Designed with a low clearance, 360° camera and remote operability, ROCKEAT machines redefine safety and efficiency in mining, construction and other hazardous industries, it says.

ROCKEAT is designed to prioritise operator safety through its cabinless design and remote control operability, reducing the risk of accidents and injuries on job sites. As an all-electric skid steer, ROCKEAT produces zero carbon emissions, minimum operating fluids and near-silent operation, transforming the industry standard of loud, dangerous and dirty diesel-powered machinery into a safer, healthier and environmentally sustainable solution, FIRSTGREEN says.

“We are thrilled to introduce ROCKEAT skid steers to the US market, which represents a significant leap forward in safety and sustainability for traditionally dangerous, high-emission industries like construction and mining,” Marcus Suess, Chief Operating Officer for FIRSTGREEN Industries in North America, said. “With continued national support to accelerate the expansion of critical mineral mining projects on home soil, we take great pride in offering a solution that not only addresses pressing environmental concerns but also contributes to the resurgence of homegrown industry.”

ROCKEAT machines are charged using a standard 110 V or 220 V outlet, with no specialised charging equipment or infrastructure required. They are also equipped with a battery management system that can sustain up to eight hours of continuous operation.

The machines are specifically designed with a low profile to navigate and function efficiently in confined or restricted spaces, providing manoeuvrability and durability. Machine precision is achieved through four individual speeds for both hydraulic and travel functionalities. These can be further modified by the operator. And ROCKEAT functionality allows operators to finetune each of the four travel speeds for optimal performance in specific tasks.

The new ROCKEAT line includes 700 and 1200 models that are 67 in (1.7 m) and 71 in wide, respectively, and compatible with lead-acid and lithium batteries. With a maximum power of 3 x 36.2 hp (27 kW), maximum torque of 3 x 89 foot-pounds, and load capacity of 1,500 to 3,300 pounds, ROCKEAT sets a new standard with unparalleled features, versatility and performance capabilities, the company says.

Vale, Epiroc planning for automation shift with battery-electric loaders at Creighton

17th March 2023Automation, Base metals, Environmental, Mine operation news, Mining equipment, Mining safety, Mining services, Mining software, Power supply for mines, Sustainable miningAll-electric, automation, autonomous loading, battery-electric equipment, Coleman, Creighton, Electrification, Epiroc, Kiruna trucks, MT42 Battery truck, Ontario, ST14 Battery Scooptram, Sudbury, trolley assist, ValeDaniel Gleeson

The industry has been told continuously that there are plenty of synergies between automation and electrification when it comes to loading and haulage, yet the hard evidence of this complementary nature has not yet surfaced. That could be about to change if a trial at Vale’s Creighton mine in Sudbury, Ontario, proves successful.

Vale has been a key electrification partner for mining OEMs and service providers, testing out a whole host of battery-electric equipment from light utility vehicles to 42-t-payload trucks at its deep mines in Sudbury. This builds on its experience of running diesel-electric Kiruna trucks since the mid-1990s at the Coleman mine (also in Sudbury).

The miner has also commenced trials on surface with battery-electric trucks and is set to commence trolley assist operations at its massive Carajas iron ore mining complex in Minas Gerais, Brazil, later this year.

The variety of testing the company has carried out – in terms of the types of mining operations, vehicle setups, charging methods and electrical infrastructure – means it can be considered an electrification pioneer.

Now, it is looking to combine this experience with its knowledge of autonomous loading operations – again an area of the technology space it is considered a leader in.

In partnership with Epiroc, a battery-electric and automation project is in the planning stages at Vale’s Creighton underground mine.

The two companies commissioned four Epiroc ST14 Battery Scooptram and two MT42 Battery trucks at the operation in preparation for the deepening of the mine in the December quarter of 2022. Full-scale operation is ramping up with a first charging bay already commissioned and new ones coming in the next months, a Vale spokesperson told IM.

“The next steps will be to leverage the autonomous capability of those battery-electric scoops to enable operations between shifts depending on the application at the mine,” the spokesperson said.

Vale has previously said it will transition to an all-electric fleet at Creighton as part of its plans to develop the orebody down to circa-3km below surface.

RPMGlobal gets pragmatic with mining ESG projections

17th September 2021Energy minerals, Environmental, Mining industry recognition, Mining mergers and acquisitions, Mining services, Mining software, Power supply for mines, Sustainable mining, Water managementAll-electric, due dilligence, emission budgeting, environmental approvals, environmental audits, environmental social and governance services, Equator Principles, ESG, GHG emissions, HAULSIM, hybrid power, IFC, legislation, M&A, mine rehabilitation and closure, mining software, Ngaire Tranter, Nitro Solutions, regulations, RPMGlobal, Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3, SIMULATE, Sustainability Policies and Standards, tailings, XERAS EnterpriseDaniel Gleeson

RPMGlobal believes it has the specialists to make the type of environmental, social and governance (ESG) projections the mining industry is after, having recently acquired Nitro Solutions and established a dedicated division for this market area.

This transaction has provided RPMGlobal with a differentiated offering in the ESG consulting space, according to Ngaire Tranter, Founder of Nitro Solutions and now Head of RPMGlobal’s ESG division.

“Where Nitro and now RPMGlobal is different, is: ‘we are mining’,” she told IM. “We’re mining specialists that happen to do ESG, not the other way round.

“Our team is preferentially selected from people that have been on mine sites. We draw on this expertise to ensure any advice we provide is pragmatic.”

Tranter, a fourth-generation miner, is keen to get this point across given the ESG focus that has swept through the sector in the past few years.

*Ngaire Tranter, Founder of Nitro Solutions and now Head of RPMGlobal’s ESG division*

This has seen miners – big and small – announce ambitious sustainability goals involving Scope 1, 2 and (possibly) 3 emissions; majors pledge to become more transparent in the way they deal with stakeholders; and companies ensure that social value is created for employees, contractors and affected communities at all stages of the mining process.

The pool of consultants claiming to have the expertise to advise companies on the correct strategies to achieve such goals in this brave new ESG-focused mining world has expanded significantly.

This ESG demand trend led to RPMGlobal’s June acquisition of Nitro, but Tranter says her team – which offers a range of services from environmental approvals, audits, economics, policy and legislation advice to compliance reporting and impact assessments – is one of the few on the market offering tailored and practical mining advice that appreciates the reality of mining.

“We offer holistic services,” she said. “We work with that technology piece and use it in an advisory context to get the correct feedback for clients,” she said. “The ability to leverage off that deep domain mining expertise really makes that technology practical and purpose designed to deliver solutions.

“We’re problem solving with our own in-house mining expertise.”

That problem solving piece has become a lot easier for the former Nitro team after joining RPMGlobal, with Tranter saying there is a “fantastic” technology foundation for the company’s ESG division to leverage off.

What started with the recent addition of electric vehicle support for its HAULSIM and SIMULATE haulage simulation platforms – to allow trade-offs between diesel, hybrid or all-electric haulage scenarios – is set to expand further through organic developments and possibly M&A.

The financial budgeting tools of XERAS Enterprise, for instance, could be used for future emission budgeting, according to Tranter, while some of the pit simulation tools RPMGlobal offers could come into the mine rehabilitation and closure part of the ESG equation.

It is this latter area that Tranter believes will grow in significance and demand in future years – an area RPMGlobal is adequately qualified to advise on.

“That rehab and closure piece is going to grow further and further, and that will be brought into the discussion much earlier in the process,” she said. “Fortunately, our models look a lot further out than what is happening next quarter or even what might be happening in 20 years’ time. For things like groundwater models, we are looking to when these levels may reach a quasi-equilibrium. This involves looking out plus-900 years in some cases.”

*An open-pit coal mine partially restored in the province of Leon, northwest Spain (credit: RPMGlobal)*

Not only is RPMGlobal equipped with the tools and models to take a long-term view that can be trusted by mining customers, it is also able to present the results in a way that everyone can understand, according to Tranter.

“Miners inherently want to do the right thing, even if the perception in certain quarters does not align with this fact,” she said. “We are able to convey ESG considerations effectively to these companies by putting them in financial metrics everyone can understand.

“We provide a financial trade-off that allows companies to make an informed business decision about the decision to pursue or avoid a particular aspect of a project.”

This is increasingly important in a market where the legislation and regulations governing mining companies changes from region to region, as does the expectations of communities and stakeholders.

Doing the right thing by the law may not always be viewed as ‘the right thing’ by stakeholders.

“Back when I started over 15 years ago, ESG was just about doing the bare minimum to move the project forward,” Tranter said. “People now recognise the importance of corporate reputational risk and the implications of not doing the right thing.”

RPMGlobal’s ESG practice continues to use baselines such as the Equator Principles and the International Finance Corp’s Sustainability Policies and Standards to provide the required transparency miners need to do business in major markets and to access capital, but the company is aware and conscious that the sector is continuing to evolve.

“In Australia, for example, a company is currently going through the court system for its ‘net zero’ claims’,” Tranter said. “The way the world has shifted in terms of transparency means there are great examples all over the world for us to advise our clients on.”

It isn’t all ‘defensive’ ESG work in RPMGlobal’s wheelhouse, with the company often providing ESG input for due diligence work related to M&A as well as lenders engineering services for mining and downstream mineral processing projects.

“ESG is a significant piece in the due diligence phase of M&A,” Tranter said. “It’s often about a company’s appetite for risk. A smaller entity, for instance, might have a greater appetite for risk based on an established reputation they think can be used to approach the same asset in a different way.”

Such a reputation could be used to tackle tailings projects that come with legacy ESG issues – assets that will most likely get a second look in the future when commodities such as copper, nickel, etc become scarcer.

“In Australia, there are some fantastic opportunities where companies could gain revenue and value by picking up those legacy assets and remedying some of those ESG issues,” Tranter said. “As long as people understand the risks associated with what they are buying, then it is fair game.

“We at RPMGlobal are there to convey those risks clearly to the industry.”

Nouveau Monde Graphite casts net out for carbon-neutral, zero-emission fleet

24th November 2020Energy minerals, Environmental, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Mining industry recognition, Mining services, Power supply for mines, Sustainable miningABB Inc, Adria Power Systems, All-electric, Dana TM4, David Lyon, Fournier et fils, graphite, hydrogen, hydrogen electrolyser, Innovative Vehicle Institute, International Task Force Committee, Matawinie, Medatech Engineering Services Ltd, mine electrification, National Research Council of Canada, Nouveau Monde Graphite, Propulsion Québec, Quebec, Western Star 6900XDDaniel Gleeson

Nouveau Monde is putting out a call to arms across the technology space for its Matawinie graphite project, in Quebec, Canada.

The company, which has been pushing forward development of an all-electric open-pit mine in the province, has issued an “international call for pre-qualification” related to the fleet and charging infrastructure at the project.

Since October 2018 when the company issued a definitive feasibility study (DFS) on the West Zone of the Matawinie deposit, the mining industry and the technology space that serves it have undergone huge change.

Hydrogen is no longer a pipe dream, with hybrid vehicle development already set in motion across the globe; while the types of electric solutions being offered by OEMs has evolved with new types of trolley and cable-electric solutions, plus more powerful and reliable battery technologies.

This has led to some of the assumptions made around 25 months ago being re-evaluated.

The call for pre-qualification follows work by the company’s International Task Force Committee, which has allowed Nouveau Monde to explore “technologies, best practices and operational parameters to bring its vision to life in a cost-effective and technologically advanced way”.

The company added: “Discussions with manufacturers have already enabled to identify existing machinery in development and/or available, notably the ancillary fleet where purchasing agreements are being finalised.”

David Lyon, Director Electrification and Automation at the company, provided a bit more background to the announcement.

“We’re not actually that far out from production at Matawinie; come January, we’ll be around two years away from producing at the site,” he told IM. “Over that time, we’ve done a lot of due diligence and homework, including the pilot graphite anode project.

“We now have a pretty good roadmap towards electrifying the mine, but our view has changed a little bit. We’re not just saying it is going to be electrified anymore; we’re saying it will be carbon neutral and produce zero tail pipe emissions.”

Lyon added: “We’re afraid we haven’t turned over every rock in the technology sphere and we want companies – not just the ones we have already got in contact with – to come to us with ideas.”

That change in tone has been aided by Air Liquide’s plans to build a hydrogen electrolyser in Bécancour, very close to the company’s planned anode plant. This could produce 3,000 t/y of hydrogen from renewable energy sources.

“Having a green supply of hydrogen just down the road, and less than 200 km from the mine site, is opening up the opportunity for fuel cells, as well,” Lyon said.

While hydrogen power could provide an environmentally friendly power supply for stationary plant, there is also the potential for it serving the loading and haulage side of the mine, as indicated in today’s announcement: “Whether powered by lithium-ion batteries, plug-in systems or hydrogen fuel cells, Nouveau Monde is seeking the best zero-emission equipment for heavy-duty operations and harsh conditions associated with open-pit mining.”

Lyon added to this: “The call is for our entire mining fleet – any piece of the puzzle – to open it up to manufacturers that maybe we have missed along the way. There is a lot of good technology being developed across the globe and it would be a shame to go into full procurement mode without at least allowing those companies to participate in the process.”

Large OEMs and innovative SMEs, alike, will be able to submit detailed proposals and performance specifications from their production equipment solutions between November 30 and January 30, 2021, the company said.

In the 2018 DFS, Medatech Engineering Services Ltd and ABB Inc – both companies in Nouveau Monde’s taskforce committee – came up with the fleet outline at Matawinie.

“The mine will be using an all-electric, zero-emission mine fleet, consisting of electric battery-driven 36.3-t mining trucks, battery-driven front-end loaders, cable reel excavators and bulldozers, and battery-driven service vehicles,” the report read.

The mine, scheduled to produce 100,000 t/y of graphite concentrate, was also expected to use an electric in-pit mobile crusher and overland conveyor system to feed crushed material to the plant.

Recently, the company has made headway on filling some of these requirements.

It signed a deal with Adria Power Systems, Dana TM4 and Fournier et fils – through the Innovative Vehicle Institute (IVI), Propulsion Québec and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) – that would see a new electric propulsion system developed with a rapid recharging infrastructure adapted to heavy vehicles in the open-pit mining industry.

This would also see mining contractor Fournier et Fils provide the project with a battery-powered Western Star 6900XD truck with a 36 t loading capacity that is expected to make its first real-world test runs as early as spring 2022 at a Fournier et Fils quarry, and at the Nouveau Monde Graphite site.

Such developments are representative of the government support Nouveau Monde has received – both at a federal and provincial level – and the company is hoping this assistance encourages more companies to submit zero-emission options.

“Quebec, Canada, features renowned environmental standards, innovative talents, business-forward policies and virtually unlimited hydropower, making it an ideal playground for OEMs to build and deploy their electric solutions,” it said.

Still, NMG will not be able to fill all its haulage gaps through innovative prototype development.

Lyon said: “A commercially-supported solution over the 26-year mine life is really what we want. They exist, and we just need to properly quantify all those other solutions and put them in the queue for an open procurement call.”

And, according to Lyon, there is some flexibility to the payloads and requirements outlined in that 2018 DFS document.

“While we have found solutions in those classes today…we are still a bit flexible and open to looking at the upper and lower bands in terms of equipment,” he said.

This can be seen in the full call for pre-qualification, which includes two 90 t excavators, one 50 t excavator, one 50 t wheel loader, 8-14 haul trucks with 50-65 t payloads, two drills, two 42 t dozers, two 22 t dozers, two 14M or 140 graders, two water trucks, and a range of operation and maintenance support machines. It adds up to a mining fleet including some 60 vehicles.

Flexibility on behalf of the vendors could also prove key in the company fulfilling its requirements.

“There isn’t today one supplier that is going to supply our whole fleet, and it is very important that these solutions work together,” Lyon said. “Maybe one of these suppliers has a comparable solution that matches well with other technology we are not aware of. That could make an impact on our planning.”

Lyon admits more than two years seems a long time to fill a fleet order, but he is cognisant that timeline is not as generous when considering much of it involves the use of new technology.

All this means there will be a transition to the carbon-neutral, zero-emission fleet after initial production starts up in 2023 at Matawinie. The company is putting this transition period at five years, hoping to have a fully-electric fleet by 2028.

Still, considering the 25.5-year life at Matawinie, most mining will be conducted in the mean and ‘green’ fashion Nouveau Monde’s stakeholders and wider industry are expecting.

“Nouveau Monde is proud to be acting as an enabler into the zero-emission heavy-duty operations and is welcoming any industrial operators in mining, quarry and/or construction sectors to reach out to its technical team with questions and interest,” the company concluded.

To find out more about the pre-qualification process, follow this link: www.nouveaumonde.group/qualification-electric-fleet

Goldcorp’s Borden all-electric underground mine moves towards production

25th October 2018Environmental, Mineral project development, Mining equipment, Precious metalsAll-electric, Borden, Goldcorp, Ontario, The Electric MineDaniel Gleeson

Those watching the all-electric Borden gold project in Ontario, Canada, will have been pleased with the takeaways from Goldcorp’s latest financial results.

In the September quarter, ramp development reached 1,884 m, on schedule, with a corresponding depth of 314 m, while bulk sample extraction began in August, two months ahead of schedule, with a first zone of extraction on levels 225 and 240.

The company said early results from the bulk sample were confirming the geological model and all operating permits were expected to be obtained by the end of 2018.

All of this indicated Goldcorp could increase the pace of development of the project, as well as construction of the remaining critical mine infrastructure including a ventilation raise and secondary egress, meaning the mine could be in production somewhat earlier than expected.

On the benefits of the project itself, Goldcorp said: “With an all-electric underground mine operation, it is estimated that operating costs will be reduced by over C$9 million ($6.9 million) per year due to the elimination of approximately two million litres of diesel fuel, and with reduced ventilation needs, a decrease of approximately 32,000 MWh of electricity and a corresponding decrease in propane required to heat the ventilation.”

As well, a reduction in annual greenhouse gas emissions of more than 7,000 t, or 70%, over a baseline mine is expected, according to the company.

Based on these numbers, it is hardly surprising the Government of Ontario has agreed to invest C$5 million into the deployment of the all-electric fleet through its target greenhouse gas programme.

The fleet is composed of state of the art mining equipment, including Sandvik DD422IE automated battery/electric jumbos and MacLean Engineering 975 Omnia Bolter battery bolters as well as Sandvik LH514E electric LHDs. All services vehicles are electrified, including a conventional Caterpillar 12M3 grader which was converted into a battery-operated unit by MEDATECH Engineering.

The project, which currently has 950,000 oz of reserves, is scheduled to begin commercial production in the second half of 2019.