Tag Archives: Fording River

Teck leverages Nanozen tech to improve occupational health at mine sites

Base metals, Environmental, Mine operation news, Mine ventilation, Mining safety, Mining services, Sustainable mining, , , , , , , , , ,

As part of its work towards eliminating occupational disease, Teck has completed a pilot project using an innovative combination of on-the-ground data and video technology to help better understand potentially harmful dust exposures at a task level.

The Nanozen pilot project, completed in 2020, was devised to understand task level exposures so the company could “laser focus” critical control strategies to reduce employee exposures.

As the company says, occupational exposures that can give rise to occupational disease represent the single most significant health and safety risk in the mining industry globally.

The large-scale pilot project it carried out, which included its Greenhills, Fording River, and Highland Valley Copper Operations, was funded by Teck’s Ideas at Work program. The pilot program leveraged the power of advanced analytics to collect real-time exposure data for job roles including pit crews, mechanics and equipment operators.

Exposure to dust at mine sites is a potential health and safety hazard, leading to respiratory diseases if proper precautions are not taken, Teck says. For years it has been industry standard to rely on daily sampling methods, averaged over the length of a shift, to determine dust exposure. These sampling methods provide one value indicating an employee’s overall dust exposure for a shift.

By making use of Nanozen’s real-time monitoring technology, Teck says it has been able to greatly improve the collection of information about dust levels during a work shift. Instead of a single value for an entire shift, it can now monitor live, accurate information on the concentration of dust exposures.

An overview of the instruments and tools deployed for the Nanozen pilot project

“This has enabled us to better understand how and when these exposures occur, and to target controls that reduce exposures from higher-risk activities,” the company said.

In 2020, the Nanozen pilot project was initiated at sites to deploy this technology into a wide range of roles including field and shop mechanics, pit utility and cable crews, bulldozer and grinding operators, and laboratory workers involved in sample processing. Teck’s Occupational Health and Hygiene team leveraged advanced analytics, diving deep into the data to find meaningful results and actionable changes, it said. This increased volume of research data, the company says, has helped it pinpoint the specific activities and times where dust exposures occur and prioritise approaches to mitigate them.

Dan Sarkany, Lead, Occupational Hygiene at Teck Coal, said: “Applying analytics to real-time particulate monitoring helps us determine exactly which activities lead to high dust exposures, allowing us to recommend and implement targeted controls to improve employee health and safety.”

This pilot project coupled Nanozen real-time dust monitoring technology with on-site video recordings and video analysts trained to recognise job activities. The footage collected maintained confidentiality and privacy by blurring faces and skin tone, and no audio was recorded. Teck said it had the full support of its workforce to undertake this work.

Corrine Balcaen, Director, Occupational Health & Hygiene, said: “This project represents a leading health and safety initiative in the mining industry and other industries with dust exposures.”

Real-time dust monitoring, and the targeted controls developed as a result of the learnings, will continue to be implemented throughout its operations going forward, the company said.

“This technology serves a key role in improving exposure controls and working towards Teck’s goal of eliminating occupational disease,” it added.

In 2019, Teck employed Nanozen’s real-time dust monitoring technology at Greenhills as part of a study looking to gain detailed, real-time data on dust exposure levels throughout a typical haul truck driver shift.

This is an edited version of the story that first appeared on Teck’s website, here.

Teck trialling new blasting process to protect water quality in BC, Canada

Environmental, Explosives and blasting, Mine operation news, Mining consumables, Mining services, Water management, , , , ,

As part of its commitment to improving water quality in British Columbia’s Elk Valley region, a number of research projects are underway to prevent nitrate from entering the environment and protect water quality in the region.

One source of nitrates is from explosives that interact with water during the blasting process, Teck said. “When this occurs nitrates can leach out of blastholes and enter the natural environment. To stop this from occurring plastic liners are used to prevent explosive materials from coming into contact with water,” the company said.

However, in order to use plastic liners, blast holes have historically needed to be dewatered so that the liner can reach the bottom of the hole and stay there, Teck said. “For blastholes that refill with water, a new approach was required.”

To tackle this problem, Teck undertook a research project to determine how plastic liners could be used in blastholes that naturally refill with water (often called dynamic blastholes). The research project was led by Teck with support from suppliers Maxam, Teck’s explosives provider, and Friesen Plastics, Teck’s liner supplier. Together, various combinations of procedures, liner types/packaging and explosive bulk truck modifications were trialed until a new system was developed.

Teck explained: “The emulsion in a liner system involves using the charging hose on the explosives truck to place the plastic liner in the bottom of a dynamic blasthole. The hole is then loaded with water resistant explosive from the bottom up, both filling the liner and keeping it in place. Once complete, the end result is a lined blasthole with the explosives protected from the water.”

In order for the plastic liner to be effectively placed down the blasthole, a hydraulic arm and funnel were added to the explosive bulk truck hose and the traditional borehole plastic liners had to be compressed into an accordion shape, according to Teck. The hydraulic arm allows for the hose to be placed directly over the blasthole and the funnel removes the wrinkles from the compressed plastic liner as it unfolds and is pushed to the bottom of the hole. “This ensures consistent lining of every blasthole while meeting our needs of durability and functionality,” the company said.

A common problem identified during early tests was the plastic liner being pulled back up the blasthole as the hose was withdrawn.

To address this, a system was developed that applies mineral oil to the bulk truck hose which acts as a lubricant allowing the hose to be withdrawn while keeping the plastic liner and blast material in the hole, Teck said.

“This process has now been successfully field tested on over 400 holes and has proven to be a safe and effective design,” the company said.

This new process is currently being piloted at Teck’s Fording River and Greenhills operations, but the plan is to implement across all of Teck’s steelmaking coal operations in 2019, the company said.

”As a result, every blasthole in the Elk Valley that is operationally accessible will contain a liner that protects both the explosive product and the environment. This will significantly reduce nitrate at source and help to protect water quality.”

Teck sees big future for saturated rock fill water treatment technology

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Teck Resources says the results from a saturated rock fill (SRF) project at its Elkview coal operations in British Columbia, Canada, show the technology has the potential to replace future active water treatment facilities (AWTF) and, further, reduce capital and operating costs for water treatment.

In 2018, the company successfully operated its first SRF project at Elkview, which has now been working for the past 12 months and “is demonstrating near-complete removal of nitrate and selenium from the feed water”, Teck reported in its 2018 financial results.

With the full-scale trial showing promising results, Teck is working to increase the capacity of the Elkview SRF to potentially reduce reliance on active water treatment, it said.

This approach has not yet received the necessary approvals and Teck said it continues to progress the construction of additional AWTFs to comply with the measures required by the Elk Valley Water Quality Plan, an area-based management plan approved in 2014 by the British Columbia Minister of Environment.

The plan establishes short-, medium- and long-term water quality targets for selenium, nitrate, sulphate and cadmium to protect the environment and human health, as well as a plan to manage calcite formation. In accordance with the plan, Teck has constructed and is operating the first AWTF at West Line Creek.

In the December quarter, Teck commissioned an additional treatment step to address an issue regarding selenium compounds in effluent from the West Line Creek AWTF. The facility is now operating as designed and the company has commenced construction on its next AWTF at Fording River Operations, which will use the same treatment process as the modified West Line Creek AWTF.

Teck said capital spending on water treatment in 2019 is expected to be approximately C$235 million ($178 million), including advancing a clean water diversion at Fording River, application of SRF technology at Elkview, construction of Fording River AWTF South, and advancing management of calcite and the early development of water treatment for Fording River North. “This compares to approximately C$57 million of capital spending on water treatment in 2018,” Teck said.

The company continued: “In our previous guidance, we estimated total capital spending for water treatment between 2018 and 2022 of C$850-900 million. We intend to complete construction of the Fording River South AWTF, currently under construction.

“If we are successful in permitting SRF projects to replace the Elkview AWTF and Fording River North AWTF, we estimate that total capital spending on water treatment during this period would reduce to C$600-650 million. If no reduction in AWTF capacity is permitted, overall capital in the same period would increase by approximately C$250 million over our previous guidance, as a result of engineering scope changes at the Elkview AWTF and an increased volume of water treated at Fording River North.”

Teck said it had presented regulators with evidence that SRFs are a viable technical alternative to active water treatment, and is working through a review process. “We expect that this process will result in a decision in the first half of 2019,” it said.

In the meantime, Teck continues to advance research and development, including the SRF technology.

“We estimate that over the longer term, SRFs will have capital and operating costs that are 20% and 50%, respectively, of AWTFs of similar capacity. If we are successful in replacing a substantial portion of active water treatment capacity with SRFs, we believe that our long-term operating costs associated with water treatment could be reduced substantially,” it said, adding that all of the foregoing estimates were “uncertain”.