Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/742224
CUTTING DOWN ON EXPLOSIVES Vermeer, the Vermeer logo, Equipped to Do More and Terrain Leveler are trademarks of Vermeer Manufacturing Company in the U.S. and/or other countries. © 2016 Vermeer Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Because those products are mostly used as building materials, the goal usually is to locate quarries near where road and other construction projects occur. This is typically in urban areas. And that is becoming an even bigger pain for mining companies because a major trend in the industry worldwide is increasing regulations on drilling and blasting methods due to environmental and safety concerns, especially in populated areas. More and more quarries are turning to surface excavation machines as a solution. They have numerous advantages over drilling and blasting: • THEY can be used in parts of surface mines that explosives cannot. • THEY cause less noise, dust and vibration. • THEY cut more precisely. • THEY produce a smaller, more consistent par- ticle size. • THEY can take steps and equipment out of the mining process. • THEY can also be used for site preparation and haul road construction. As a surface excavation machine moves on its tracks, its cutting drum rotates and the teeth on the drum mechanically excavate material. To give an example, the Vermeer T1255 Terrain Leveler ® surface excavation machine (SEM) has a 600-horsepower (447 kW) engine and can cut a swath up to 27 inches (68.6 cm) deep and 12 feet (3.7 m) wide in a single pass. It can be equipped with an optional GPS for pre- cision cutting, allowing an operator to use the full length of the drum and minimize the overlap with each pass. Additionally, a survey can be taken of a quarry to create a fl itch plan, which can be uploaded to a computer on the machine. Mining companies are benefi tting from these features. There's a Vermeer customer that chose not to use a primary crusher because its Terrain Leveler SEM could consistently produce a 6-inch (15.2 cm) minus particle size. Another customer had a million tons of mine- able product but could no longer drill and blast because of nearby pipelines, powerlines and roads. "The surface excavation machine is getting that last remaining bit of aggregate," says Patrick Robinson, senior commercialization manager for mining at Vermeer. "The site is already per- mitted, but if not for the surface excavation ma- chine, it would probably be abandoned because drill and blast is no longer an option." It may go without saying, but surface excavation machines are quieter and create less vibration than explosives. As for dust suppression, the Vermeer Terrain Leveler SEM offers an option- al traditional water spray bar or an optional dust-collection system that uses vacuum tech- nology instead of spraying. The smaller, consistently sized product wastes less space than the larger material from drilling and blasting, which may allow more material to fi t into haul trucks and loaders or possibly allow for the downsizing of equipment, which in turn can lower expenses. A surface excavation machine also could potentially let a quarry get to market faster. The infrastructure and planning needed for drill and blast — conveyer systems, purchasing and set- ting up large pieces of equipment like primary crushers, permits — can take years. "Many of the mining companies interested in surface excavation machines usually are forward-thinking in terms of how they adopt technology, their processes and their process control," Robinson says. INTEREST IN SURFACE MINING MACHINES FOR QUARRIES GROWS ALONG WITH DRILL AND BLAST REGULATIONS IF YOU ASK PEOPLE WHO RUN QUARRIES WHAT THEIR BIGGEST PAIN POINT IS, THEY'RE LIKELY TO SAY TRANSPORTING THEIR PRODUCT. IT'S EXPENSIVE AND LOGISTICALLY CHALLENGING.