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NUTS & BOLTS continued from page 21 Canadian Mining Firms Look to Modern Airships for Transporting Heavy Equipment Firms look to safer, modern dirigibles to minimize energy use, infrastructure construction, environmental footprint. The difficulty with getting heavy equipment to mining sites due to poor road conditions and unpredictable weather has some Canadian companies looking to the air. At least two firms that provide transport to Canadian mining companies are in talks with U.K.-based Hybrid Air Vehicles to order the company's state-of-the-art airships, which can carry up to 50 tonnes and which the company says are very safe and have little impact on the environment. Just don't call them Zeppelins. HAV says its airships are not the same as the floating ships that lost popularity after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. For one thing, they're filled with non-flammable helium, rather than hydrogen. And, the ships can transport people, cargo or a combination of the two in a large internal space in their payload modules. Chris Daniels, HAV's director of communications, declined to name the two Canadian companies, as discussions are ongoing. He said his company's airships are providing the $960 billion mining industry with new opportunities to make some sites that are rich in minerals, but located in isolated regions such as Canada's Far North, Modern airships, which use inflammable helium instead of the highly flammable hydrogen used in commercially viable. the Hindenburg era, are being considered as a way for mining companies to get heavy equipment to mining sites in isolated, frozen areas of the Far North. "In these areas, the cost of moving HAV isn't worried. "Even if we first flight test last year went mining equipment is prohibihad 100 vehicles, they would very well, he added. tive, and you also have to build use less than one percent of The price for an airship, an airport or an ice road. More which is 93 metres long, 45 the world's annual helium than that, environmentally and metres wide and 30 metres tall, production." ecologically speaking, it would The United States has is about $100 million (U.S.) But be difficult," said Daniels. Daniels said that is a steal when the world's largest reserves "What we offer is an of helium, followed by Qatar, you consider that operational ecologically-friendly option and maintenance costs are low. Algeria and Russia, accordto make the stranded mines ing to the Geological Survey. "An airplane has a lot of commercially viable, withRichard Dixon, execumoving parts and requires out destroying the landscape." tive director of the Univeran airport to land, but with He said the airships are sity of Alberta's Centre for ours, the bag is full of helium, nearing the final stages of Applied Business Research in and you've got more simple development and likely will engines and that burn less fuel," Energy and the Environment, hit the market within the next said airships are a relatively he said. "You fill it with helium two to three years. The model's new idea in mining, but once, and that's it." The introduction of airships as a better mode of transport comes as Ontario seeks federal help to develop transportation routes around the mineral-rich Ring of Fire. Other companies are also hard at work on their own designs for airships, including Lockheed Martin and Worldwide Aeros Corp. As the world's helium supply dwindles, Daniels said IDA UNIVERSAL January-February 2014 one that would help protect the environment while reducing costs for companies. "You're reducing your footprint on the environment at the site," he said, as there is less of a need to build infrastructure on top of the vegetation. "By the time you're out of there, there's hardly any footprint left at all." ● www.thespec.com/news-story, Dec 1, 2013 Nuts and Bolts continued on page 25 23