hello and a warm welcome everyone to our forth online lecture. today it is my pleasure to introduce you to my colleague, anastasia kucheryavaya, who is our scientific coordinator and who will be your moderator for today's session. enjoy and see you. many thanks anna for your nice introduction. good morning everyone from my side too. as russian myself i'm very pleased and honoured to moderate the today's forth lecture with professor oleg ivanovich kazanin from st. petersburg mining university. this lecture will finalise the thematic area of sustainable mining aspects.
professor, doctor of technical science, oleg ivanovich kazanin, is dean of mining faculty at st petersburg mining university. he is head of the university's methodical comission of the mining engineering and the author of the programs of continuous professional development for managers and engineers of mining companies. today’s presentation will be devoted to the strategies on how to meet the demand for mineral resources, and in particular in the context of the depletion of reserves of easily accessible deposits and the complexity of the conditions. also, main trends in the development of mining technologies will be discussed.
please join me by welcoming professor kazanin. thank you anastasia, can i start? ok good morning everybody, dear students, dear colleagues, dear friends.i am glad to participate in this project online lecture series sustainable development approaches in engineering research and education. so it’s a very important topic which is discussed now at all levels, among people in the schools, in universities, in the government, in mining companies.
so as for me, the topic of my lecture is “mining technologies and sustainable development, modern challenges and prospects”. first of all a few words about content of our lecture. we are going to start our lecture from some facts and figures about mining industry and mining technologies, modern challenges for developing this kind of activity. general technology performance targets for 2030, requirements for high efficiency and safety.
and after that we discuss some trends which we can see now for mining technology development, in which we, i mean our university, participate for development. it's concentration of mining operations, it’s intelligent mine and invisible mine. what does it mean, intelligent mine or invisible mine, what is the features of this statement. we are going to discuss during our lecture. so as for facts and figures. now more than 100 types of minerals are mined. i don’t know exactly who calculated this but that’s some sources we can see the figure 200.
i don't know but there is a huge number and the mining industry now is a large part of world economy. and every year produced the minerals with total value of 100 billion dollars. and in the industry engaged depends millions of people.
so as for volume of production it differs for different types of minerals, it can be a few tons for example rhenium 49 tons per year in 2019, up to billion tons for example coal industry. the world production more than 8 billion tons. or sand and gravel, about 50 billion tons annually. mining production is necessary part for sustainable development and it is the base for almost every business value chain. without minerals we don’t have iphone, computer, cars and many other things which are part of our usual life. with an annual increase of the world’s population by 1 to 1.3 percent, the mineral production increases by 0.6 to 1,5 percent. and it’s normal and obvious trend, the life standards are growing and to support these growths we have to increase the mineral production because it is necessary part of the world.
reserves to production ratio for minerals also differ, differ in the world for different kind of minerals, differ for different countries, for example bauxite, chromium, as for coal, if we take the figures for the world this ratio will be about 130, and as for Russia for example for coal these figures can exceed 600. now we can see on this slide the challenges for mining technologies. volatility of prices for minerals, and at the plot, you can see the plot from bp annual review for world energy. this is the prices for coal how they differ from 2004 up to 2019.
and as you can see here in some periods the prices drop not for the percent but just in times. and for some periods approximately 30 percent of the coal mining companies operate at the edge of profitability, and sometimes under this edge, under this line. and when we are going to develop some mining projects, this feature, this volatility, we have to keep in mind.
So difficult geological conditions. it is also obvious trend because depths of mining continuously increase. and for some mines underground, mines for natural ore, i have some figures. 5 of these mines the depths of mining exceed 3 kilometres.
with increasing of depths, the stress and state conditions, mechanical conditions are getting more complicated. and the hazards of road burst or sudden gas outbursts, the thermo factors became important and started to affect efficiency and safety of mining operations. and we have to choose and to develop our technologies to meet these challenges.
lower ore grade or quality. so it’s also obvious trends because deposits with favourable geological conditions is usually already extracted and we are going deeper, we are taking into operations ore with lower quality and lower grade of metals. geotechnical challenges. it’s a topic for separate lecture. as i already told we are going deeper, gets our conditions more complicated.
and we have to keep it in mind and to get some mirrors to overcome these challenges. isolated mine sites and infrastructure challenges, social and environmental challenges, community reaction to mining project. unfortunately, mining industry has a not so good image, not positive image for many people. and some of them think who is a miner? they destroy the planet and this situation we have to understand and try to change. here you can see some strategies for ensuring future demand for mineral resources. first is reduced consumption of mineral raw materials.
minimization of metal content in final products, how can it be achieved. use of alternative materials, design of materials, now it is possible and sometimes it takes place. recycling, so we all heard about circular economy and recycling, and requirements for recycling already included in some rules which mining companies have to follow it to operate in different countries. increase in resource recovery rate from deposits, it’s also important thing because many times recovery rate not exceed 50 percent. so for example for some deposits. why we leave underground ground so much mineral.
it can be caused by reason of safety, efficiency, leave some pillars in the complex geological conditions. but there is one other way which we can follow, increase resource recovery rate on the product. exploration of new fields and modern technologies, already mentioned the goal for the development of a new field. so on this slide you can see the general technology performance targets for 2030.
they were formulated in the report of the united nations on a global sustainable development of 2016. improve progressively global resource efficiency in consumption and production and endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. it’s a general purpose and all producers have to follow this requirement. achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation. upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes. so it's very clear requirements which, I already told, mining companies have to follow to provide sustainable development. so how these requirements can be transformed for mining technology.
so on this slide we will try to show some perspective mining technology development. concentration of mining operations, on the next slide I will try to explain what it means. intelligent mine, the wide using of i.t. technologies at all stages of mine work.
invisible mine, its final point of development of mining technologies development. i think that the mine of the future it’s just a drill hole, all processes underground without people and from another drill hole we will get the products which are ready for direct use. so maybe sometime we construct such kind of mine, no footprints on the surface, no danger of hazards. i think it will be really good. but what we have now? concentration of mining operations, what does it mean? the increase of equipment power and reliability. equipment manufacturers offer a wide range of mining equipment which can provide a high rate of productivity and reliability.
little bit on the next slide we will talk about it in more detail. and appearance of reliable and productive equipment, it was the opportunity to change mine planes and technological schemes. it also was opportunity to decrease the number of extracting units and simultaneously increase productivity.
risk assessment and control, personnel training and continuous professional development. so it is also separate topic on which we can discuss in a lecture or else. intelligent mine, also on my next slides i will clarify what does it mean, how we understand this statement and what we are doing to support this trend, and invisible mines. concentration of mining operations. increase of equipment power and reliability.
as we can see the history over equipment production, we can see that power on the mining machines continuously increased. and now sometimes it achieves big figures. and as for some machines which we can see on this slide, for example bucket excavator, it can produce more than 10000 cubic metres per hour. it’s a great productivity. and here is a longwall shearer. so now some manufacturers offer the shearers which have installed power of engines more than 2000 kilowatt. they can produce more than 20 million tons of coal without any repair.
it gave us the opportunity to change mining layout and the question is how far we can increase the power while machines are reliable. and from some points of view, the figures and level which we have reached now, it’s enough and maybe we have to learn how to unlock potential of these machines. on the next slides i will show you what i mean when i say it. so mine trucks, the load capacity can be more than 400 tons, it’s a huge machine. but manufacturers have made them reliable. they can work for years and provide a great productivity. concentration of mining operations, here is example of underground coal mining.
as you can see here, best longwall performance annual production from one only more than 10 million tons. i’ve seen some figures with 12 million tons per year, per month the record is 1.6 million, per day 62000, per shift 30500 tons. in russia, 2 years ago, 1,6 million tons per month in a mine.
is it the full potential of this equipment? of course not. at the world mining congress in 2011 the specialist for germany, martens published some article where he assessed longwall equipment potential. so some statements you can see here, what we await for equipment. full automation of longwall operations, so it’s some longwall phases we already can see full automation.
theoretical productivity of longwall mining of seam with thickness 4 metres, a density of 1.4 ton per cubic metre by the shearer with the cutting depth of 1 metre and the shearer speed of 25 metre per minute is 8400 tons per hour. given 20 hours per day of production and 300 days annually, the yearly production of a single longwall would be around 50 million tons.
this would result in a face advance of 75 metres per day or 22 kilometres per year. what i have to say, the article was published in 2011. these figures concerning productivity of longwall equipment, it’s a real figure. so we have longwall shearers which can provide such parameters. we see the annual production achieve a level that is far from theoretically possible. why do we face this situation? because to provide the full potential using of this equipment we have to design mining sub-system, transport, ventilation, we have to solve some geotechnical issues and many other things.
what i mean when i talk about improving of equipment, we do changes of mine layouts and technological schemes. we can see this example of yalevskogo coal mine located in kuzbass, our industrial partner. so here is part of a mine map and as you can see here in 2005 longwall face with 140 metres, 200 metres. it’s a longwall panel length 2400 metres. reserves inside the longwall panels about 2 million tons. what do we have now when we use state of the art equipment, reliable and productive. in 2019 longwall face 400 metres, reserves 11 million tons, length of the longwall 4700 metres.
so this equipment gave us the opportunity to work and make the panels from one wall to the other wall of the minefield. so we don’t need to divide this minefield into separate smaller parts to provide the mine is working there, to equip this working with conveyers or to create some other infrastructure. so it gives us the opportunity to make mine layouts more simple and reliable. it’s much better for companies to have one longwall which produced 20000 tons per day than to have 10 longwalls each of them produced 2000 tons per day.
why is this. those people simultaneously work underground. its more simple and more reliable for ventilation and transport and many other things. nowadays we think that concentration of mining work is good for company, for economical effectiveness and for safety. another part of mining technology is so called large scale mining. so in many cases we meet situation where company is quite big and have to operate with a big mine, large scale mining.
so it creates special conditions for mining. so when i was a student, open pit with a depth of more than 100 metres our teacher told us that this is a deep open pit and we have to keep in mind how to provide stability of the slopes, how we provide mine atmosphere, we have to think how to provide ventilation and many other things. so here you can see kimberlitic pipe udachnay. open pit operated up to 2016 and now 2014 underground mine start operation.
it’s created a lot of difficulties. how can we transit from open pit to underground. what pillars should we leave to provide safety, to exclude water in floor, and from the other part of this rock pillow, we have high grade ore. it created special requirement for technologies, at our university for phd and some researchers for this situation. large scale open pit mine bogatyur. it was included in guinness record book. annual coal production in 1985 achieved 56.8 million tons, nowadays annual capacity is 32 million. deposit olimpiada, open pit operation going up to 2030, depths is 700 metres, annual production of ore 14 million tons.
and after finished the open pit operation, they’re also planning to go underground and underground mine will put into operation in 2030. and it's also such depths of mining and huge production rate create some difficulties, difficulty how to provide stability of the slopes. so it’s a special requirements to the blasting ward, to the planning, to the seismicity and many other things. and how to keep such level of productivity when we are going from open pit to underground mining. another part, important part of mining technology is approaches to ensure safety of mining enterpises. safety is priority number one for all companies and what do we have now. so the first of all is a risk assessment at all stages of mine life cycle.
there are a lot of methods for risk assessment, some of them already accepted and implemented in mining practice, some of them we continue to upgrading. so the question is how to provide the risk assessment more simultaneously. at the stage of designing it is quite clear, we can assess the geological conditions, our techniques, and the mine layouts and estimate some hazards and its impact in future mining, but after we put in in calculation we have to understand . how we’ll change the risk during the development of our mining operation. so our university also engaged in this activity multifunctional safety systems. safety is also amultidisciplinary topic, there are different types of hazards. for example rock bursts, explosion, water in floor, roof caving and other things.
and each type of hazards can be assessed separately. and when we make the total assessment we have to keep in mind all kind of hazard. and multifunctional systems give us such opportunity. and in russian coal mines since 20116 it is a necessary requirement to operate. r and d support for the development of mining operations. so it’s also a necessary part of a safety system. all mineral deposits is unique object and these objects were created by nature. there are no absolutely the same mineral deposits. so some decisions which show us a good result for one deposit can be absolutely unacceptable for another.
and in this connection i think r and d support is a necessary part. and also our university, our faculty has experience in this field and we keep in close touch with our industrial partners, coal companies, ore companies and many other. training and continuous professional development of personnel.
also it’s my topic and i can talk about it for many minutes in a lecture but in this lecture we will not discuss such things. on this slide you can see just a few examples of risk assessment. a well-known system is riskgate. it was developed by our Australian colleagues for coal mines. it was a good work which was supported by many companies and universities. and our colleagues provide such systems. you can see the site, you can enter the site and assess some risk of hazards for your minefield.
different kind of hazards, explosions, fires, falling and many other. . this system gives the opportunity to assess the risk, choose the methods and capture in this risk. it can be used if we investigate some accidents. in russia our university engaged in some researches and we developed a method of risk of accident assessment for coal mines in russia, this is just part of this method.
this method was approved by our mine safety and health administration and now it is necessary element for designing of mining operations in a coal mine, and the work in this direction we continue. the second trend which i mentioned is intelligent mine. what does it mean, what do we think when we talk about intelligent mine, smart mine, digital mine? first of all the use of 3d models of deposits and technological processes. the use of this allows to optimize processes, use equipment and maximize profits.
the model is transmitted to the operator before the start of mining operations. i.t. technologies are used at all stages of development of the deposit from the exploration and 3d modelling till designing and control of technological processes, logistics and haulage systems. in combination with gps, the operator has a complete digital representation of the real production facility, a digital scheme which allows to manage production and risks, and generate various reports. laser scanning systems, positioning systems, sensors of various systems form big data, a large stream of data that, after processing, allows you to visualize the actual production. lets have a look at intelligent mine, source of minelens, part of mckinsey global institute, putting in they’re assessment, the potential of increasing mining company’s value, up to 2025 they assessed that 370 billion dollars.
what are the sources of this expense? first of all operational management, increase in mechanization through automation, monitoring of real time performance versus plan. equipment maintenance, reduced unscheduled breakdowns, longer equipment life, modern equipment has a check system as you can see in your car, something is wrong with the engine, first you see the check signal. so mining equipment, modern equipment also has such system, longer equipment life. health and safety, minimized exposure to dangerous conditions. and as i already told real time risk assessment is also important things to provide efficiency and safety in modern operations.
equipment supply, improved purchasing analytics, internet of things, and many others in purchasing analytics we don’t need to have large storage for some parts. if our equipment inform us about some unpredicted things we can buy some parts exactly at the time when they are needed. augmented reality, built on better human machine interaction, task based activity monitoring. so how it work. integrated data platform, we already talked about 3d model of deposits, so also the modern software system gives us opportunity to assess some mining scenario.
different scenarios and choose the better one, the scenario that provide the better performance indicated. so we have the model of deposits, have the scenario, and we have in real life equipment with positioned systems, with many sensors, and the data from the sensors can be translated to this integrated platform and compared with ideal variant which is already loaded. after that real time mine modelling, predictive optimisation, and command control to our automated equipment. so all this is a cycle and continuous learning. experience will be accumulated and it can make our model more correct and provide better kpi.
so we already mentioned such things as equipment effectiveness. and here is the data from minelens, mckinsey analysis. overall equipment effectiveness for underground not exceed mining 27 percent, open pit 39 percent, crushing and grinding 69 percent. what does this mean. there is a huge potential for increasing indicator of productivity. if we unlock this potential we can get good result. and now we are working with some industrial partners to check it and to develop some methods how can we overall equipment efficiency.
how can we increase by changing mine layout, by changing mode of equipment, exploitation or something else. and to illustratethis , you can see longwall productivity dynamics for yalevskogo coal mines seam 52. the blue bar is productivity level per month which is a fact. the red one is level of productivity which can be reached. as you can see the red one shows the potential. how we can increase the potential. how we can increase
indicators of our productivity and indicators of effectiveness of our operations. to check to accumulate data about downtimes, brakes, many other things, multifunctional safety system, just a part of intelligent mine construct. as an example i can present united dispatching and analytical center suek company.
the main function is automatic control of parameters, indicators and characteristics of operational objects. collective display allowing to all participants of the project to obtain simply the full volume of information which is available in the dispatching and analytical system. automatic formation of the alarm and precautionary system.
automatic report creation, comparative analyses and recommendations. and many other things, mailing to the responsible persons the information within their competence. here you can see just a video panel from suek center. what can you see here? it’s a video of information, its translation in real time mode from all longwalls and from open pit. the information, thematic information about equipment performance indicators. where is the shearer, what is the floor of the coal.
here is information about multifunctional safety system, information about production process, operational processes. as you can see 500 windows of a current status and 500 reports. it’s hard to get information and analyse it. it’s why it has colour indication. the green colour, all is ok and all systems work correctly.
the blue one you have to pay attention on the system and the red one the system requires immediate reaction. it gives the opportunity for suek to increase productivity up to 40 percent since 2010 and decrease the number of incidents. and now this centre, this system continue to develop.
another part of intelligent mine is autonomous mining equipment, so autonomous mining equipment does not need to rest, to make tea breaks or something like that, so it can work, it can work simultaneously, and it gives additional opportunities for mining operators, for mining company. now we can see such decisions, autonomous fleets of komatsu, caterpillar, hitachi, belaz. now one of the partners of our university, company zyfra, which are specialised on automation of mining operation. and we keep in touch for some joint projects, for some companies. autonomous blast-hole drilling operation and equipment manufacturers offer decisions with drilling equipment positioning, can drill autonomous, put in coordinates and parameters which are loaded on computer automated longwall shearer system, already gave some examples about it, how it operates in real coal mines. and avatel, first mechanised development charging system. this is one of the partners of our university and every year we have the
seminar where our board present new achievements and equipment in blasting designing and many other things. the last one was this avatel machine. they developed it together with epiroc and some elements such as explosives and detonators. it is the first mechanised development charging system gives additional opportunities for safety or increasing productivity development operations. also orica develop and support blast iq system. everyday they produced more than 1500 blasting around the world and the information about each blasting is collected, processed and accumulated in blast iq. it gives opportunity to increase quality and solve any task connected with blasting.
intelligent mine, some features: autonomous mining equipment, part of this equipment will be extended. it can be remote operating centre located in urban centres, we also have of some example of such situation where operating centres are located far from the mine site. off-site services for specialized machine health diagnostic, fewer operators but more highly skilled personnel, we are required to support and develop this concept. and i have to mention the report, mines of the future version 1, which was presented society of mining professors 2019. so it a very usefu documents, major findings about autonomous mining, intelligent mining and some parts devoted to off shore mining, mining under sea.
and the next step is invisible mine, as you can see here what does it mean invisible mine. first of all it’s the planning of mining work from trees to trees, it’s not only planning. yes we can design we can plan such way of operation, but as we can see the prices can drop significantly and it can lead to bankruptcy of the company, but this situation will have a lot to influence on environment. so the work for rehabilitation has to be done anyway.
integrated use of minefield resources. it is also separate topic, very interesting topic. when we come to mine field, when we start mining operations, our resource is not only mineral resource. the space which we create underground is also one of the resource. mine water is a resource, the rock mass which we don’t use. also we can see material, which we don’t know how to use now but it can be used in the future.
so we can use underground space for disposal of solid waste form mining and processing of minerals. when we deal with ore, with low grade of metal, it is important to organise underground near face processing. do not transport and lift to the surface huge amount of ores. transport, process, transport and organise storage. mine to mill concept is also an interesting concept.also it can be a separate lecture. best available technologies in many countries now you have a reference book with elected best available technologies for processing and many other things. so in russia we have more than 50 reference books with the best available technologies
and 5 of them are directly connected to mining, mining industry. so here are just some criteria: minimisation of mineral losses in the minefield, availability of modern high-efficiency equipment and technologies for the treatment of waste water and emissions of pollutants. application of measures to reduce the release of pollutants into the atmosphere.
availability of recycled water supply systems, drainless systems. application of drilling and blasting technologies aimed at minimising the negative impact on the environment. use of technological waste. arrangement of waste disposal facilities that minimizes the impact on the environment and many, many other things. and at the end of my lecture the role of university in supporting development in this activity. first of all it’s a training and graduation of the world competitive specialists on the basis of integration of the researchers and education.
our economy is global, and the mining industry are global, requirements for the mining engineers, the mining technologies are the same over the world and thus our universities provide training and graduation. researches, promotion of the mineral sector technological development. development of international cooperation. popularisation of mining and miner’s profession. so it’s very important thing and if we together develop our mining technologies,
it will change the image of the industry, our task, ours and yours as students and future mining engineers, are to develop the mining industry, to make it more environmentally friendly and more attractive for young people. so i wish all of you success in your professional development and personal development. thank you for your attention.
2021-08-16