MINING ENGINES
Sandvik’s first truck equipped with
an EU Stage V engine from Volvo
Penta (example right) is being
tested at the Boliden-owned Tara
mine, in Ireland
fuel consumption at the same time as
cut diesel particulate emissions in
trials in South Africa.
“We want to encourage operators
to adopt larger Tier 4 Final solutions,”
Woodruff said. “We see that adoption
happening in South America and Australia
– Australia has, to date, been slower than
expected to adopt the larger ultra-low emissions
engines.”
Steve Nendick, Marketing Communications
Director – Global Off-Highway for Cummins,
meanwhile, said India and China could be the next
markets to adopt Stage V engine technology in
some classes of equipment after Europe.
“Below 750 horsepower, there is a push for
India and China to move towards Stage V,” he told
IM. “Over the next 10 years, there will be some
global alignment on emissions regulations, with
many getting closer on par with those operators in
Europe and North America.”
provides advanced detection of
potential equipment health issues,
with continuous analysis helping
mitigate performance impacts and
improving mine site productivity by
streamlining maintenance and
service planning, Cummins says.
The solution includes options for
customers to track and monitor their
own mining assets or retain experts
from Cummins to watch over their
equipment and make personalised
recommendations in real time.
Using PrevenTech and advanced
prognostics at one mine site,
Cummins
was able
to detect
injector failures
before they happened,
according to Schaefer. This allowed the
operator to bring the machine in for maintenance
and “save the engine”.
Schafer added: “Instead of a repair that costs
hundreds of thousands of dollars to rectify, you’ve
ended up with a repair that costs thousands of
dollars and avoidance of additional downtime.”
Since release, Cummins has added “hundreds”
of engines to the PrevenTech database, according
to Schaefer – an achievement that will help
increase the robustness of the IoT solution
through improved predictive modelling.
He explains the benefit to users: “When you
can connect to those engines effectively and you
have the right interface and the people
understand how to use the system, you can
proactively schedule those maintenance events,
which enables mine operators to manage their
machine availability in a much more efficient way.”
Rolls-Royce is also ‘connecting engines’ through
its MTU Go! product portfolio to reduce downtime
associated with engine failures and, earlier this
year, advanced plans to further bolster this digital
offering.
In March, Rolls-Royce and Autonomous
Solutions Incorporated (ASI) signed a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) enabling
the power company to offer autonomous-ready
(through Mobius) MTU engine power solutions for
equipment in a wide range of mining applications.
One potential benefit of this MoU to customers
of Rolls-Royce and ASI Mining is the ability to
retrofit an MTU power system into existing Heavy
Mining Equipment (HME) and convert them to
autonomous operation, the companies said at the
time.
Both are also interested in exploring the value
customers would receive by modernising their
trucks with more efficient MTU engines along with
implementation of ASI’s autonomous mining
solutions.
“Customers would thus save on operating costs
and further benefit from the increased
performance of the autonomously optimised MTU
engines,” they said.
Woodruff added to this: “We believe in the
autonomous environment – the equipment itself –
and we think we can find solutions to further
optimise the engines within these machines. This
could mean running the engine at fuel settings or
power settings that are a bit more ‘smart’.
“We can potentially walk into a mine site with
ASI for a chance to retrofit that HME with a more
Lasting longer
For all the talk of new technologies coming into
the mining engine space, the current spate of
engines is lasting longer than ever.
Real-time diagnostics on engines are reducing
the number of critical failures, monitoring key
inputs such as fuel and oil and allowing operators
to schedule maintenance more effectively.
Along these lines, Cummins launched
PrevenTech™ for Mining last year and, according
to Schaefer, the results have been positive.
“We’ve had some high-profile engine saves
recently where we have received positive feedback
from miners,” he said.
The digital monitoring and reporting solution
Cummins’ PrevenTech solution includes options for customers to track and monitor their own mining
assets, or retain experts from Cummins to watch over their equipment and make personalised
recommendations in real time
42 International Mining | JULY/AUGUST 2020