Determining constraints and equipment fleet configuration for one of the biggest open cast coal mines in Southern Africa.
Industry sector: Mining
Client: One of open cast coal mines (South Africa)
Partners: Tomahee, Minfo
One of open cast coal mines
Project objective
To answer the following questions:
- How many dozers, excavators, and trucks are required to fulfill the plan?
- Is a buffer of ore needed in front of the conveyor? If so, what should its size be?
Description
The main stages of work and characteristics of the system
- Definition of the problem on a series of off-site sessions with the mine’s personnel and implementation partner
- Creating the simulation model in MineTwin by configuring it and programming the client-specific coordination logic
- Validation the model to make sure it correctly captures volumes, speeds and mining rates
- Performing experimentation with the model to obtain the numeric results addressing the business challenges
System input data
- Geometric and mining-geological features of mines
- Schedules, technological operations execution order and duration
- Technical characteristics and limitations of equipment and transport
The main structural elements of the system
- Input data file of scenario in MS Excel format
- Simulation model on the MineTwin platform
System output data
- Coal mining volume for each scenario
- Utilization of equipment types
- Achievable mining volumes for every size of buffer in front of conveyor transportation system
- Number of excavators, dozers and trucks required to reliably meet the mining plan
Project result
We used MineTwin to create a detailed simulation model of coal mine operations that was used to answer the following questions:
- How many dozers, excavators, and trucks are required to fulfill the plan?
- Is a buffer of ore needed in front of the conveyor? If so, what should its size be?
Using simulation has become an industry standard in mining
Todays modern simulation tools, such as MineTwin, allow to speed-up creation of simulation models.