TUESDAY
09:00-16:00
Virtual Field Trip (08:00-09:00)
Hosted by Boliden
Welcome to Euro Mine Connect 2021
Main moderator Anna Ricknell
This session is hosted by Boliden
Electrification of open pit mining in arctic conditions | Boliden
SPEAKER: Jonas Ranggård
SESSION: Fossil Free mining
In 2018 Boliden did a presentation at Euro Mine Expo on the plans to build a trolley assist pilot in Aitik. It turned out to be a great success, the trolley line showed great availability, proving that it is possible to achieve large CO2-savings while increasing productivity. Boliden have now refined the technology further and decided to invest 30 MEUR in implementing trolley assist on a larger scale not only in Aitik but also Kevitsa.
Closing the loop with greener batteries in mining
SPEAKER: Valter Plasgård
SESSION: Fossil Free mining
Northvolt is establishing large scale production of lithium ion battery cells in Skellefteå, Sweden, using hydropower and sustainable supply chains to make the worlds greenest battery. Electrification of the mining industry play a key role in reducing the carbon footprint for lithium batteries and Northvolt has been partnering with Epiroc to develop and supply battery systems for underground mining vehicles. These batteries are tailored for the demanding safety and performance requirements in mining applications to enable a wide transition to emission free operation throughout the industry.
Battery electrification and mining as a part of the solution
SPEAKER: Erik Svedlund
SESSION: Fossil Free mining
Electrification is happening in many areas of society. The transition towards a fossil free future mean replacing fossil with renewable alternatives. The alternative in most cases require raw materials and metals to produce, transferee and use the renewable energy. Mining is today heavily depending on fossil fuels. How can we change the environmental footprint of our industry and make mining a part of the fossil free future?
Panel discussion Fossil Free Mining
This session is hosted by Boliden
How to benefit from metallurgical digital twin in process optimization | Metso Outotec
SPEAKER: Ari Rantala
• What is metallurgical digital twin?
• Plant vs. process optimization and stabilization
• Development, where and how to start?
• How to benefit? – use case examples
Robot charger – Automatic charging of tunnel faces | ABB
SPEAKER: Jan Nyqvist
In November 2019 was automatic charging of tunnel faces using ABB robotic solutions demonstrated. This presentation will give some background, result and next development step of the Robot charger concept.”
Remote scaling | Boliden
SPEAKER: Lisa Önnerlöv
Mechanical scaling is a critical safety operation that requires real craftsmanship in order to be done properly. The operators use their eyes, ears, feel and experience, to be able to read the rock and do the right actions. Could this be done remotely? This is the story of our way there.
Production Benchmarking | Epiroc
SPEAKER: Olav Kvist
Production drilling is one of the most rewarding mining processes to automate. A production drill is usually stationary in a stope for several days under controllable conditions. Still the amount of miners using automation for production drilling is low. Epiroc as a leading OEM has decided to change this by benchmarking and demonstrating what good looks like to our customers, lowering the threshold. This talk will share some learnings on what you can achieve and some tips for the journey to improved productivity.
New mine dewatering | Boliden/Xylem partnership
SPEAKER: Jan Wikström and Mats Isaksson
Presentation of a partnership between Boliden and Xylem about using new Flygt sump pumps and technologies for dewatering and sediment handling to meet the future demands of mine automation.
WEDNESDAY
09:00-17:00
Virtual Field Trip (08:00-09:00)
Hosted by Boliden
This session is hosted by Sandvik
Make the Shift in the Mines | Sandvik
SPEAKER: Dr. Mats W Lundberg
The talk will gaze into the future of mining from a sustainability point of view. What trends will impact the future of mining and what does bananas have to do with it? Could examination of current sustainability topics and trends give us heads up? Could this future lead to more business?
How human interactivity and technology can work together to support operational excellence | Sandvik
SPEAKER: Dr. Petra Sundström
Seeing how everyone develops “My Fleet” digital services based on data collection from equipment, a project team from Sandvik’s new Business Area, Sandvik Rock Processing Solutions, has run a series of co-creation workshops with customers exploring what needs various stakeholders/personas actually have in relation to equipment data. The work effort has outlined a digital service assistant called SAM which is intended for team members responsible for running the daily operations within the crushing and screening plant. SAM is like a digital assistant bringing together people, activities and data in an easy-to-use collaboration tool that aims to power tomorrow’s data-driven operations.
Journey to the Digital Mine – Creating a Digital Ecosystem to Support the Mine of the Future | ABB
SPEAKER: Eduardo Lima
In today’s complex, hyper-connected and globalized world, technology has outpaced business processes, putting pressure on mining companies to constantly improve day-to-day performance. In this presentation, we will demonstrate, in practice, who are already seeing evidence that digital transformation in mining is working and demonstrating enormous value to the operations when driven by a single digital strategy across the enterprise. Wherever you are on your mine digital transformation journey, you will learn how with ABB's structured approach, broad digital portfolio, deep domain expertise and ecosystem collaboration, you'll cut through the hype to the core of how to achieve value through digitalization.
Simulations as a tool for co-learning in electrification of mines | Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions
SPEAKER: Mikko Valtee
Electrification is a clear trend in mining, but not widely adopted yet. From machine and component level issues there are still a lot of unknowns, but most critical unknowns are on process level. The bigger the environment in question is, the more difficult it is to qualify and quantify with static analysis. Simulation tools can be used to test scenarios and variants in technical and operational factors. Simulation itself is an excellent platform to create co-learning and development.
Panel discussion Digitalization
Women In Mining
(11:45-12:45)
WIMinarium: How Sweden’s toughest industries are investing to build a gender balanced future
Deep rock engineering challenges
This session is hosted by LKAB
Rock pressure management in deep mines - A paradigm change
SPEAKER: Horst Wagner
The presentation outlines the continuing demand for minerals and its impact on mineral resources. The trend is towards larger and deeper mineral deposits.
The focus is on the effects of depth on mining activities and in particular rock pressure. The period from 1950 onwards has seen an unprecedented increase of knowledge in rock mechanics and the development of the rock engineering discipline. This has resulted in a paradigm change from rock support to rock engineering design. The implications of this shift are most noticeable in deep mining. Once the rock stresses exceed a value of about 0,4 of the compressive strength rock failure of excavation walls is unavoidable. In the case of strong rocks this situation is reached at depths in excess 1500 m and Scandinavia with the exceptionally high primary horizontal rock stresses already at a depth of about 1200 m. The emphasis of the rock engineering design is on taking advantage of the inevitable stress changes resulting from rock excavation. Some rock volumes become more highly stressed than before excavations and others become stress relieved. The digital revolution has made it possible to calculate these changes even for the most complicated mining situations. This has made it possible in some instances to extract mineral deposits well in excess of 3000 m depth. The thrust of deep mine design is now on stress management, i.e. to create favorable environments for mineral extraction. In South Africa massive gold deposits are extracted at depth in excess of 3000 m in the stress shadow of special destressing excavations. Similar concepts are now being evaluated for steeply dipping relatively massive ore deposits. The objective of these concepts is to extract the bulk of the deposit in destressed ground and place the vital mine infrastructure in destressed ground as well. This opens new avenues for the extraction of deep mineral deposits. Deep mining requires foremost active rock stress management and support should be seen as the last resort.
As with most developments of revolutionary nature the implementation requires other changes as well such as the development of novel mining systems and equipment and changes in the organizational structure of deep mines. In the case of rock engineering it requires the understanding of senior management for the need to establish a competent, well trained and equipped rock engineering infrastructure which becomes actively involved all matters requiring rock engineering expertise such as mine planning, production scheduling excavation support and risk management. In some major mining countries the need for competent rock engineering personnel a strong engineering function has been recognized and is prescribed by law.
Rockburst management at LKAB’s Kiirunavaara Mine — Lessons learned from COVID-19
SPEAKER: Ping Zhang
Managing rockburst has been a challenge task in hard rock mines for many decades that still remains difficult especially when mining goes deeper. Management of coronavirus infection and treatment is also challenging in our society and we are suffering from its wide-spreading. Based on our recent studies, it is found that there are lots of similarity between triggered rockburst and coronavirus infection. Considering the experiences obtained from coronavirus investigation and treatment, it is worthy of making a decent comparison of these two things and try to learn the lessons from COVID-19 when thinking about rockburst management. This talk gives you a thorough comparison between COVID-19 treatment and rockburst management at LKAB’s Kiirunavaara Mine in terms of prevention, evaluation, monitoring and treatment.
Heading towards great depths | LKAB
SPEAKER: Matthias Wimmer
Recent exploration results are very promising and reveal opportunities for continued future mining at greater depths. Changed conditions in terms of more complex geometries in combination with the present encountered rock mechanical problems require though a mind shift for the mine design and mining method used to maintain safe and productive operations. This presentation gives an insight into our rock engineering challenges and possible solutions.
Rock mechanics in Boliden underground mines – challenges today and technical solutions tomorrow | Boliden
SPEAKER: Anders Nyström
This presentation will start with a general description of the understanding of rock mechanics in the mining environment. Examples from Boliden mines of how high stresses on varying rock mass strength influences the mine infrastructure will be shown. An example of a ground fall due to high stress will also be presented that gives insight in how rock mechanics work is done in our mines today. Finally, some thoughts on ongoing research and development that may lead to technical solutions for tomorrow where the challenges with high stress in deep mines needs to be solved.
Panel discussion Deep Rock Engineering Challenges
This session is hosted by ABB
Mining Engineering Digital Twin | Andritz
SPEAKER: Sohail Nazari
The experienced team of ANDRITZ Automation has developed a unique and continuous way of training artificial intelligence to operate a mineral processing facility using ANDRITZ's digital twin. The AI is trained to respond to a variety of situations, making it capable of adapting to changing inputs and improving upset recovery time. The trained AI's ability to quickly process information and recommend data-driven solutions will allow for the improvement of the operation, such as start-up and shutdown, and assist operators to achieve plant-wide optimization.
Process industries value the IDEAS Digital Twin as a single, interconnected, fully dynamic, first-principals based model of their process operations; used from pre-feasibility process design, through controls validation, operator training and for on-line virtual instruments, condition monitoring and fault tolerant autonomous controls. The latest application of IDEAS is for the IDEAS Intelligent Control. This innovative technology just won 1st prize in the Goldcorp Disrupt Mining challenge - using IDEAS to train an AI agent controller using the principals of reinforcement learning. The IDEAS Digital Twin has been mitigating risk, increasing safety and creating value for projects and operations for over 15 years - yet many people are only aware of some of the uses.
Reliable positioning - A key enabler for the future of mining
SPEAKER: Emil Fresk
Positioning is a foundation for various services and applications, in mining and elsewhere, and is a key enabler for digitalization and automation.
Zinkgruvan Mining and Mobilaris | The Digital Mine – built on LTE with full site coverage
SPEAKER: Roger Schmidt and Marcus Ek
Welcome to this session in which you will hear from Zinkgruvan Mining and Mobilaris as they share information about how the two companies have worked closely in a unique digitalization project. Together they have set a unique, full site coverage, communication and positioning infrastructure at the Zinkgruvan site based on LTE, for seamless functionality between the different areas of the site. With this infrastructure in place the mine is now well prepared to take their operations to the next level and new technology is now being added on to boost safety and efficiency, among other things. Welcome to join!
THURSDAY
09:00-12:00
Virtual Field Trip (08:00-09:00)
Hosted by Boliden
This session is hosted by Svemin
Haul More with Less, how to improve haul truck performance | Metso Outotec
SPEAKER: Carl Samuelsson
Metso Outotec has for decades been supplying the mining industry with rubber linings. That has given us the experience and advantage needed to build a unique and totally customizable truck body. The Metso Truck Body is the result of a tight collaboration with our customers and is the perfect match to retrofit bodies to any fleet of haul trucks existing ones or new ones. The Metso Truck Body is a custom-built one-piece optimized hybrid. It is not a traditional light weight steel box with a retro-fitted rubber lining nor a suspended truck body. The energy absorbing characteristics of the rubber lining in combination with a body in high-strength steel allows us to build a lighter truck body. The lining consists of a modular system of different polymers optimized to further strengthen the exposed impact zones in the truck body to withstand the impact of loading and wear of hauling and unloading. In combination with Metso’s flexible lining, carry-back is reduced, additionally increasing the hauling efficiency, when hauling sticky materials such as coal or iron, or in arctic climate. These benefits are having a direct effect on the OPEX, not only by increasing the pay-load but also by lowering the fuel consumption. There are very few things that has such a direct impact on the sustainability of a mining operation than to haul more with less. That’s what we do.
NEXGEN SIMS | Epiroc
SPEAKER: Jan Gustafsson
NEXGEN SIMS - World leading mining consortium collaborates in new EU-sponsored project for carbon neutral sustainable mining.
Epiroc has started a new European Union-funded collaboration project together with several mining companies, equipment and system manufacturers and universities. The three-year project, called NEXGEN SIMS, will support new technologies, methods and processes that will enable a more sustainable and efficient carbon neutral mining operation.
Sustainable Underground Mining | LKAB
SPEAKER: Michael Lowther
LKAB has initiated an industrial development project together with ABB, Epiroc, Combitech and Sandvik with the aim of setting a new world standard for sustainable mining at great depths. Together with our four partners, we will build a test facility where new technology will be developed and tested in real mining environments as well as in a virtual test mine.
The project is now almost two years old and is entering a very exciting phase.
Development of the Konsuln testmine is on target, with the first new level (436L) completed.
A mobile raiseboring machine (Epiroc Easer) is in place, and test drilling has commenced.
This presentation will describe the ongoing activity in the mine, the development of the Mine Operations Control (MOC), and the status in the four sub-projects:
- mine layout and technology
- battery electric and autonomous machines
- control systems
- Our way of work and the interface between humans and technology
TraceMet – a pilot for sustainable metals and minerals | Svemin
SPEAKER: Erik Lindblom
Knowing that metals in consumer products have been responsibly sourced is increasingly something that producers and consumers are asking for.
With an internationally accepted certification scheme and a system for traceability in place, we believe that being in the front line when it comes to the transfer to a more sustainable production will increasingly become a competitive advantage, driven by a growing concern in society and by an increasing number of actors getting involved in Agenda 2030 and in contributing to the UN SDG:s (Sustainable Development Goals).
Therefore we have initiated the pilot project “TraceMet” with the goal to develop a simplified, but fully functional, system and a technical solution that allows a certified declaration of origin, of carbon footprint and of recycled content for metals through the whole value chain. The project will have copper in electric cables and steel in trucks as test cases. The project partners include Boliden, LKAB, ABB, SSAB, Scania and Volvo.