Is the best driver no driver at all? a recent survey conducted in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles – where Waymo is available to the public – found that 70% of passengers who’d used Google’s self-driving car project preferred driverless rides to traditional taxi or rideshare services. Despite the higher costs (Waymo is known to charge about 40% more than either Uber or Lyft), riders on the cutting edge of urban transport are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of driverless cars. The mining industry arrived there a few years ago.

In Western Australia’s vast, dry and mostly empty Pilbara region, Rio Tinto uses a fleet of trains to haul iron ore across a 1 700 km railway network. The catch? The trains are autonomous; managed by a team stationed in Perth, 1 200 km away. In SA, a fleet of fully automated, remote-controlled trucks has been operating at the Finsch diamond mine in the Northern Cape for more than a decade already.

‘Many technological advancements that we see today in mainstream society have roots in the mining industry,’ says Charlotte Gibson, head of the critical minerals processing lab at Queen’s University Canada. ‘A good example is autonomous vehicles, which are incredibly useful in mining. On the one hand, autonomous vehicles can work non-stop, allowing mines to be running and operating 24 hours a day. On the other hand, there is an important safety component: we have vehicles running underground without subjecting people to this environment. Automation is a huge topic in the field, and there are a few mines around the world that are now operating with autonomous haul truck fleets.’

It’s not just autonomous vehicles, though. The mining sector is also at the forefront of efficient water management, providing innovative operating models that other sectors – including SA drought-threatened municipalities – are watching closely. ‘Without water, a mine will shut down,’ Steve Bartels, a partner at SRK Consulting, told Infrastructure News recently. ‘Water is critical to their existence. So wherever possible, water is recycled back into a mine’s processes. They use a lot of technology to either utilise less water in their processes or recycle that water.’

One example is the wastewater reticulation and water treatment plant that WEC Water recently put into operation at a gold mine in Burkina Faso. The plant offers a long-term solution that treats the sewage at the mine and reclaims water for use as dust suppression and irrigation, reducing the demand on potable and rainwater reserves.

‘Traditionally, much of the water used by mining activities ends up as waste,’ says Wayne Taljaard, MD at WEC Water. ‘However, through innovative treatment technologies – including advanced filtration, sedimentation and chemical dosing – this water can be reclaimed and safely reused in the process cycle.’

Meanwhile, according to Carl Haycock, CEO of water solutions company Talbot, the losses associated with lost mining productivity, combined with the rising cost of water, means the mining industry has reached the inflection point for water recovery versus buying water. ‘In Gauteng, parts of the North West and Free State provinces, many mines are water positive, and they must continuously pump water out to keep the mines dry,’ he said. ‘That water can be treated and used.’

Whether in the fields of self-driving vehicles or water management, the mining sector continues to drive innovations that other industries are adopting, adapting and deploying for their own needs.

In one example, the National Research Council Canada (NRC) recently developed a tool with agritech company Logiag that measures the carbon content in soil. As part of the global shift towards carbon neutrality, many companies are removing CO₂ emissions from the air and sequestering that carbon in the soil through regenerative agricultural practices. Soil organic carbon, which the NRC describes as the main component of soil organic matter and critical to maintaining soil health, has several benefits, including higher nutrient density and higher yields.

The NRC has adapted its laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy technology – which was originally developed to detect minerals in mining environments – to quickly and efficiently analyse soil organic carbon in the agricultural space.

The mining environment is an excellent testing ground for new technology: the conditions are extreme, and safety is an ever-present concern. According to Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) data, the mining industry sees more than 2 000 accidents, and R3.5 billion lost to workplace injuries, every year. It has developed an immersive extended reality safety training solution, which allows mineworkers to practise safety protocols in a simulated, risk-free environment. The tool then enables companies to track user performance, customise training modules and ensure compliance with safety regulations.

Related to that, the CSIR’s mining cluster recently commercialised the trackless mobile machinery digital twin, a near-real-time digital risk assessment tool to prevent vehicle collisions in mines. Developed in collaboration with the Mandela Mining Precinct and the Minerals Council South Africa (MCSA), the system applies artificial intelligence, machine learning and other data analytics to evaluate vehicle risk interaction and predict optimum scenarios to support decision-making.

Mining’s focus on vehicles and machinery creates plenty of natural overlap with the automotive sector. In 2022, Anglo American launched a prototype of the world’s largest hydrogen-powered mine haul truck: a 2MW hydrogen-battery hybrid beast that carries a 290 ton payload. Deployed at Anglo’s Mogalakwena platinum group metals mine, the vehicle was part of the company’s nuGen Zero Emission Haulage Solution.

‘NuGen is a tangible demonstration of our FutureSmart Mining programme, changing the future of our industry,’ Duncan Wanblad, chief executive of Anglo American, said at the time. ‘With diesel emissions from our haul truck fleet accounting for approximately 10% to 15% of our total Scope 1 emissions, this is an important step on our pathway to carbon neutral operations by 2040. The mining industry is playing a considerable role in helping the world decarbonise, both through our own emissions footprint and the metals and minerals we produce that are critical to low carbon energy and transport systems.’

One can draw a fairly straight line between the mine haul truck and BMW’s smaller and nimbler BMW iX5 hydrogen-fuelled concept car. The ix5 Hydrogen uses two 6 kg hydrogen fuel tanks that can be topped up in under five minutes, is capable of speeds of 180 km/h and has a range of up to 504 km regardless of outside temperatures. BMW is already calling hydrogen ‘the missing piece in the jigsaw when it comes to emission-free mobility’.

Technologies such as this continue a long tradition, says Sietse van der Woude, modernisation and safety senior executive at the MCSA. ‘Of the 118 elements of the periodic table, two-thirds, or 74, would not be with us if it were not for mining, either directly or as a by-product,’ he says. ‘That is how important mining is to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the future.’

By Mark van Dijk
Image: Gallo/Getty Images