CEMI’s first annual Future of Deep Mining Conference was held in September 2019 in Toronto. What does the event aim to achieve and what were its main themes?

The aim of the conference was to profile the kinds of technologies that have been under development in Canada over the last four years. None of the developments at the conference were of very large-scale and most were from small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the mining service and supply sector. We believe that SMEs are the most innovative companies in every sector of the economy. We also wanted to showcase the diversity of these innovative companies. We wanted to highlight that change in the mining industry is already happening, and we are in a time where if you create an environment where people have opportunity, the innovators will pick up the ball and run with it.

The first day of the conference was focused on production intensity, which is everything to do with getting to the ore faster and moving ore to mill more quickly. The second day was focused on energy consumption, where there was emphasis on ventilation systems and battery systems for production vehicles.  

How can CEMI assist SMEs to penetrate the mining market?

CEMI typically does not help SMEs with the sales process; our role in the ecosystem is to develop government funded programs to accelerate the process of delivering SME products or services into the economy. We will first do a profile of the SME to find any gaps in their business capabilities and then find other small companies in the ecosystem that they can work with to fill these gaps, and we also assist SMEs to find more established companies that might become partners. We aim to solve SME’s technical issues as well as commercial and business issues so as to get their product or service to the market faster. When we find a gap in the mining market that no one is addressing, we try to develop a research program to produce solutions for the gap. 

Can you elaborate on some of the technologies CEMI has been helping to commercialize?

Looking at deep underground mines, the challenges are heat management and rock stress management. CEMI has spent the last three years managing its way through these issues, as we are focused on creating systems that achieve the best advance rates and productions rates possible. The environment also needs to be cooler and dryer as well as protected from rock stress. The industry has a pretty good handle on how to manage rock stress issues, but heat management is an ongoing and growing problem, depending on the thermal gradient in the region. The innovations we have been working on deliver active cooling rather than ventilation systems, which simply remove the heat from the underground environment. Ventilation easily provides enough air for people and equipment to breathe and simply pushing more air around becomes ineffective because the cost of electricity; it is the second largest cost after labor. Delivering cooling with less energy consumption is really important for the future of deep, hot mines.

Four years ago, CEMI started an experiment using compressed fresh air from a hydraulic air compressor – an old technology from before 1900. We believe that this will be a valid approach for relatively small-tonnage gold mines, but the infrastructure needed is quite significant. In the future, we believe larger, high-tonnage base metal mines will use the decompression of liquid air, both liquid nitrogen and oxygen, in the ventilation system to deliver active cooling to very large, hot, deep underground operations.  

From an innovation standpoint, what do you believe is the next big thing in underground mining?

Continuous transportation systems for moving ore out of the mine faster are the next big thing in underground mining. Deep mines with dynamic, seismic conditions are not conducive to fixed infrastructure that can be damaged by rock bursts. Instead, simpler, mobile equipment systems are required, and that is what CEMI has focused on. We have to move away from batch transportation systems to continuous transportation systems. A conventional batch process uses roughly 80% of the energy to move the equipment and 20% to move the ore. A conventional conveyor belt uses approximately 95% of the energy used to move the product and only 5% to move the belt, but the challenge in hard-rock metal mines is that the ore product is too dense and heavy for belts to be effective. We believe in various designs of steel conveying systems, which will use approximately 25% of the energy to mobilize the equipment and 75% of the energy to move the ore.  This will allow mines to move the ore faster and much more energy-efficiently, reducing the total horsepower of the equipment and the ventilation demand.  

As the effects of climate change increase the demand for electrification in a move away from fossil fuels, do you believe the implementation of new technologies will be driven by social pressure?

More than anything, I believe that economic pressure will drive the implementation of technology to reduce the cost significantly of the metal society needs to achieve electrification of the economy.  Climate change will soon begin to threaten coastal infrastructure on a scale that most economies will not be able to tolerate. But if more demand for metals means the price of copper nickel and lead increases, it will be harder to drive lower-cost carbon out of the economy and the trends in climate change will continue.

If there is a strong demand for electrification base metals, supply-demand economics predicts that prices will rise. However, if the price of base metals increase, we become less able to push lower-cost carbon out of the economy, and we will continue to use fossil fuels because they are cheaper. We need to see greater volume of base metal production, but at a lower price point. Therefore, it is paramount that we significantly reduce the cost of base metal production, not only from prospective mines that may not come into production within a decade, but from current mines as well. If we change the cost of production significantly, we change the cut-off grade of ore, expand the volume of mineable ore and increase the life of mine. Extracting more metal from mines already in production gives us more time to find new mineable deposits and bring them into production. We will also have to find ways to mine much smaller and more remote deposits whilst still being profitable. This requires us to implement whole-scale change in metal mining operations globally within the next decade. The innovation imperative for mining globally is to achieve a radical increase in the electrification of the economy; the consequences of failing are not trivial.

Are there any other social issues that you believe will be pressing for the mining industry to address in the next decade?

The other aspect of mining that is under social pressure is its management of mine waste and wastewater. Most of the changes that are being considered now address the monitoring of tailings storage facilities and the removal of water from behind the containment structures. While these changes should decrease the risk of catastrophic failure of tailings storage facilities, this is not the only risk posed by mine tailings; fugitive toxic dust severely impacts both local communities and neighboring ecologies.  CEMI believes that a completely new approach to mine tailings management, one that removes contaminants from the material that will be left exposed to the environment, can achieve this.  Ensuring that the environment around mining operations will be secure from any long-term risk of exposure to toxic materials will make it much easier to obtain permits and license to operate and will see new mines come into production sooner.  And it also allows the industry to demonstrate progress in improving its environmental performance.