Vale, along with Sudbury's Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) and The Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator (MICA), are putting out a call to the larger mining community to find better and safer ways to carry out some basic mining procedures.
The call is to seek new ways of marking bootleg drill holes and inserting tubes into lifter holes. Both are basic functions carried out close to a freshly-drilled rock face by miners every day, but both present hazards to the miner.
In both cases, the call for new solutions seeks to find ways that miners can do the work without putting themselves at risk. In both cases, there is currently no commercialized solution for dealing with the problem.
Bootlegs are the remnants of a previously blasted drillhole, left over on the rockface. Bootlegs, which are sometimes called misfired holes, present a danger because a hole that is three to six inches deep for example, can still contain leftover blasting powder. Bootleg holes must be inspected, cleaned out and marked (red paint) before drilling a new round at the face. It is against the law for miners to drill inside bootlegs.
The problem is that inspecting, cleaning and marking the leftover hole can be dangerous for the miner standing next to the rock face to do that job. There have been many instances where large pieces of rock have fallen off the face and have injured the miner.
Vale is seeking a solution that would keep the miner from entering the zone immediately next to the rockface.
It's a similar concern for the process of inserting marker tubes into the lifter (floor level) holes at the face. Once a floor level hole is drilled, a marker pole, usually a one or two-metre length of PVC or plastic tube, needs to be inserted into the newly drilled hole.
This allows the drilling crew to find that hole after all the other holes have been drilled. Lifter holes are usually hidden by falling rock debris and excess water in the drift.
Vale's call for a solution seeks a way to clean and mark the lifters through some means with no human intervention unless it is five metres away.
The news release from CEMI said the request for solutions will remain open until January 5, 2024.
The deadline for the Marking bootlegs and PVC Lifter solutions request will remain open until January 5, 2024. Those submitting for bootlegs can click online here, and those submitting a solution for lifter marking can click online here.
