Drilling and Blasting
Technology inspires more viable deposits
Drilling and blasting has long been a cornerstone of the mining industry. However, the technological advancements of recent times have brought about a significant evolution in the methods and equipment utilized in this process. An observer from the past would be astounded by the state-of-the-art machinery and sophisticated sensors that are becoming commonplace on equipment.
Demand for these services has seen a marked increase since the pandemic, as miners have boosted their exploration budgets and accelerated their activities in an effort to make up for a period of underinvestment. This has placed drill and blast service providers in a favorable, albeit challenging, position. The current shortage of skilled labor is a testament to the high demand for their services, with most, if not all, of the available rigs in constant use. Consequently, companies like Boart Longyear posted 1H revenue results unseen since the height of the previous bull market cycle in 2013.
Although drilling services make up 65-70% of its overall business today, Boart Longyear sees its fastest growth prospects in its segment technology business called Geological Data Services (GDS), which offers unique technology to the mining industry. In recognition of its work, Mines and Money recently awarded GDS Mining Innovation of the Year for 2022. GDS has two components: It offers downhole technologies, which includes core orientation and geophysical tools to gather information downhole, and on the other side of the business, they have a scanning technology that uses unique XRF technology that is calibrated by orebodies to produce a full elemental analysis of either core, or chips that are extracted from the ground to provide information to mining clients in a quicker, more accurate and far less expensive way than traditional methodologies. “As this technology becomes more accepted, you are going to see the ability to delineate ore bodies much quicker,” noted Jeff Olsen, CEO of Boart Longyear.
An additional benefit, particularly for remote mining operations, is that the technology is highly portable. “We do not need to build any infrastructure, it is nondestructive to the sample, and we combine that with artificial intelligence to provide things like auto structural logging, which greatly reduces the number of geologists that need to touch the core,” Olsen said.
“We have modified our rigs to have more sensors on them. This reduces training time as the rig can provide more data and information to the driller and also helps in optimizing production and improving hole completion.”
Denis Larocque, President and CEO, Major Drilling
Novamera is another company working to add to a mining company’s toolset by developing enabling technologies. Its specific focus is to make surgical mining with conventional drills possible. Novamera co-founder and CEO, Dustin Angelo, explained that in the first phase of its 3-phase Surgical Mining by Drilling (SMD) process, Novamera assists the mining company by deploying, via wireline, its near borehole imaging tool (NBIT) on a standard NQ size core rig down the dip of the vein to map the vein deposit in high resolution (up to 3 m in radius around the borehole), and calculate the optimal drilling trajectory using its proprietary algorithms. “Our data driven solution allows you to see a much clearer picture of the ore body unlike traditionally, where it would be cost prohibitive to drill conventional cross-cutting core holes at an equivalent spacing to achieve similar resolution,” Angelo said.
The second phase is the extraction stage, where a conventional large-diameter drill armed with Novamera’s course-correction device and positioning control system follows the trajectory path calculated by its imaging tool and extracts the ore using reverse circulation airlift assist. In the final phase, once the hole is open and the ore has been processed, the mining company will combine the tailings with cement to backfill the hole.
The glaring opportunity Novamera recognized was that if a company has steeply dipping narrow vein deposits that are too complex or uneconomic to mine using conventional mining techniques, they can use Novamera’s technology in a manner complementary to their existing operations to be able to extract more of their mineral resources. “There is a huge economic benefit for companies to be able to get that incremental production, because they already have all the infrastructure in place, including people, permits and mills. Therefore, they can add to their bottom line far more efficiently and profitably using Novamera’s technology,” Angelo commented.
“Drill hole and blast hole data consist of XYZ coordinates and a measure of value for the target commodity. We take those data points and literally create a 3D map of what is underneath the ground.”
Farzi Yusufali, Co-Founder, StratumAI
“The ultimate goal is to design a blast that accounts for the rock and explosive properties to produce a specific fragmented rock distribution suitable for milling.”
Troy Williams, President, iRing
Blasting
By spending a bit more on one process, a mining company can save significantly on their overall operation if they are able to see the overall value in a solution. In the case of blasting, this may mean choosing a more expensive but more performant explosive product or a different blasting technique that will ultimately help to reduce overall costs. “By spending more on one aspect of mining, we will make large savings down the line,” said Paul Kuznik, DynoConsult manager - Canada at Dyno Nobel, adding that Dyno Nobel has proven that gassed emulsion and electronic detonators are the future of rock breaking. “Customers recognize that using these products is quickly justified by making huge savings on fuel, equipment wear and tear, and energy consumption at the crushers.”
iRing started in 2003 after receiving a large IRAP grant with the mission to design software to help mining engineers design better blasts. The company developed its Aegis software to transform blasting operations into a controlled industrial process, repeatable and predictable. “The goal of this new tool is to help close the loop on the data side so that mining engineers can better understand the rocks they are trying to blast so they can design and utilize the energy of the explosives in a more efficient manner to produce consistent results every time,” iRIng president Troy Williams said. Building on this capability, in 2023, the company plans to introduce a new geomechanics probe to help better characterize rock properties.
iRing’s software helps companies produce reports that can be consumed by operations. With the current state of technology, some drills can take direct uploads from their software and can start drilling the holes automatically with minimal assistance. Getting blasting right can also have important implications on energy costs and GHG emissions: “If blasts can be designed to generate a consistent feed size, the mill has capacity that can be used to reduce energy consumption (and therefore related emissions) because it doesn’t have to handle the variable feed size,” Williams affirmed.
Article header image courtesy of Dyno Nobel