Comparative study on the economy of hybrid mining trucks for open‐pit mining

Abstract

The mining trucks with heavy loads are widely used in open-pit mines, which are usually under working conditions where the recoverable potential energy accounts for more than 1/3 of the traction energy. Therefore, it is important to study the existing energy recovery technologies suitable for mining trucks. This work presents a comparative study on the economy of a mining truck by integrating four different energy storage systems (ESS): battery, supercapacitor, hydraulic accumulator, and air tank combining with the existing internal combustion engine to form a hybrid mining truck. First, recent applications and features of the four ESSs in vehicles are discussed. Next, the configurations of four types of partial hybrid mining trucks are presented. In addition, this project compares different configurations by the total benefit over 10 years of operation. The compressed-air ESS with full capacity obtained the best benefit under medium and heavy load scenarios, which is more applicable to the actual situations. Therefore, it will be beneficial to turn the conventional electric-driving mining truck into a compressed-air hybrid.