Abstract
Abstract The current economic and political scenario in Brazil has allowed small, medium and large companies to adopt cost cutdown and productivity increase strategies. Diesel fuel consumption by off-highway haul trucks stands for one of the largest costs at the Sossego Mine operational management department. Based on this fact, as well as on the 8% increase in the budgeted diesel fuel cost for 2017, the mining unit has decided to implement a project, previously implemented at the Capao Xavier mine site, which makes use of a high-fidelity haul truck simulator for operators' qualification, by working on the major factors impacting fuel consumption. The application of the simulator has been observed to be a potential upturn for the identification and correction of major failures and bad habits impacting fuel consumption. The results suggest a significant diesel fuel consumption cutdown, as well as enhanced haul truck operation ability and performance.
Highlights
In the mining industry, cost control during the haulage phase, as well as throughout the production chain, has become quite relevant in a time of low market value of commodities worldwide
A more complete training with 270 hour workload, the operators receive all instructions of safety, operation instructions and maintenance there are carried out at the time of hiring. It is quite relevant for other mining companies to get to know this technique, which brings about expressive results regarding fuel consumption cutdown
Even though this is only an estimation and other factors might contribute to cut down on fuel expenses, it has been duly proved that simulation does contribute for fuel consumption cutdown, besides providing the company with significant gains
Summary
Cost control during the haulage phase, as well as throughout the production chain, has become quite relevant in a time of low market value of commodities worldwide. In high-production mine sites, where common material handling practice is carried out by large-size haul trucks, known as off-highway trucks, one of the major issues encountered is high fuel consumption, due to a high value of Average Haulage Distance (AHD) for the work cycle haulage, from the mine site to the crusher, deposit or stockpiles (LOPES, 2010). With that, requirements such as profit maximization, operational cost cutdown, and better mining throughput oblige mining companies to be always on the outlook for new alternatives to be able to meet proposed results and targets. Virtual reality (Riener et al, 2004) plays a major role, for it stands for advanced computer interfaces, which have not yet been fully implemented by society at large
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