Project background
Caterpillar 777 dump trucks are used to transport ore to processing site at one of the open pit mines in Armenia, where copper-molybdenum is mined. Such machines consume up to 80 liters per hour and carry up to 100 tons of cargo over 3 km at a speed of up to 50 km/h.
There was an urgent need for monitoring also because dump trucks should undergo maintenance works frequently: on average, every 250 operating hours. Service intervals increased over time, but hundreds of liters of oil in the hydraulic systems need to be changed regularly. Spare parts, work and oil costs makes up about $7K for one machine. Multiply it by ten, as there are dozens of trucks at the company.
Thus, the mining company top management is interested not only in fuel monitoring, but also in the ability to save the resources as well as money on maintenance.
Ararat Ikilikyan, CEO at ICU
Fuel economy is not a top priority in monitoring heavy mining equipment. Idle hours reduction, productivity increase and minimizing of maintenance costs are what really save money.
Challenges
- Connect to CAN-buses
- Calculate the coefficient of fuel consumption per ton of cargo
- Minimize dump trucks downtime and idle hours
- Eliminate errors and malfunctions timely
Solution
When talking about fuel consumption control on large quarry machinery, the main factor is the gram consumption per ton per kilometer. It may seem paradoxical, but road dump trucks with a carrying capacity of 26 tons, such as Mercedes or MAN, spend up to 75 g / t per km, while mining dump trucks with a lifting capacity of up to 100 tons have the consumption of only 30-35 g / t. Therefore, it is more profitable for extraction organizations to use several dump trucks with a large carrying capacity than to drive dozens of light-tonnage vehicles.
In order to calculate this coefficient, ICU specialists used the Galileosky 7x tracker and its own software. By connecting to VIMS (Real Time Weighing System), the engineers read cargo weight data. This system is installed on all the CAT mining equipment, connects axle load sensors and, using mathematical calculations, gives out tonnage with an error rate of up to 5%. Through the standard dump truck CAN-bus specialists received indications regarding injectors performance, FLS, traveled distance and travel time information, etc.
Another essential objective is to minimize the parking time of loaded dump trucks as well as engine idling. To succeed, experts connected to CAT CAN-buses and used Easy Logic algorithms. Thanks to this technology, it was possible to prescribe the conditions and set reactions in case of any rules violation while working in the quarry.
