Blasting out a stope inside an
underground mine hasn't always
been a precise process.
But a North Bay technology company
has been steadfastly working to change
all that.
After three years of development,
iRing INC. has brought a software
package to market that could take mine
planning to another level.
While Chris Preston, a 40-year veteran
of explosives manufacturing, was teaching
at Queen's University's mining
school, he was witness to a whole host
of dubious blasting practices.
"When you get exposed to mining
through an academic route, you can see
bad practices extend out just like a sore
thumb," said Preston, now a consulting
engineer at iRing.
As specialists in underground blasting
applications, iRing had developed an
earlier namesake version of the software
to optimize ore recovery that proved
initially successful internationally, but
had limitations.
Users had to run it in conjunction
with a CAD (computer-aided drafting)
system, which was too cumbersome
and time-consuming to use.
With Industrial Research Assistance
Program funding, the iRing team developed
an intuitive new version, Aegis,
that was released last December.
"AEGIS is iRing on steroids," and is
used to design blasting rings, the drill
hole patterns filled with explosives that
separate valuable ore from the host
rock, said Preston.
It's a stand-alone blasting software
that runs independent of AutoCAD or
MineCAD. Where once the planning
process for blasting took weeks and
months, it can be done in less than a
minute on Aegis.
"Once you define where the drilling
is starting, the blast for the whole stope
is done in less than 10 seconds," said
Preston.
The program can lay out various
blasting scenarios for mining planners
based on the kind of explosives, rock
types, the associated costs, and predict
how effective the ring pattern will be in
removing a volume of ore.
A reporting mechanism can send the
layouts to the underground drillers.
"Instead of setting up blasts and
seeing how it does, if you can do it on
the computer, and if it gives you some
accuracy, then people really trust it,"
said Preston.
One of the company's supporters has
called Aegis a "gamechanger."
"Designing AEGIS has been a dream
for me," said Preston. "When you consider
they used to do this with paper, pencil
and a protractor, we've come light years
ahead."
A second module, Aegis Analyzer,
allows mine planners to fine-tune their
patterns with such predictive modelling
capabilities as blast recovery
revenue forecasts.
"It allows you to see what your
dilution will be, the value you get in
creating the cavity, and if you removed
all your ore or did you break into the
boundaries and bring in some (other)
rocks," said Preston.
But some of the biggest roadblocks
to this technology were the mine planners
who designed blasts according to
their own individual standards, said
Preston.
"If you have 10 planners all doing
their own designs, it's not the best way
to set up a best practice."
The records they kept were usually
on handwritten notes. When those
veteran mine planners retired, so went
that institutional knowledge.
Aegis also serves as a record-keeping
repository that's able to call up past
blasts and document the results according
to rock type and explosives.
Preston sees no reason why blasting
an underground cavity can't be done
with such a high degree of precision
that it eliminates some downstream
processing.
"We believe using the tools that
we're developing, there will come
a time where you might not need
a crusher underground. You can be confident
in your blasting methodology
— knowing what your rock and explosive
properties are. Wouldn't it be
amazing if you could use the blasting
process as your primary crusher?"