Portugal’s mining strategy may favour copper over lithium
Portugal already has the largest copper mine in the European Union, operated by Lundin Mining.
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, (December 9, 2013): The latest release of HAULNET from RungePincockMinarco (RPM), delivers engineers an intelligent tool that can help to dramatically reduce one of the largest costs facing mining operations today, haulage.
Previously, one of the biggest hurdles for engineers to deliver real cost savings, has been the effort required to create accurate and usable haulage models. The lack of a dedicated software application for haulage has necessitated that a high level of manual intervention has been required to create fully connected networks. This has in turn meant that real in depth analysis of haulage cost could never be completed. HAULNET was developed, not only to create this connected network, but also to perform the underlying analysis. In this latest release, RPM has made the haulage network creation process even easier.
Previously, users would input their haulage network, created in an array of applications, into HAULNET for analysis. To make it easier for engineers to start using HAULNET to deliver cost savings to their operations, RPM has added key functionality to enable users to create their haulage network on the fly.
The new user interface enables users to quickly and easily build haul networks from scratch. It is as simple as using the mouse to point and click out the haulage routes across the mine site. Intuitively, the application snaps the route to the underlying surface and extends it to join existing roadways, nodes and points of interest. It also interprets and rationalises the haulage network. It can autocorrect creation mistakes and smooth out routes, removing unnecessary detail that isn’t required to perform an accurate analysis.
This latest release now sees HAULNET take advantage of 64-bit operating systems allowing for even faster analysis of complex haulage networks.
“One of our clients has a haulage network of over 8,500km. To put that in perspective, that is the same distance from London to Las Vegas. This makes for a very large and complex network. HAULNET has always been able to handle such large datasets, however with the upgrade to the underlying architecture, this analysis can now be performed significantly faster, giving users more time to spend reviewing options and making the right decisions” stated Paul Beesley, RPM’s Chief Technology Officer.
HAULNET 2.1 has also added support for the Russian language.
“Having a customer base in the Russian and CIS market, we see the haulage problems first hand. With HAULNET now available in the local language, local engineers can use the tool to help reduce one of the largest costs on their mine sites. HAULNET allows them to perform more detailed haulage analysis and in a far shorter timeframe.”
HAULNET 2.1 is available as an upgrade for all existing users with valid maintenance contracts.
