Longwall automation at Glencore’s Oaky Creek Coal Glencore
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20 years ago, it was a pipe dream. Five years ago, it was ‘maybe we can get there’. Now, we are actually there. We have a longwall being operated from the surface on a safe, regular and controlled basis.
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Lauris Hemmings, Engineering & Maintenance Manager at Oaky Creek Coal, is talking about advances in longwall automation at the Glencore underground mine in Central Queensland. Oaky Creek has been at the forefront of trials of CSIRO laser scanning technology that allows longwall operations to be managed remotely from an above-ground control centre. The “ExScan” technology takes a full three-dimensional scan and, through a combination of Wi-Fi and optic fibre, transmits the images from the coal face to the control centre. Operators capture the data on a bank of computer screens to provide a panoramic view of the longwall face, accurate to millimetres, that enables remote guidance of the longwall equipment. 66
BBMC Yearbook 2020
