Digitalisation as a Part of Sustainability Targets

Digitalisation is one of the biggest drivers of change in the industrial sector, extending to the productivity and sustainability performance of drilling and blasting operations as well. In FORCIT Group, we have strong focus on developing a wider portfolio of digital services and products. Recent innovations and R&D drivers have concentrated on questions of how we can serve our customers to achieve their sustainability targets.

FORCIT Group provides digital tools like O-PitSurface and O-Pitdev, and those can be used in many ways to reduce the environmental impact of drilling and blasting operations. The efforts to optimise the blasting results using digital products can have multiple positive implications on the sustainability performance of downstream processes.

OPTIMISATION IS KEY FOR SUSTAINABILITY

By optimising the fragmentation curve, muck pile shape, and diggability, it is possible to influence the fuel and electricity consumption of loading and thus decrease carbon footprint. At the same time, the need for secondary breakage is also reduced.

Digital 3D scanning of the blasted face together with hole deviation measurements can be used to adapt the blast design to field conditions and ensure the quality of the operation and the results. The picture below presents a typical situation encountered on the bench, where two holes are extremely close to each other as a result of drilling inaccuracies. From a sustainability point of view, this phenomenon has some clear risks, such as malfunctions of the explosive, which may lead to unproper fragmentation and increased emissions to the air and water.

Hole deviation control and burden relief analysis with O-PitSurface blast design software.

INNOVATIONS ARE NEEDED AND ADAPTED INTO PRACTICES

According to several studies, 5‒20 % of used explosives will not follow ideal detonation behaviour in traditional operations, due to reasons related drilling, blasting and geology. As described earlier, this affects the carbon footprint of the drilling and blasting operations. By utilising digital optimisation tools, it is possible to minimise the number of poorly detonating blastholes and amount of undetonated explosive. This improves sustainability performance across all its dimensions (i.e., environment, safety and profitability) and overall efficiency of the production, which will lead to cost savings. As a new innovation Forcit – O-Pitblast is planning to launch a tool (O-PitEco) to calculate, evaluate and track CO2 emissions of the drilling and blasting operation on each site and on each blast. This tool will also give an opportunity to evaluate amounts of waste and theoretical post blast fumes (NOx and CO2) in drilling and blasting. This tool provides practical approach to choose the best solution for both blasting execution and for the nature.

O-PitEco for the carbon footprint calculations in a drilling and plasting operations.

DID YOU KNOW?

O-PITBLAST

• Established in 2016 in Porto, Portugal • +20 employees with background in mathematics, programming, designing, and engineering • Develops design and measuring technologies and tailor-made solutions for optimising drilling and blasting operations • Products are in use in every continent; the biggest market areas are South

America, Nordic countries, and Australia