130-year-old Hecla stays on vanguard

Established in 1891, Hecla Mining Agency has survived two worldwide pandemics, two World Wars, the Good Melancholy, and fairly a number of crests and troughs of a cyclical metals market that has sunk a number of the silver miner’s contemporaries over the earlier 130 years. Certainly one of many causes for this long-lived success is a readiness to adapt to change and the imaginative and prescient to undertake new utilized sciences that maximize safety, improve effectivity, and reduce the environmental footprint of its operations within the US, Canada, and Mexico.

“The one issue that is certain is change, so we have to proceed to get increased every day, in either side of what we do,” acknowledged Hecla Mining Vice President of Exterior Affairs Luke Russell. “We don’t depend upon ‘successfully that is the method we did it yesterday,’ there is also a better method.”

This mindset of utilizing the latest utilized sciences to repeatedly improve operations is on full present at Hecla’s Greens Creek Silver Mine in Southeast Alaska.

Thanks largely to the implementation of twenty first century utilized sciences, resembling high-speed wi-fi and semi-autonomous mining instruments, Greens Creek produced 10.5 million ounces of silver in 2020, which is roughly 77% of the 13.5 million oz recovered from all of Hecla’s operations last yr.

“This undoubtedly won’t be your grandfather’s mine,” Hecla Greens Creek Mine penned on the enhancements net web page of its web page.

Connection is important

The centerpiece of the cutting-edge mining utilized sciences being utilized at Greens Creek is a high-speed wi-fi info swap system that options miles of communication cables and wi-fi hotspots that be a part of the working areas of the underground mine.

Hecla acknowledged this connectivity provides real-time info on the place every particular person and piece of equipment is located, even inside the labyrinth of underground passages extending better than a mile beneath the earth’s ground.

Initially put in as a safety measure to permit radio frequency identification (RFID) know-how to help monitor workers and instruments, the high-speed wi-fi info swap offered by this underground wi-fi group permits a broad range of utilized sciences.

Due to this you normally are likely to see an underground worker at Greens Creek pull out a capsule with real-time info than reams of paper to take notes which will should be transferred to the company’s laptop system after they get once more to the ground.

“The geologists can go into that work area and fairly than having 20 maps with him, he has a capsule and he seems up the face map, the mine plans for that area, from that capsule,” acknowledged Bob Haecker, mill supervisor at Greens Creek.

Further autonomy

The wi-fi underground group at Greens Creek moreover permits for the operation of completely distant and semi-autonomous mining instruments from the ground.

The first of such instruments, put to work at Greens Creek in 2017, was a remotely operated semi-autonomous long-haul dump loader working all through shift modifications at Greens Creek.

An operator sitting behind a monetary establishment of laptop shows on the ground runs the LHD on the first go, instructing the machine the place to load and dump, after which the loader repeats the tactic.

Working by two shift modifications a day, each taking about two hours, this avant-garde piece of equipment provides the mine with about 4 further hours of ore hauling daily on the underground operation.

Hecla says one different advantage of the autonomous LHD, which has proximity detectors that cease it from working into totally different objects, is its potential to operate sooner with out working into partitions than the identical loader with a human being jostled spherical inside the driver’s seat.

With the success of this semi-autonomous loader, Hecla says it is adopting automated, jumbo stope drilling and shaft operations between shifts. The company will also be growing its utilization of tele-remote and battery-powered loaders and vans at its operations.

The company says these emissions free and unmanned instruments “reduces air circulation requirements, improves worker safety, and lowers emissions.”

On-demand modern air

Closed quarters and with no breeze, sustaining modern air for workers is a crucial and dear part of any underground mine.

At Greens Creek, Hecla is using the wi-fi underground connectivity for on-demand air circulation, an optimization-via-automation methodology that targets the vital strategy of supplying modern air to underground miners of their scattered workplaces whereas exhausting the used air that has acquired further heat, noxious gases, and dirt.

By mounting variable-frequency drives to the underground followers that circulation into modern air by the underground workings at Greens Creek, the air circulation system is able to modify the amount of up to date air delivered in response to the people and instruments in an area.

The company says merely one among these drives lowers the annual power bill at Greens Creek by about $23,000. So, the mine could save spherical $1.26 million per yr when all 55 of the followers are equipped with these drives.

In the midst of the testing part, Hecla put within the money-saving variable drives on 14 of the followers.

“We’re already saving money instantly, and will roll out this know-how all by Greens Creek and our totally different mines to doubtlessly save way more eventually,” Hecla penned on the enhancements net web page of its web page.

Distant vein miner

As a forward attempting agency, Hecla has its eyes on the way in which ahead for underground mining. This consists of being the first agency to order Atlas Copco’s distant vein miner, a state-of-the-art mining machine that features the a lot of steps of underground mining proper into a gradual operation.

With a cutterhead that digs into the face being mined, the distant miner does away with the drilling and blasting traditionally used to interrupt up ore.

This revolutionary mining machine is being put to utilize at Lucky Friday, an Idaho silver mine merely 4 miles from the place Hecla acquired its start in 1891.

Since its start in 1942, Lucky Friday has produced better than 155 million oz of silver, along with healthful parts of lead and zinc. Hecla first bought into Lucky Friday Silver-Lead Mines Agency, operator of the underground mine, in 1958. Six years later the two corporations merged, bringing Lucky Friday into the Hecla portfolio.

Hecla is taking Lucky Friday to new depths with the No. 4 shaft, which may develop mineralization 10,000 ft beneath the ground and add better than 20 years of silver-rich ore to the operation.

The distant vein miner is predicted to alter into increasingly more very important as Hecla follows the rich silver ore deeper into the Lucky Creek Mine.

“We see mechanical rock lowering as an very important step forward to significantly improve productiveness and safety as we mine at higher depths on the Lucky Friday, and are proud to be working with Atlas Copco, a frontrunner inside the space, to develop the distant vein miner,” acknowledged Hecla Mining President and CEO Phillips Baker, Jr.

It is this work on the lowering fringe of underground mining know-how that is anticipated to take care of the 130-year-old Hecla going strong by the twenty first century and previous.