The continued push by many governing bodies to move away from fossil fuels to electric is now reaching the mining industry as many mining machines are now run by electric.
Although most machines are still powered by diesel fuel, with the crackdown on C02 emissions, companies like Caterpillar, Komatsu, Volvo and others have no other option than to start producing electric powered equipment.
Since the gradual lowering of the dangers of the pandemic, diesel usage has begun to recover across the world because of the return of vehicular, railway and marine traffic in domestic and commercial travel and haulage of goods.
With mining, where large amounts of diesel fuel is burned every second of the day, the move towards electric has secondary benefits. One of the biggest advantages is no longer needing to ventilate polluted spaces like tunnels and mines. No exhaust means cleaner air for workers to breath. This saves both time and money in the digging process.
Along with the new electric machine technology, new remote-control equipment is providing companies the ability to get dangerous work done more safely while reducing downtime because many tasks can be completed without a person operating the machine on site. Instead, workers can control machines from a safe environment, often indoors.
Ferrit Electric is one company developing electric options for mining companies. Electric machines being produced include ground tracked and suspended monorail transport systems, multipurpose crawler machinery, LHD Loaders and universal vehicles for transporting people and equipment.
Ferrit is also implementing project management software aimed at reducing downtime and increasing productivity.
