In-Pit Crushing and Conveying

D Morrison1 and I Lourel2

ABSTRACT
In evaluating the installation of an in-pit crushing and conveying (IPCC)
system for any mine, a number of options are available for each of the dig
side, transport and dump side operations. Some of them are more
appropriate than others; given the pit arrangement, the material being
handled and the rates at which it needs to be moved.
This paper seeks to document the options that might be employed, and
to rank them in terms of their applicability at any mine and their
practicality overall, with a view to nominating those that would be most
suitable for further study.

SYSTEM DESIGN OBJECTIVES

For the purposes of this study, the IPCC and the associated
subsystems are assumed to work under any of the following
conditions:

continuous operation at 24 hours a day, seven days a week;

maximise annual production hours; and
the system will be owner operated and maintained.
EXISTING CONTINUOUS STRIPPING
APPLICATIONS

FIG 1 - A 4500 t/h relocatable in-pit crushing station with a

gyratory crusher for copper ore at the ASARCO Inc Ray mine
in USA.

There are a number of examples of continuous stripping

operations in other mining operations around the world and visits
to any or all of them would be appropriate during an assessment
of the technology.

Relocatable crusher options

The copper mining industry in North and South America has a
number of relocatable crushing systems. Escondida and
Chuquicamata mines in Chile, and the Bingham Canyon mine in
Utah, USA, are among the largest mines in the world, each
employing relocatable ore handling crushers (Figures 1 and 2)
delivering onto large conveyors that reach to the process plants
via long tunnels through the mine wall.

BHP-Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, Goonyella

Riverside
The SHECON (Shovel conveyor) system at Goonyella was the
first of the large mobile sizing rigs constructed (Figure 3).
The system was matched with a P&H 4100A, delivering
approximately 10 Mbcm/annum of overburden onto a conveyor
system that is approximately 6 km long. The current limitation
on the system throughput is thought to be a combination of
conveyor capacity and operational methods. The shovel and
crusher are both capable of greater capacity than they are
currently achieving.
The mobile sizing unit was supplied by MMD and began work
in 2003. The conveyor system, onto which it delivers, was built
back in the early 1980s to form part of a bucket-wheel excavator
operation.

1.

Manager, Integrated Mining, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), PO Box

3848, South Brisbane Qld 4101. Email: DMorrison@skm.com.au

2.

Senior Applications Engineer, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), PO Box

3848, South Brisbane Qld 4101. Email: ilourel@skm.com.au

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FIG 2 - Photograph showing a relocatable crushing station being

moved by a transport crawler.

Suncor Voyager, Canada

Currently there is a drive in the oilsands industry towards mobile
mining systems. The oilsands industry is interested in this
technology as a way to mobilise their ore mining and processing
operation. The current thinking is that overburden removal would
still remain a conventional, truck-and-shovel operation, while a

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D MORRISON and I LOUREL

FIG 3 - Goonyella Riverside SHECON operation.

mobile crushing and conveying system could be used to feed an

in-pit slurry preparation plant.
Three major oilsands operators are already using mobile
crushing systems. Albian Sands has been using a semi-mobile
crushing plant (manufactured by ThyssenKrupp) since 2002.
Syncrude has been conducting pilot tests since 2006 for an in-pit
slurrying system involving the use of a shovel-fed mobile crusher
and conveyor system. Suncor Energy has been evaluating a
mobile crusher system (see Figure 4) on a commercial scale in
partnership with MMD mineral sizing. The pilot system, costing
$150 million, was commissioned at 5500 tonnes of ore per hour.
Suncor is considering additional mobile crusher units, with plans
to employ mobile mining technology in their proposed Voyager
South mine.

FIG 5 - Photographs showing dragline feeding trucks at

Drummonds Pribbenow mine in Columbia.

The mine already uses the same style of feeder with a dozer
fleet to load a sizer module (Figure 6), which in turn loads an
overland conveyor to take the overburden out of pit to a spreader.

FIG 4 - Mobile crusher unit being evaluated by Suncor Energy.

FIG 6 - Dozer push-down operation at Drummond.

Yimin open-pit coal mine, Peoples Republic of

China
ThyssenKrupp have supplied a system encompassing a fully
mobile in-pit crusher, a crawler-mounted beltwagon, a hopper
and cable reel car, a shiftable bench conveyor, a relocatable
conveyor bridge (semi-mobile beltwagon), and a transport crawler.

Drummond, Colombia
Drummond Coals Pribbenow mine in Columbia has used a
dragline to load trucks via a ground hopper and an apron plate
feeder (see Figure 5).
Anecdotally this operation has increased truck utilisation by
15 per cent. There are also reports of good loading characteristics,
resulting in reduced maintenance costs for the trucks.
There are thoughts of adopting the system to feed an out-of-pit
stacking conveyor system, with the addition of a crusher/sizer
beneath the apron feeder.

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SYSTEMS IN THE PIPELINE

Clermont
The Clermont Coal Mine Project open cut mining operation has
procured a mobile IPCC system. When complete, the system will
be similar but not exactly the same as that installed at Goonyella
Riverside. The key difference will be the provision of a
beltwagon allowing greater flexibility with regard to the benches
on which it will operate and the elimination of costly and time
consuming moves of the face conveyor from bench to bench.
Clermonts IPCC will be operated in conjunction with the
shovel in two different extraction modes of operation. Early in
the mine life when pit room is at a premium, the system will be
set up so that the mobile sizing rigs feed hopper is placed
beneath a preformed concrete hopper. This will be used to

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receive waste from truck haulage, allowing the truck fleet to

make short hauls and leaving the task of carrying the waste out to
the extremity of the out of pit dump to the conveyor and
spreader system (Figure 7).

Methods for combined overburden and ore

handling
The basic processes involved in the handling of overburden could
be expanded to encompass the movement of ore. This concept is
presented in Figure 10.
Seen on a more global basis, any mine could (eventually) be
characterised in accordance with Figure 10.
In this examination the excavation method, transport method
and dumping methods will be treated separately before focusing
in on optimising the interaction of each one.

SYSTEM MOBILITY
Before considering which options might be worthy of further
consideration, it important to establish a common understanding
of how the systems operate and then to label them in accordance
with the methods of operation.
Systems that might be considered as part of this study can have
various degrees of mobility; there are three basic distinctions:

FIG 7 - The Clermont Spreader erection.

1.

fixed structures,

2.

relocatable structures, and

3.

mobile structures.

Fixed structures

Fortescue
Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) have engaged Rahco to provide
a continuous materials handling system for waste handling. The
system will include a pair of mobile feeder/sizer machines
loaded by hydraulic shovels.

Fixed structures are those that are anchored to the ground and in
which some degree of disassembly is required for relocation.
Typically, the primary crushing stations already in place at any
mine are of this type.

Relocatable (semi-mobile) structures

OPERATIONAL MODELS
Methods of overburden handling
The basic processes involved in the handling of overburden can
be seen in Figure 8.

Structures that operate in one location for considerable periods of

time and, can be readily moved (see Transporters section) when
required. For example, conveyor drive heads and tail stations (see
Figure 11) and track-shiftable conveyor modules (see Figure 12).

Mobile structures
Trucking
Drilling
and
blasting

Excavation of
overburden
Sizing

Conveying

Overburden
dumps

Mobile structures are those that can relocate by themselves.

Mobile structures can be carried on rail or they can be crawler
mounted. Some smaller types of mobile equipment used in IPCC
systems are mounted on tyres that are can be retracted during
machine operation.

Transporters
Relocatable structures can be moved from one location to another
using a transport crawler (see Figure 13) or use detachable walker
systems (see Figure 14).

Trucking

FIG 8 - The basic overburden handling processes.

Any of the systems currently employed in the mining industry

can be characterised by one path or another through that flow
chart. At one end of the scale most mines employ the simplest
path that passes through the top level. At the other end of the
scale, Waihi mine in New Zealand employed the more complex
path of using all but the trucking directly to dump path,
employing as they did, trucks to hoppers, to crushers to
conveyors to trucks and then eventually to the dump.
Any combination is workable and all have their applications.
This block diagram could be represented as a flowsheet such
as that presented in Figures 9 and 10.
Each of the operations presented in that flow sheet can be
treated separately. No single machine type selected at any stage
dictates a specific path through this concept map.

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EXCAVATION TECHNIQUES AND MACHINES

General
Selection of excavation machinery is fundamental to the success
of any mining operation. The types of equipment that might be
used at the mine face are presented here, and from that possible
fleet, a recommendation is made.

Excavation machines
Selection criteria for excavation machinery may include:

ease and cost of electricity reticulation into the pit,

mobility,
throughput,
capital cost,

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FIG 9 - Process flow diagram showing multiple waste handling options.

Trucking
Drilling
and
blasting

Overburden
dumps

Excavation of
overburden or
ore
Sizing

Conveying
Ore
stockpiles
Trucking

FIG 10 - The basic overburden and ore handling processes.

FIG 12 - Track-shiftable conveyor modules on hollow steel skids.

productivity (cycle time per pass),

materials handling characteristics, and
face and bench operations.

FIG 11 - Relocatable conveyor head and tail end stations.

16

Understanding the characteristic performance of the available

excavation machines is necessary before establishing the capacity
of the crusher and any out-loading conveyor system.
By way of example, to best utilise the excavation productivity
of a machine, full utilisation of the suspended load rating while

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IN-PIT CRUSHING AND CONVEYING

packing efficiency (presence of large voids) of the bulk

material inside the dipper, and

the average skill level of the operators.

In some instances, the use of separate dippers for different bulk
materials may offer a significant improvement in productivity (up
to 25 per cent) improvement by maximising the full loading
capacity of the excavation machine.

SIZING

FIG 13 - A transport crawler shifting a conveyor drive head.

Before the overburden may be conveyed, it needs to be reduced

to a top size of -450 mm by a primary sizer, in order to fit onto
the conveyor and to prevent physical damage to the conveyor
components during transport.
Short hauling trucks to in-pit hoppers/sizers/crushers and then
onto conveyors can be quite successful, and provided the dump
station doesnt have to be relocated frequently (say less often
than once every five years or so) they can be quite economic.
This option needs to be considered further, particularly as it
seems that each of the dump hoppers could remain in position for
the life of the pushback.
The use of mobile sizers delivering onto conveyors could also
be quite successful. The Goonyella/Riverside system operates
with quite a low typical operating cost although the system has
been poorly configured (being based on a hand me down
conveying system used in a previous mining system) and requires
frequent and expensive bench and face relocations. On the
other hand Suncor have used a mobile conveyor system behind a
mobile sizer and this arrangement has been reasonably successful.
Interestingly, Clermont have begun construction of a mobile
sizing unit which is intended to be used in conjunction with a
large rope shove, but during the early mine life, when pit room is
too tight for the fully mobile operation, the system will be
installed beneath a truck dump hopper and then will be used to
size and convey material from short hauling trucks.

Crusher selection
FIG 14 - Detachable hydraulic walker for Goonyellas relocatable
conveyor drive heads.

Crusher configuration selection depends on:

uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of the material being

presented,

excavating, and making short swings are both required. This has
an impact on the machine selection as well as the conveyor
configuration.
Table 1 gives an overview on different types of excavation
machines used in opencast mining and their indicative
performance envelopes.
The selection of optimal excavation machines will depend on a
number of drivers. Table 2 rates the available options against a
number of key parameters.

Dipper selection
For a typical truck and shovel operation, the shovel dipper is
sized to match the capacity of the trucks being loaded so that a
unit number of passes fill the truck. For an IPCC installation, the
greatest total throughput is achieved when the entire system is
able to cater for the whole operating cycle of the excavation
machine, and that is achieved when the crusher and conveyors
are able to clear the short-term peak loading rate from the short
swinging cycles, while minimising the need to relocate the
machines. Therefore, the dipper should be sized in consideration
of:

weight of the protective wear package,

weight of the dipper itself,
density of the material being excavated,

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required throughput,
power consumption and mechanical strength of machine,
abrasiveness,
max feed size, and
wear component replacement cost and frequency.

Table 3 presents crusher options that are available for inclusion

in a crushing rig and their key performance envelopes.
Any or all of those crusher types could be employed in a
mobile or relocatable sizing rig. The rolls sizer or breaker/
feeders would be the most appropriate for any mine recognising
the capacity required and the material being mined.
A breaker/feeder could be successful at any mine, although the
wear costs for chains and picks is likely to be high. There is no
technical reason why a breaker/feeder should be excluded from
consideration at any mine, so the option of either a rolls sizer or a
breaker/feeder unit needs to be considered further.

Semi-mobile sizing rig configuration

With one of the recommended options for further development
being the use of trucks on short hauls to in pit dump stations, it is
important to establish the optimum configuration of such a
machine.
Two crushing/sizing options have already been touted as
suitable:

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TABLE 1
Excavation machines types.
Machine type

Capacity

Notes

Vendors

Dragline
Can reach depth of 65 m in
height.
Average operating life of 40
years.
The lowest removal cost per ton.
High capital cost.

Walking draglines
Bucket 12 - 170 m3.
Boom 53 - 130 m.
Crawler draglines
Bucket 15 m3.
Boom 43 - 61 m.

P&H (eg model 9160).

Bucyrus (eg model 8750).

Payload capacity
360 t.
Working weight
7300 t.
Electric rope shovel
A large shovel (eg the 104 tonne
P&H4100XPB pictured) should
be capable of mining at
10 000 t/h, or 50 Mt/a with and
44 Mt/a without a belt wagon.
A medium sized shovel (eg
59 tonne P&H2800XPB) should
be capable of mining at 5000 t/h,
or 30 Mt/a with and 24 Mt/a
without a belt wagon.

Payload capacity
19 - 130 t.
Dipper 8 - 80 m3.
Working weight
1500 t.

P&H (eg model 4100XPB).

Bucyrus (eg 795 series).

Hydraulic excavator/shovel
Shovel

Terex O&K (up to 45 m3 bucket,

Bucket size 7 - 45 m3 (up to 90 t). Good mobility and versatility.
Hitachi, Leibherr (model R996,
Operating weight 100 - 1000 t.
A large hydraulic excavator/
up to 34 m3 bucket), Komatsu
shovel (eg Terex O&K RH400
477 - 3280 kW.
(model PC8000, up to 38/42 m3
pictured) now offers a comparable
bucket for a excavator/shovel).
bucket size to that of the largest
electric rope shovel available.

Excavator

Front end loader

Bucket size 12 - 40 m (up to 70 t). High mobility and versatility.
A large front end loader (eg the
Operating weight 110 - 270 t.
LeTourneau L-2350 model
783 - 1715 kW.
pictured) should be capable of
mining at 2000 t/h.
3

LeTourneau, Komatsu,
Caterpillar.

Dozer (crawler or wheeled)

Up to 650 kW.
Blade capacity up to 45 m3.
Operating weight 110 t.

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High mobility and versatility.

Small capital investment.
Can be used to push material
directly onto an apron feeder
below.

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Komatsu (eg D475A-5EO),

Caterpillar (eg 844H Wheel
Dozer).

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TABLE 1 Cont ...

Excavation machines types.
Bucket wheel excavator
Bucket size.
40 000 t/h.

Goonyella used a bucket wheel

excavator (1980 Krupp model
L1367, 5200 m3/hr)to remove
upper benches of overburden.
The deeper overburden is
removed by a dragline.

FAM, Krupp, Voest-Alpine,

Takraf.

Bucket ladder excavators

14 500 m3/h.
Cutting at heights up to 40 m.
Excavation up to 32 m deep.

Not reliable, being phased out.

FAM.

Continuous surface miner

Peak cutting rate of 2800 bm3/h.
Maximum cutting drum width
= 250 - 7400 mm.
Maximum cutting height
= 0 - 2.9 m.
Total installed power
450 - 3340 kW.
Working weight 40 - 540 t.

TABLE 2
Performance matrix of various excavation machines.
Parameters

Capable of mining material up to

100 MPa without drilling and
blasting.
Precise cutting (minimum
dilution) can be achieved.
Can be used to load directly into
trucks.
A belt wagon can be utilised to
transfer mined material onto a
relocatable face conveyor which
sits multiple benches away (both
horizontally and vertically).

Wirtgen, Bitelli, Huron (middle

drum).
Voest-Alpine (front cutting
boom).
Krupp and Takraf (front cutting
drum).

station that discharged onto an overland conveyor system, would

be suitable for any mine. The equipment configurations are
similar.

Mobile rig configuration

Mobility

For high capacity operation, either a mobile rig carrying a rolls

sizer or alternately a breaker feeder is appropriate. Configured
for shovel dumping, the rigs are similar in conception. Both need
to be considered in detail prior to determining the optimum
equipment configuration. Some of the issues appropriate in their
configuration are discussed in the sections that follow.

Reliability
Volume per pass
Capital cost
Operating cost
Compatibility
Flexibility

Bench design and face operation

Accuracy/operator skill independence

The selection of IPCC equipment will depend on:

1.

rolls sizer, and

2.

breaker feeder.

Mae Moh mine in Thailand uses a rolls sizer in a relocatable

dump station structure. This arrangement is depicted in Figure 16.
A similar system would be a suitable choice for any mine.
Alternately consideration of something similar to the installation
at Waihi Gold mine, which used a breaker/feeder in a fixed dump

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layout of pit,
blasting and mining sequence,
dump location and method,
excavation equipment,
number of active face and track shifting arrangement of
track-shiftable conveyors, and

degree of flexibility in mining operation required.

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TABLE 3
Available options for crushers/sizers.
Crusher type

Capacity (t/h)

Max feed size (mm)

Weight (tonnes)

Gyratory crusher

1000 - 10 000

1000 - 1600

180 - 750

Vendors: FL Smith, Metso Minerals,

Kawasaki, etc.
Jaw crusher

10 - 165
55 - 1200

Vendors: ThyssenKrupp, Nordberg,

Metso Minerals, etc.
Hammer crusher

Around 2000 t/h

Extremely large reduction ration can

be achieved.

Crusher type

Capacity (t/h)

Max feed size (mm)

Up to 2000

10 - 250

Rolls sizers

Up to 15 000

Vendors: ThyssenKrupp, MMD,

Abon, etc.

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TABLE 3 Cont ...

Available options for crushers/sizers.
Crusher type

Capacity (t/h)

Max feed size (mm)

Breaker feeder

Up to 6000

Up to 10 000

Vendors: Abon, McLanahan, etc.

Fixed sizing
station

Sizing rig is built into a permanent pit face. Throughput is

only limited by the largest sizer/feeder available.

Relocatable or semi-mobile sizing stations have no moving

Relocatable
(semimobile)
sizing
station

gear of their own. A varying amount of effort is required to

disassemble the unit for transportation as piggyback load(s).

Semi-mobile sizing stations are appropriate when a change

of location is infrequently required.

FIG 17 - Fully mobile sizer unit in operation at Goonyella mine.

Can significantly lower in-pit transport costs.

A fully mobile sizing rig is a self-contained unit with its

own moving gear.

Fully
mobile
sizing rig

Each crushing plant comes ready to operate with its own

feed hopper, feed conveyor, discharge conveyor and
material transfer belt (refer Figure ).

Throughput limited by the size of the onboard equipment,

which are selected based on practical weight/height for a
mobile structure.

For softer materials (UCS < 175 MPa), the existing rolls
crusher technology can yield a throughput of around
10,000tph.

For harder materials, where rolls crushers become

unsuitable, throughput is generally limited to 5,000tph.

FIG 15 - Fixed, relocatable and mobile sizing station

configurations.

FIG 18 - Mobile breaker/feeder unit (in this instance configured to it

can be fed by dozers, but could have a walled hopper fitted over
the feeder).

Where blasting is required, the bench arrangement needs to

provide physical separation between blast zone and location of
any face conveyors (a separation of more than 30 m is typically
required to provide some fly rock protection).
Generally speaking, mining a wide face while tramming the
shovel in a circular pattern around the crusher hopper, offers the
best overall productivity. For a large shovel, a 60 m pass width
offers the greatest productivity. In that arrangement, the maximum
swing angle that the shovel is required to use is 110, and the
median swing is 83. Configuration of the sizer rig needs to
consider this operating method, particularly the selection of the
boom length.

Sizer feed

FIG 16 - Relocatable sizing rig installed at Mae Moh mine in

Thailand.

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Typically, a heavy-duty apron feeder is used to feed the primary

crusher in a mobile sizing rig. This is the key difference between
a rig using a sizer and one using a breaker/feeder. The breaker
feeder uses a chain feeder that runs beneath a pick breaker.
Chain wear is a serious consideration with breaker/feeders and
while this style of rig may have a capital cost advantage, their

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TABLE 4
Dump machine types.
Machine type

Capacity

Vendors

Up 20 000 t/h

Numerous

Up to 15 000 t/h

Numerous

Tripper

TABLE 5
Dump machine types.
Spreader

Capacity

Vendors

Up 20 000 t/h

Various

operational performance can be compromised by higher

maintenance costs.

TRANSPORT OPTIONS
General
Options for material transport could be characterised by:

conventional truck/shovel operations;

truck/shovel operations delivering into relocatable hoppers,
from which the waste/coal/ore is conveyed away;

shovel to sizer operations which deliver to conveyors;

shovel to sizer operations which deliver to conveyors and
then feed into trucks to allow selective dumping at the dump
site; and

truck/shovel to hopper applications delivering to conveyors

then to truck loading stations for selective dumping.
The two latter options (selective dumping) are particularly
attractive options where run off acid or alkali leaching, salinity, or
waste dump stability issues are important, allowing as they do the
option of low cost haulage combined with placing material in
specific locations after it is delivered near to the site. Waihi mine
in New Zealand has been employing this technique for a number
of years for the construction of their tailings impoundment
structures.
Shovels loading trucks is a system with great operational
flexibility and little operational risk. On the other hand, its

22

FIG 19 - Feed hopper and apron feeder onboard Goonyellas

mobile in-pit crushing station.

operating cost profile is subject to labour cost variations, liquid

fuel prices and periodic equipment replacement. The low risk
profile of this option means it deserves to be the base case for the
prefeasibility study, but other less flexible options could
drastically reduced the cost of overburden removal.
In deciding what alternate transport option works best for any
mine, it is important to establish what is practical, and also what
is already in use elsewhere in the industry, for a number of

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reasons. Any existing system will have been a compromise in

one way or another and there will be a number of lessons to be
learnt from examining that system. Being the first to employ a
form of technology carries some degree of risk and a
contingency would need to be budgeted and drawn down to
improve the performance of the system if any of the compromises
in either cost, performance, materials or equipment proved to be
incorrectly founded.

Relocatable conveyor systems

A similar arrangement would be used to transfer to more than

one conveyor.

Tail end station

Because the conveyors will typically be relocatable, tail stations
that are not fixed to concrete foundations are required. The best
solution to the need to anchor the tail end in place is the use of
bored holes with steel pickets and restraining chains. This
arrangement is depicted in Figure 23.

Options worth considering in an IPCC system include conveyors

that run overland, comprising a number of discrete units, and
also a number of options for self-contained mobile conveyor
systems that allow greater flexibility in mine operations, transport
and dumping (admittedly with a corresponding increase in
capital and operating costs).
The trunk or overland conveyors comprise four major
components, these are:
1.

relocatable drive head assembly,

2.

intermediate modules that carry the belt,

3.

relocatable or pivoting tail end assemblies (with or without

drives attached), and

4.

mobile hoppers for loading the conveyor.

FIG 22 - Arrangement of a shuttle conveyor head end showing

shuttle in the fully extended position.

Head end stations

Shuttle conveyor head end

In the instance when more than one destination has to be
selected, or when trucks are being loaded from a conveyor, a
shuttle head arrangement may be considered. The configuration
depicted in Figure 20 and Figure 21 was employed at Waihi Gold
mine.

FIG 23 - Photograph of a typical relocatable tail station secured by

chains and ground anchors.

Dump conveyors typically operate on a pivot arrangement

(because it is easier to move the conveyor beneath the spreader if
it is only moving at one end). That usually involves a large piled
concrete structure beneath the tail end to anchor it into position.

Mobile conveyors
FIG 20 - Photograph of a relocatable drive head assembly.

FIG 21 - Arrangement of a shuttle conveyor head end showing

shuttle in the fully retracted position.

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Fully mobile bridge conveyors can be used along the moving

mine face, across a pit, between mined benches, or for dump
development.
This option greatly reduces the production time lost through
face relocations and face movements. The most appropriate
configurations for any mine are presented in Figures 24, 25, 26
and 27. Effectively these are mobile machines of the same type as
the sizing rig, upon which has been installed a single long belt
conveyor. At present the longest unit in service is approximately
1500 m. The machine comprises a number of gantries, each
supported by a crawler mechanism. The drives are coordinated
by a Global Positioning System (GPS) based system to ensure
the horizontal alignment of the conveyor. Joining each of the
gantries are pin joints that allow a degree of vertical
misalignment, so the system can operate along slightly
undulating benches. This is the style of conveyor installed behind
the mobile sizer at Suncors Voyager mine.

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FIG 24 - A pivoting tail station arrangement for radial trackshifting a

dump conveyor.

FIG 27 - Photograph of a cross-bench bridge conveyor.

slope. The preparation would only be necessary ahead of the

crawler mechanisms (situated at 40 m intervals) rather than along
the full length of the machine.

Belt wagon

FIG 25 - Photographs of bridge-style conveyors supported by

multiple crawlers. These conveyors can be used on mine face or at
the dump (operable at a maximum slope of 2).

A belt wagon can serve as a link between a mobile sizer and a

face conveyor. It allows operation of a mobile sizer at benches
either above or below the horizon where a relocatable, in-pit
conveyor is mounted. Alternatively, a belt wagon can be used to
extend the operating range of the excavation and crushing
operation (increasing working distance from a face conveyor). A
typical belt wagon is a fully mobile structure (crawler mounted)
supporting a receiving and a discharge conveyor which can slew
and luff independently.
With any mine likely to operate typically over many benches,
means of conveying from one bench to another are going to be
vitally important is costly and time-consuming dismantling and
reconstruction of face conveyors is to be avoided.
The use of a belt wagon should be considered in any fully
mobile operation because of the increased flexibility it offers.

Bridge conveyors
An option that should result in fewer trunk belt relocations is to
consider the use of a bridge conveyor. These units serve a similar
purpose to a beltwagon, although they are typically longer and
supported at both ends.

Piggy-back conveyor
Piggy-back conveyors are short-centred conveyors which can
greatly enhance the degree of flexibility of an IPCC. There may
be situations in the configuration of an IPCC system where the
use of such a conveyor (or several) might be appropriate.
Ulan mine operated a fleet of 20 of these conveyors behind a
mobile crushing plant for many years. The system is depicted in
Figure 29.
FIG 26 - Photographs of a belt wagon.

Hopper and cable reel car

Conveyors of this type would be an appropriate for face

operations with a fully mobile sizing rig, removing as they do the
need to shut the system down for extended periods while the
conveyor is relocated.
Correctly configured machines of this type are able to traverse
quite steep grades (of the order of 20 per cent) and could
therefore move from bench to bench by walking down a graded

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Hopper cars and cable reel cars are necessary for transferring the
material onto a conveyor and supplying power to the mobile
equipment (Figure 30).
In developing the face operation, any or all of these options
could be considered and decisions on the use or not of each
system will be dictated by the method of operation that gives the
greatest up time combined with the best capital cost.

Perth, WA, 27 - 29 July 2009

Iron Ore Conference

IN-PIT CRUSHING AND CONVEYING

FIG 28 - Schematic of a mobile crushing system feeding multiple piggy-back conveyors.

FIG 29 - IPCC operation at Ulan utilising up to 20 piggy-back

conveyors in series.

FIG 31 - Photograph of a feed hopper arrangement.

FIG 30 - Photograph of an existing mobile feed hopper

arrangement.

DUMPING OPERATIONS
A number of options exist for placing material on the dump. Two
functions are required, a means of getting the material off the
belt at any location along the length of the belt and a means of

Iron Ore Conference

placing the material where it needs to be placed. Trippers serve

the first function. After the tripper a travelling stacker or spreader
that can be used to place the material in the appropriate manner.
Two different styles of dump conveyor could be considered.
The most common is the trackshifting arrangement where dozers
are used to relocate the conveyor, by sliding the conveyor
sideways on skids. The other option is to mount the dump
conveyor on mobile gantries, which are self propelled.
The advantage of the self propelled gantries is the ability to
combine the tripper unit and the spreader discharge boom into
the same piece of equipment, so while the conveyor itself is
much more expensive than a trackshifting unit, the extra cost is
offset by the reduction in the cost of the spreader.
Dumps are typically very large and crawler mounted dump
conveyor of the length required to reach all the way across the
dump have not yet been built.
Under the circumstances the most appropriate dump
arrangement is to use a crawler mounted spreader, fed by a
crawler mounted tripper which is integral with a track shifting
conveyor. Mounting both the tripper and the spreader on crawlers
allows for lower ground bearing pressures and easier conveyor
moves. Alternately the use of crawler mounted conveyors with
integral tripper could be considered, although the geotechnical
issues related to their close proximity to the edge of the dump
would have to be considered in detail before a decision to go
forward with one of these machines.

Perth, WA, 27 - 29 July 2009

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