Volume 9 Edition 2 2012 - The ASIA Miner

Supplier News
International alliance conquers desert challenges
MONGOLIA’S Gobi Desert unleashes extreme challenges under adverse
conditions, contests that are providing Australia’s GW Engineers
(GWE) with opportunities to exhibit their extensive bulk
materials handing expertise under the most demanding circumstances.
At the remote Ovoot Tolgoi coal mine, GWE’s design abilities
are assisting SouthGobi Resources defeat all the environmental
contests Mongolia can impose.
Ovoot Tolgoi’s coking coal is excavated with shovels then transferred
via front-end loaders and excavators to 100 tonne capacity
road trucks. The constant truck convoy negotiates a 50km journey
over a dirt highway to the Chinese border crossing at Ceke, where
coal is loaded into rail wagons for the journey to China’s steel manufacturing
regions.
The mine annually delivers 1 million tonnes of unprocessed and
un-sized coal, and is ramping up production to beyond 6 million
tonnes. Consequently, the first stage of GWE’s challenge is focused
on the design of a facility that can handle high capacity production
rates and improve coal quality. This facility will include a dump hopper
to accommodate 200 tonne haul trucks, installation of a rotary
breaker, transfers, conveyors and a truck loading bin that can operate
regardless of the Gobi’s extremes.
Increased operational economies, productivity gains, improved
output quality and risk minimization are the same key objectives
that drive GWE’s specialist mining and heavy industrial design
teams, and GWE is concentrating on how bringing the best of Australian
engineering practices into this remote region will help realize
Ovoot Tolgoi’s challenging objectives.
GWE’s design engineers explored how each objective could be met
and the project’s risks minimized under environmental extremes. Isolated
and remote mines are no strangers to GWE, however the limited
local infrastructure and finite construction windows mandated
that the project’s design incorporate as much off-site prefabrication as
possible. For similar reasons, maximizing production efficiency makes
the standardization of critical components and spare parts another
strategic consideration in the GWE design. Wherever practical all pulley,
gearbox, and motor sizes are uniform, streamlining plant maintenance
as well as simplifying spares inventories.
GW Engineers Mechanical and Electrical Division director Graham
Wall says, “The need for SouthGobi Resources to efficiently
extract and move ever increasing quantities of coal under adverse
conditions presents safety and environmental risks that demand
practical and sustainable engineering solutions. The design challenges
also involve ongoing assessment and control of Health,
Safety, Environment and Community (HSEC) management standards
and minimization, avoidance or elimination of identified HSEC
risks in compliance with SouthGobi Resources’ site and operational
performance requirements.”
The desert climate imposes temperature extremes, conditions
that necessitate all equipment and buildings be designed to remain
productive and operational across a 70 degree Celsius variant (from
66 | ASIA Miner | March/April 2012