A visit to the remote town of Newman and surrounds might be the antidote to anyone who argues Western Australia’s export economy is simplistic.
Mines across the Pilbara region produced almost all of the $60 billion of iron ore exports from WA in the 2018 financial year.
That means an area with 62,000 people sells merchandise exports almost double that of the electronics hub of Santa Clara County in the United States, part of Silicon Valley.
CUTTING EDGE
- BHP – laser scanning to optimise train loading, sensors to listen to conveyor belts, autonomous trucks and drills, pedestrian avoidance alarms for forklifts
- Fortescue – trial of autonomous light vehicles, CSIRO hydrogen research partnership, autonomous trucks and drills, Future Mobility Centre
- Shell – predictive analytics on gas compressor failure, floating marine loading arm, digital plant twin.
- Woodside Petroleum – AI in business processes, quantum computing, digital twin plant
- Rio Tinto – Autohaul trains, trucks and drills; autonomous sampling, autonomous rail wagon maintenance, building intelligent mine
Not too far from Newman are BHP’s Eastern Ridge and Jimblebar mines, possibly two of the most advanced operations in the world.
Eastern Ridge is where BHP tests innovations before scaling them up across the Pilbara and the world.
One trial under way is using sensors to monitor sounds along a conveyor belt, which can help detect when maintenance is necessary.
Ordinarily, technicians would walk the length of the belts regularly to listen to any unusual sounds themselves.
Speaking at a recent media tour of the sites, BHP chief technology officer Diane Jurgens said workers would interact with the sensors through a mobile phone app similar to Shazam.
“The system is an advanced fibre optic sensor that can be easily attached to our equipment, enabling us to detect the failure modes associated with rotating equipment,” Ms Jurgens said.
“We are able to predict when faults may occur, which allows us to plan our maintenance.
“We also know what the fault may be and where it is located.”
BHP’s adoption of lasers to optimise iron ore loading on to trains was particularly fruitful.
Using data on iron ore density, the company determined the perfect volume of iron ore to fill rail cars to 137.5 tonnes, the maximum weight the ball bearings can handle.
That enabled an extra 2.4 million tonnes of iron ore movements through the supply chain, which would be worth about $300 million at today’s prices.
Automated rail scheduling used self-learning algorithms to move about 10,000 additional rail cars annually.
At Jimblebar, there are 57 trucks which operate autonomously, managed by four controllers in an air-conditioned office.
There are a further 16 autonomous drill rigs, with maintenance costs falling 40 per cent since the move to driverless drilling and drill rates up 25 per cent.
Despite the rise in automation, there are 900 people employed at the mine, which the company said was more than before they switched to driverless mode.
The benefits extend beyond productivity, with serious haul truck incidents down 80 per cent.
BHP is not the only miner near Newman with a high-tech operation.
Fortescue Metals Group chief executive Elizabeth Gaines told the audience at the Resources Technology Showcase the business operated 147 autonomous trucks and eight autonomous drills.
Soon, the company will be trialling autonomous light vehicles.
In both cases, the autonomous trucks are provided by US company Caterpillar.
Oil and gas companies have also adopted highly advanced technology in WA.
At Shell, big data has supported predictive maintenance of gas compressors at the Prelude FLNG plant, equipment which would otherwise be the biggest cause of unscheduled downtime.
Woodside has partnered with IBM using artificial intelligence for information management, and recently joined the American giant’s quantum computing network, with potential applications in building digital twins of plants.
Jobs
Perhaps what is most notable about the move to automation is that both BHP and Fortescue say it has not come at the expense of jobs.
What it does mean, according to Citic Pacific chief executive Chen Zeng, is that WA will be better able to extract value from lower-grade orebodies that might otherwise be too costly or require too much processing.
Ms Gaines said 3,000 staff had been trained in areas related to autonomy.
She said there had been no redundancies from autonomous haulage, only people upskilled and moved.
Ms Jurgens said there were new jobs created from automation, such as technicians at the workshops fixing the bigger, more technologically challenging truck fleet.
“It’s a challenge but we’re way out ahead of it, because we communicate with our team members in operations about what we’re doing and where we’re going,” she said.
“We have a chance to redeploy people.
“More importantly, we’re explaining the skills of the future.
New jobs create a demand for new skills.
BHP has worked with South Metropolitan TAFE to create new qualifications in autonomous technology.
At the school level, the latest example is a programming challenge announced by the state government to be rolled out in the Pilbara.
And universities were rethinking their role in society, Curtin University deputy vice chancellor Chris Moran told the Resources Technology Showcase.
“What we can see is a very complicated ecosystem of what people are going to need to know ... need to trust, to understand,” Professor Moran said.
“What we teach (in future) is an incredible challenge, we don’t want to turn everybody who’s going into university into a data scientist.
“That’s not going to be very good for society and probably not very good for the individual in the long run.”
He said people would need to be able to come out of university able to relearn.
“I can see quite a lot of stress in society about that,” Professor Moran said.
“Universities are going through a quiet internal revolution.
“We’re coming out of the (campus), we’re trying to make uni a place where people come from, and go to, on a recurring basis.”
The journalist joined a media tour of Newman operations as a guest of BHP.
