60 60 Page 60 For years mini ng has been dominated by diesel fuelled equipmen t which has been a sturdy workhorse in min ing but today as mining companies are pursuing ores at greater depths companies are looking to electric vehicles to help reduce costs and im prove health and safety V entilation costs especially in an un der ground environment represent one of the lar gest expenditures for mining operations In addition compa nies are pursuing health and safety goals like the elimination of diesel particulate matter as much as they are searching for gold or base metals Mining companies are starting to move away from diesel Goldcorp for example decided to eliminat e diesel from its new under ground mine at Borden Lake by making it fully elec tric The under ground mine is sched uled to begin production in the second half of 2019 MacLean Engineering based in Collingwood Ontario is taking up the challenge and producing battery electric vehicles to meet the new de mand Goldcorp selected MacLean Engineering to be one of two engi neering frms to provide the equip ment for their Borden Lake Gold Mine and make it Canada s frst to tally electrical mine Goldcorp anticipates a 70 reduction in greenhouse gases and annual sav ings of 2 million litres of diesel fuel and 1 million litres of propane The company also expects to save 35000 megawatt hours of electricity yearly due in lar ge part to drastically reduced ventilation needs Battery electric equipment allows the mine to improve health and safety reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease operating cost V entilation in an under ground mine consumes a lar ge amount of power and any reduction in its use means major savings for the operato r Some companies like Goldcorp have tried to reroute ventilation to area s where work was taking place There is a limit however to how much the venti lation can be rerouted so Goldcorp s new approach is to reduce the demand by going electric The industry downturn presented over the past several years presented Ma cLean s an opportunity to develop three key products In 2015 MacLean Engineering turned their product development attention towards designing a battery powered feet that would respond to the min ing industry s growing need for cost containment through ener gy and mine design efciencies along with im proving under ground air quality for miners MacLean Engineering builds best inclass battery electric motor on board char ging and vehicle analytics technology and then integrates these components into mobile under ground equipment MacLean s vehicles are built with the understanding of the mining cycle in which it will be used MacLean was frst hired by Goldcorp in 2016 to build a bulk sample ramp at Borden Lake Since then MacLean has sold Goldcorp fve battery electric units two bolte rs an emulsio n loader cassette a boom truck cassette and a scissor lift with nine more MacLean EV units to be shipped in 2018 in cluding a blockholer the frst of our Ore Flow suite to be electrifed Other mining companies such as Glencore s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations is also actively pursu ing Battery Ele ctric V ehicle s in their two operations Onaping Depth and Nickel Rim Deep are case in point in this transition to dieselfree mines to leverage ventilation savings and re duced infrastructure costs along with the benefts of exhaustfree and lower maintenance feets Though MacLean s doesn t build heavy hauling equipment or scoops they build alm ost all other battery electric vehicles and equipment MacLean Engineering drives mining electrifcation with its electric vehicles By Frank Giorno Page 61 Page 61 North America Mining Expo www northamericaminingexpocom