Abstract:
Haulage of materials in Open-pit mines contributes to approximately 40%-60% of the
total operational costs. Current stricter environmental conditions, an increase in depths
and size of open-pit mines, an increase in labour costs, and fuel costs have made the
conventional truck and shovel system extremely expensive. This predicament has
motivated search for alternative material haulage options in open-pit mines. In-Pit
Crushing and Conveying (IPCC) system has been regarded as the best plausible
alternative for the conventional transportation approach. However, the usage of IPCC has
been limited to only a few mines due to limited knowledge on the IPCC performance as a
system and other technical factors of the system.
This thesis investigated and evaluated the productivity performance of the four types of
IPCC systems. The study utilizes mine productivity index (MPi) as the measure of overall
productivity of each IPCC type. The thesis develops a model aided by MATLAB that
computes the system MPi holistically from input variables of availability, utilization, and
performance. This model was applied to a quarry case study from Mombasa Cement
Limited.
It was found that the FIPCC had the highest truck fleet of 55. The large truck fleet had
impact on increasing the overall system availability but decreasing the system
performance and utilization. In overall, the MPi for the FIPCC, SFIPCC, SMIPCC, and
FMIPCC was obtained as 67.13%, 69.02%, 70.52%, and 71.52%, respectively.
Apparently, the FMIPCC is the best placed IPCC for the utilized case study.
The in-depth investigation of the state of art of the IPCC systems and the evaluation of
the IPCC systems based on the number of trucks, shovels, system availability, utilization,
performance, and MPi provide vast knowledge on IPCC. This increases the likelihood of
it being considered as better alternative haulage option in open pit mines.
