Displaying items by tag: Mining

Nokia has announced it has partnered with Vivo to provide private wireless services for Vale’s Carajás mine in Brazil.

The service will be part of an Industry 4.0 project by Vale to deploy autonomous drill platforms and trucks. The project will increase productivity at the mine and improve worker safety. The network will be also used for mine-wide communications between workers. Vale plans to expand the technology to other mines currently using older WiMax solutions.

Nokia is currently working with several mining operators worldwide to deploy private wireless networks based on LTE, with plans to migrate to 5G in the future.

Autonomous ore trucks have been shown to increase productivity by 15% and reduce fuel and maintenance costs by 10%. Nokia’s LTE and 5G, being mobile technologies, provide more reliable support than WiMax or Wi-Fi for operating and controlling trucks and drills on the move.

Nokia’s private industrial-grade wireless solutions are enabling many new applications in the mining field, including support for environmental monitoring, video-assisted remote operations and improved worker monitoring and safety. Nokia is partnering with key solution providers in the mining industry, including Komatsu and Sandvik.

Vale is also currently operating 13 autonomous trucks on a WiMax network at its Brucutu mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, with the intention to also replace it with a private LTE network for improved performance and reliability. Other applications being considered include an IoT application connecting dam monitoring instruments using LTE.

The advantage of LTE is its ability to adjust performance characteristics to each individual application and to provide a single mine-wide wireless platform that can support any kind of critical communication requirement.

Gustavo Vieira, CIO of Vale, said, “This new generation of wireless technology — LTE and, eventually, 5G — is enabling us to explore many new applications and use cases for remote and autonomous operations. This will help to make our mining operations more efficient, sustainable and safe for our workers.”

Alex Salgado, Vivo’s B2B Vice-President, said, “The private wireless service we are implementing at Vale’s Carajás mine is one of many deployments that we expect to see in the next few years. Forward-thinking customers such as Vale are embracing Industry 4.0 technologies, fostering digital solutions at the heart of their businesses, whether in agriculture, transportation or mining. We are excited to be leading this transformation.”

Luiz Tonisi, Head of Market Unit Brazil at Nokia, said, “Nokia is making a lot of impact in the mining sector right now, and this project with Vale is a very important beginning here in Brazil. Our industrial-grade private LTE wireless solution is ideal for supporting the industry’s embrace of autonomous technologies. It solves a lot of issues that past wireless technologies have struggled with and opens the way for many new and exciting use cases for mines of the future.”

Epiroc, a leading productivity partner for the mining, infrastructure and natural resources industries, has signed a cooperation agreement with Ericsson to jointly help mining companies achieve optimal wireless connectivity in their operations through LTE and 5G technologies.

Mining companies are increasingly seeking to digitalize and automate their operations to increase productivity, enhance operator safety and lower cost. This includes, for example, remotely operating machines from a control room, and collecting machine performance data to optimize use of the equipment. This creates a need for reliable, high-performance wireless connectivity at the mines. Epiroc and Ericsson have agreed to work together to provide mining customers with high-performing LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and 5G mobile technology solutions.

Helena Hedblom, Epiroc’s Senior Executive Vice President Mining and Infrastructure, says: “We are happy to team up with Ericsson so that our mining customers can get the most reliable and high-performing wireless connectivity possible. This is a crucial step in our ongoing work to ensure mining customers reap all the benefits, including higher productivity and better safety, made possible by digitalization and automation.”

Åsa Tamsons, Ericsson’s Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Technologies & New Businesses, says: “Cellular technology and the introduction of 5G is critical to realize the full value of digitalization and automatization for smart industries. This will open up for new business models and ecosystems across the mining industry, telecom services providers in each market, and Ericsson. By combining our expertise in connectivity and Epiroc’s cutting-edge technology in mining equipment, we will be able to ensure stable and secure mining operations, leading to increased utilization, improved productivity and reduced costs.”

Key advantages of LTE and 5G solutions compared with other wireless solutions include better coverage, higher reliability and stronger security, especially when machines are in the same area and share information.  The technology, which is for both underground and open pit mines, has already been tested on Epiroc’s machines at the company’s test mine in Kvarntorp, Sweden. Further testing will be done before providing the solutions to customers.