Adoption of Electric vehicles in underground mines ? A green approach towards sustainable mining

Underground mining has become relatively simple in the recent years owing to the technology sophistication in the equipment thereby performing complex operations with minimal human intervention. Currently, most of the mining operations underground employ equipment and machinery that run on diesel and emit noxious fumes that affect a miner's health and overall environmental conditions to a significant extent. This in turn necessitates a complex ventilation system to absolve the existing diesel particulate matter and accounts as significant energy cost for the mining company adding to their cash costs.

Additionally, diesel equipment is prone to failures and requires constant monitoring and servicing thereby further escalating to a miner's operating cost. Under such conditions, it becomes important for a mining company to adapt techniques that support the environment at the same time brings about process optimization whilst reducing the overall cash costs. Adoption of electrically driven mining equipment in mines is gradually increasing in the recent past as they are not associated with toxic gases and subsequently reduces the need for a complicated ventilation system thereby resulting in considerable cost savings for mining companies. This white paper discusses about the possibilities of replacement of diesel equipment by electrically driven equipment and analyzes the subsequent business process optimization achieved in mining.