Invention: Dust buster

This story from New Scientist

14:24 26 October 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Justin Mullins

Dust can be a significant cause of throat and lung irritation for tunnel and mine workers and can even cause long-term serious health problems. But monitoring dust levels in a darkened tunnel has never been straightforward, until now.
Masato Shinji at Yamaguchi University in Japan says a camera can do the job simply by taking a flash photograph.
Dust specks appear as white dots in the image and software can count them to give a good idea of the amount of dust within the range of the flash gun, and hence its density in the air.
The result should be a better way to make sure that tunnels and mines are safe for workers, Shinji says.
Read the full dust counter patent application.

The spirit of Innovation

An AT&T article from Bitpipe surveyed IT and Business execs who cite varying interpretations of innovation.
No matter how it's defined, innovation occurs over a broad spectrum, says Thomas Koulopoulos,founder of the Delphi Group, a strategic thought leadership and advisory firm, and executive director for the Center for Business Innovation at Babson College.
He states that there are radical innovations representing entirely new concepts that change business in a monumental way; for example, the invention of the telephone.
Read the original article here.

Virtual Reality training.

I highly recommend Jack Uldrich's 'Jump the Curve' Blog. I wait for every new entry. This one "The Future of Education is Converging All Around Us" is about the convergence of VR, Artificial Intelligence and personalised delivery of content. I think that his take on how those things might work together is spot on.

Most of the people I talk to are Miners - they will love this stuff. Already the Petroleum Industry uses immersive environments for groups of people to come together and, in a virtual space, collaborate on estimating resources, interpreting complex 3 dimensional geotechnical data. For whatever reason, the Mining industry, who have pretty similar problems with this, have been slow to take up the approach. But this video shows just how far this technology has matured.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn1g7Wu5EgE

Cheers

The Swarm Enterprise

I don't make a point of hawking my employers wares on this blog, I'm really not trying to sell anything here, but I read something pretty interesting on CSC's Leading Edge Forum blog. The entry is talking about the new report "Digital Disruptions". The specific post "The train has left the station" talks about how tech savvy employees are driving new technologies into enterprises.
It got me thinking about the level of power and influence employees now have in their companies and how that has changed over time. The enterprise as we know it probably emerged during the early industrial revolution. I suppose they needed the structure to co-ordinate the efforts of so many people and machines. They turned to the only model they had at the time - the military and so the early enterprises - even up to as late as the 1980's were mostly fairly heirachical.

The next step really sees companies focussing down on somehting they might call their core business, and having suppliers and contractors do the other stuff. These arrangements became optimised by collaboration across the supply chain (sometimes agreed between peers or forced by individual very powerful members in the chain). This is a trend (albeit a simple one) where management structures give up power to suppliers, customers, vendors etc.

Can we make a prediction? I spoke in a previous post about the possiblity of using swarms of automated robots to transform the mining industry - are we moving towards an enterprise model which is just huge collaborations between independant actors? Its a model that could work really well in a knowledge based business, it could be really efficient, and it could be enormously agile.

I love to hear some thoughts.

Robot Dragonfly

Robotics, artitificial intelliegence, automation, and remote management are all technologies in which the rates of innovation now are enormous. New Scientist reports on a robotic dragonfly that could guide Mars rovers - giving the fly's eye view in a task analagous to helicopters being used as force projection assets of naval warships.

In the near future, further miniturisation of the electronics, and better smarts will mean that this kind of technology can be used to continually update the topography of an open cut mine, with swarms of such robots preceeding ultra large automated vehicles, helping automated shovels load automated trucks. Perhaps they will even be able to replace the truck fleet, with millions of tiny robot flies moving enormous tonnages of ore without the need for roads, ramps etc. Just the saving in the profile of the open cut pit would change the economics of mining.

Underground mines could benefit too, with robot miners like the fly moving in to survey the mine after blasting - testing the air, rockface stability, everything. There is also my previous post of the robot crawlers which could also operate underground in ver confined spaces.
There is a lot to consider, and the extraterrestrial problems being solved by robots can also be applied here, today.

How IT can cut Carbon Emissions

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:15:00 PDT

The McKinsey Quarterly article of talks about - How IT can cut carbon emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with making and powering the world’s computers and telecom networks are growing fast. Despite efforts by technology manufacturers and users to make these tools more energy efficient, rapid growth in demand for computing and communications—particularly in developing nations—is creating a big carbon footprint.
The good news is that information and communications technologies can reduce far more emissions than they generate.

I agree with all of the comments that they make. IT, even though it generates some greenhouse and other gases, displaces many many activities that are far more GhG producing. A perfectly legitimate approach to a companies GhG footprint issues maybe to increase the footprint of the IT Department and overall reduce the footprint of the company. Of course, doing both at the same time is a valid option as well.

We need to be very careful about goaling IT departments to lower their GhG footprint.

Greening the Mining Industry - Part 2

Green Design

Introduction

There is no doubt that dealing with issues of sustainability is difficult. While there is a level of awareness among organisations of the coming need to achieve ‘sustainability’ goals, they are not yet sure of what governments may require of them, so it is difficult to plan responses. There is reasonable clarity on what the issues are: enhanced greenhouse effect, continental and global fresh water availability, toxicity, and eventually issues of ongoing availability of some resources. Planning for success in a market regime where external forces are poorly understood is a great challenge. Even so, a cursory analysis of the likely scenarios indicates that everybody will need to be reducing their greenhouse gas contributions, reducing their impact on the water cycle and reducing the inputs of toxic materials to the environment.

So what can organisations be doing and thinking about now to help them position themselves to be competitive in a world where their ability to comply with government regulations and to do business sustainably, may determine their ongoing existence?

Firstly, companies need to understand and accept that the world is changing, and that societal pressures will require them to respond. If we accept that there is a need to do business differently, the response needs to consider remediating for current operations, and adopting new practices for new operations.

For the mining industry, where particular operations may persist for more than 50 years, there are many current operations with long futures still ahead of them, and no doubt many planned operations will be operating well into the 21st century. Interestingly, many of the projected consequences of global climate change are expected to occur within that same timeframe.

Introducing the new systems and procedures to new operations will be challenging, but nowhere near as hard as retrofitting brownfield operations. The best time to position for success in greenfield operations is during the design phase. This article introduces some of the issues around incorporating sustainability requirements in the design phase. Remediating brownfield operations will be the subject of later articles – so keep an eye on future issues of Symbiosis.

Are we prepared?

In a survey conducted by PWC in 2008 (Table 1) less than 10% of resources industry CEO’s had a high level of confidence in their greenhouse emissions data. More that 50% had taken little or no action to address the issues.
Reporting of greenhouse emission will be required by the Australian Government for almost all mining companies commencing in the financial year 2008-2009. Clearly the level of reparedness for the upcoming requirements in Australia is low, and yet the time of implementation is very near!

What can you do?

Mining Companies need to approach the process of smart design in the following stages;

• Understand the issues
• Work out the information you need
• Simulate and design iteratively until the optimal design is achieved.

Understand the issues

I dealt with the high level issues of sustainability in the mining industry in issue n. Broadly speaking, the considerable interest and debate around the globe on climate change means proactive action is very important and mining companies will need to respond quickly and credibly if they are to retain their ‘licence to operate’. It’s nothing new, the mining industry has been responding to changing community attitudes for the last 3000 years.
Work out the information you need.

In order to respond to anthropogenic climate drivers, and government and community requirements to report on those responses, as well as potentially develop new markets, products and businesses, organisations need to identify what information they need to be collecting. A number of organisations have commenced this work. Firstly the Global Reporting Initiative , is one organisation (see Callout 1) that has widespread support and hasas well as a framework which is currently being used for many nations’ emissions reporting requirements. The ‘Mining and Metals’ sector supplement includes specific details of the information and procedures that should be considered. The Australian Government’s National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGER) provides specific requirements for Australia, and other jurisdictions should publish their requirements in due course.

Iterative simulation and design

The ability to optimise a process for any particular outcome is best achieved in the design of that process, before large expenditures on capital works and equipment make later changes very expensive. Adisa Azapagic of the University of Surrey has studied many aspects of this issue including sustainable development indicators and process design. In these works, Azapagic develops a methodology for considering sustainability issues in the design of chemical processes and further develops the ideas by translating that to the mining industry .

In order to do this, you require an intimate knowledge of the mining process and an holistic view that takes account of the affects of process inputs, as well as the downstream effects of process outputs. That is, it optimises the process not just within the process, but external to the process.

Most industries have a good understanding of how to design a process to optimise financial outcomes, indeed financial outcomes are usually they way that we decide on the viability of an investment. Unfortunately, environmental outcomes are usually considered late in the planning cycle, and certainly after the major design decisions have been made.

Other recent contributions to the literature detail how to measure sustainability outcomes in infrastructure projects and Mangena and Brent describe the application of a Life Cycle Impact Assessment framework in the coal industry . Finally, the development of a mining Life Cycle Assessment Model (LICYMIN) at the Imperial College London provides a solid basis for using the other tools to model a mining operation throughout its whole life (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - The mining life cycle impact assessment system and model boundaries. [after Durucan et al 2006]

Discussion

These and many other works have defined the macro and micro level processes and the inputs and outputs of all stages of a mining operation. They explain how these data can be used to optimise sustainable design through a process of simulation in a systems thinking environment. Importantly, this allows these new decision making criteria to be included along with the economic criteria (which are also in the models). Modelling different scenarios in a simulation environment allows all aspects to be considered to provide the best possible outcome; for the company and for the environment. Most importantly, the case is made for the benefits of including sustainability at the design stage rather than trying to squeeze it in later.

With an understanding of how to include sustainability issues into the concept stage design process for a new operation, at both the macro process level (mining, processing, remediation etc) as well as the micro level (coal washing process, copper leaching process etc) and a solid grasp of the data that will need to be captured, mining companies can begin to plan for future reporting requirements.

Greening the Mining Industry – Part 1

Comment by Dennis Franklin

Introduction

For the last 100 years, the mining industry has been responding to changing community attitudes about the environment and sustainability. The considerable interest and debate around the globe on climate change means proactive action is very important, In this article I hope to highlight some of those impacts, and in later follow up articles, I will discuss impacts and responses in more detail. I won’t reproduce all of the work that is being published, but I will point to some of the emerging trends and insights into the role and contribution of Information Technology (IT). In particular, I’ll be highlighting some of the areas where IT can help to support the industry’s response and management of “sustainability”.

Today, not a single project can proceed without an understanding of its impacts on the environment. Now the growing community interest on a global scale means that the mining industry, indeed all industries, need to understand their specific and general impacts on the global environment. The industry’s contribution is through emissions resulting from the mining process, and through the production of raw materials that contribute to the main causes of global emissions. Legislation to minimise those impacts is already being enacted or drafted in many jurisdictions. Even though the mining industry is an important contributor to the economy and our lifestyles, it is, by its very nature, an industry whose emissions will be subject to increased scrutiny.

Where are the impacts across the life cycle of a mine?

Most of the recent press on environmental impacts is about the generation of greenhouse enhancing gases. The main contributors here are Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane, and Nitrous Oxide . These contributions are different at different stages of the life cycle of a mine.

The use of fuels, power, and water and the possible introduction of contaminants have impacts that exist across the whole life-cycle. The obvious response to all of this is to use those resources more efficiently and so use less of them. Optimising mine operations through smart design during the concept and pre-feasibility phases of a project can produce significant offsets.

Ensuring that new technologies in mining equipment which lead to reduced fuel usage, more effective tyre wear, and automation and optimisation of their use through fleet management can deliver significant whole-of-life cost savings and can reduce carbon emissions per ton of product. Just as the public are moving towards energy efficiency in their homes through the use of energy saving lighting and appliances, so the mining industry can reduce its energy usage through smart selection of equipment and consumables.

The Build Phase

Perhaps the best time to affect the life-cycle impacts of anything is during the design stage. Minimising the embodied impacts of building a new mine can best be addressed during design. For example, the production of concrete has relatively low embodied energy (energy used to produce the material) but it tends to be used in large quantities . On the other hand, concrete production produces up to 3000 kg/tonne of CO2 and so the carbon contribution is significant.

In domestic applications, however, both of these issues can be traded off against the benefits that concrete slabs can provide. Good design turns concrete slabs into heat sinks that reduce the need for power usage for heating and cooling. So while the interactions are complex, there is a case for good design turning an initial high contribution to environmental impacts into a long term beneficial outcome.

Another example is the use of an in-pit crusher and conveyor to offset the needs for a large diesel truck fleet in an open pit operation. Emissions from the extra trucks is much greater that the carbon footprint of the conveyor system.

The same is true for many other aspects of mine design, mine planning and mining process design where a detailed understanding of the environmental impacts could contribute to a better long term outcome.

The Operate Phase

Good design can go a long way to minimising impacts from operational processes but there are ways to improve existing operations without major capital upgrades. These include better power management, optimising algorithms for mobile equipment, and almost any application of Lean Manufacturing techniques for reducing wasteful effort in the production processes.

The more significant issue during the operational phase of a mining operation is the end-user impact of the raw materials being produced. The obvious example is coal, the burning of which contributes a significant amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. While the argument about whether anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of climate change is controversial, the industry needs to take a position on this issue simply because the political landscape requires it. Besides, any rational approach to risk management would dictate the need to act on the risk anyway, regardless of the likelihood of the risk, simply because the size of the projected global impacts is huge.

The responses to the liberation of CO2 to the environment by burning coal and other carbon fuels tend to be technological. Now, many are researching processes that capture liberated CO2 and turn it into a form that can be stored for long periods, for instance Geo-sequestration. Sequestration seeks to inject CO2 back into the geological strata to remove it from the short-term carbon cycle. Research into these technologies is in its infancy, but most large mining companies and most governments are contributing funds to the research. Another approach is to offset emissions by parallel activities that remove CO2 from the atmosphere, such as reforestation. In time, the establishment of carbon trading markets will allow nett emitters to offset against the activities of others.

The Retirement Phase

The retirement phase of a mining operation includes all of the activities discussed with the life-cycle but offers some interesting opportunities for offsetting emissions as the environmental repatriation activities are progressed. Where appropriate reforestation of mine sites is progressed, carbon offsets should be claimable. Here are also gains to be made through the optimal dismantling of the infrastructure and the reuse of equipment. One option is the mothballing of operations until a time when the technology advances have addressed the problem, similar to the practice of mothballing operations during times of low prices. The threat of this possibility is enough to give the mining industry a strong motivation to be an active participant of the technology development.

Conclusions

The issues at question for the mining industry are not trivial, and the interrelationships between the natural processes are complex. Most of the research on the impacts is detailed and well understood but the necessary responses that need to be taken are not yet well researched. Even so, there are many activities that can be commenced, not just because they make environmental sense, but because they can make business sense as well. Already, in other industries, innovations that reduce energy use are being instituted because they save money. Smart design can help to deliver both energy savings and operational benefits; they are worth doing for their own sake.

A High Level Technology Roadmap for building sustainable businesses. (Part 1)

D. C. Franklin

Introduction

The global and local influences on climate and environmental change are well understood and not at issue. Also not at issue is the human contribution to those influences, and for the most part those human influences are managed by businesses. Therefore, in the coming few years, the business community will need to redefine the way it operates. Even though it is true that businesses are responding to demand for goods and services that is being driven by the population at large, that population now expects that business and government be responsible for ensuring those goods and services are delivered sustainably. In so much as individuals do not link sustainable behaviour with product price, then the challenge is made even more difficult.

In this paper, I will discuss some of the global trends that are driving the sustainability challenges we face, identify some of the visible evidence that we see and to which we can respond, and discuss some of the technologies that will most likely help us to make our activities sustainable. Finally, I will discuss the most likely near term actions that businesses should consider as first and second order responses moving from a non-sustainable, to sustainable operating model.

What is 'sustainability'?

'Sustainability' is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. Generally speaking this means that a process is not sustainable if it exhausts its own inputs faster than they are being replenished. When applied to the environmental context I offer the definition forwarded by the Brundtland Commission (1987) with its use of the term "sustainable development" to mean "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"

Why do we care?

To cover the scientific evidence for global warming, or the evidence that enhanced climate change is overwhelmingly caused by human use of fossil fuels in any meaningful way is beyond the scope of this report. As the evidence is overwhelming I direct the reader instead to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has numerous references on the subject.

Most of the concerns raised by those who oppose the idea of an anthropogenic cause for enhanced greenhouse effect are more likely to cite the unacceptable outcomes of taking action; cost to the economy, cost to the community, jobs etc. However, to answer the question of "why do we care?" is not to demonstrate how we got to where we are, but how we intend to behave in our future response. The cost equation of changing our paradigm to respond to issues of sustainability can only be assessed in the light of a comparison with the cost of not acting, which may be much greater.

For this paper, I make the assumptions that;

1. The global temperature is directly and causally related to the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere,
   
2. Our (human) actions can affect the future concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere.
   

A note of the scope of Sustainability.

Sustainability is about a lot more than CO₂ in the atmosphere. Our ability to develop a truly sustainable culture includes considering things like other pollutants, the cost of energy, how we share the burdens and the benefits with the developing world, and how we live peacefully with our neighbours. Even with all of these variables, government and community interest tends to form around responses to Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions. At the beginning of this discussion, I will take a very broad brush view of sustainability impactors to demonstrate the complexity of the relationships. In the section discussing the technology roadmap the discussion will concentrate on responses to GhG impactors only. Even so, many of the responses to GhG impactors have a broader application to sustainability impactors more generally.

Global Trends

Much of this section is strongly informed by the work of Kates and Parris (2003).

Demographics.

Understanding the number of people on the planet, and how they are moving about helps in understanding the size of this impactor and to plan for a response to it. As current trends in transitions from high birth-rates to low birth-rates continues, as well as the continuing move from rural to urban locations an estimate can be made of the probable population that will be reached. This is important because all GhG impactors are driven by human demand either proximally or distally. The 2003 United Nations 'medium' estimate of global population for 2050 was 8.9 billion from today's approximately 6.5 billion, reflecting a growth rate of about 1.2% per year. Further the UN estimates that most of the projected growth will occur in developing regions like Africa.

More people now live and work in the urban centres of the world than in rural areas, with the urban proportion of the population projected to grow to 60% (2030) with Latin America, North America, Europe, and Oceania already >70% urbanized. To accommodate this shift, more than 13 cities with populations over 5 million people will need to be built each year between now and 2030.

Standard of Living

As levels of education increase, the people of developing nations begin to aspire to the same standards of living that those of us in the developed nations are already used to. Assuming that such aspirations are reasonable, and understanding that increased standards of living means increased demands on the planets resources means that not only can we expect the global population to rise, but the per capita increase in demand adds to the stress on the environment.

The current global trends for the distribution of living standards has seen a better than 8 fold increase in per capita gross domestic product since 1820. This growth has been seen in all regions but it has not been evenly experienced. There are significant regional disparities. Over the last 50 years, all indicators of overall well-being of people show substantial improvement. Life expectancy, adult literacy and equity measures all show improvement.

Improvements and innovation in health and medical science have seen a dramatic increase in life expectancy driven mainly by improvements in immunization, sanitation, water quality and nutrition, as well as the effective treatment of many infectious diseases.

Production, Consumption, and Technology

While consumption of raw materials is related to population growth, globally consumption actually increases faster than population. In addition, that relationship differs between the industrialized world, the developing world and the 'undeveloped world'. It appears that the process of industrialization is the most affective of the environment, with developed nations in the process of reducing their effects, the undeveloped nations not yet having much affect, but the greatest affects associated with the mid-tier as they industrialise. The method by which consumption occurs is also changing, with developed nations moving towards a services economy.

The emergent technologies now include new energy sources and transmission, new materials, and the substitution of information for energy and materials, and importantly, technologies that continue long-term processes of decarbonization, dematerialization, and detoxification. Most of the technologies that sit beneath these categorizations can be accelerated. It is this information that can direct our attention to how to plan to reduce our GhG emissions, that is by accelerating the rate that we develop and implement technologies that decarbonise, dematerialise, and detoxify the environment.

Peace and Security

Civil and national conflicts affect our global impact because they divert effort from productive activity and the destructive aspects of them require a lot of remedial activity after the conflicts are resolved. The global trends since the end of the Second World War are characterised by an increase in conflict during the cold war when there were many of smaller conflicts which were quite localised, followed by a period of reduced conflict from the mid 1990s onward which is actually more representative of the long term trends.

Globalization, Governance, and Institutions

By virtue of the issues of sustainability being discussed in a global context at all, an argument can be made that the significant changes and developments in globalisation, education, governance and extra-national institutions, government and non-government can have a substantial affect on long erm sustainability outcomes.

"In its simplest sense, globalization refers to the widening, deepening, and speeding up of global interconnectedness". Increasing trade and the mobility of people lead to increases in tolerance and diversity but also to spread of disease and invasive pests. As communications technologies become pervasive, new expectations of government are being met by new governing institutions at both the state level but also the non-state players.

All of these changes are accompanied by, or even caused by a great shift in values and behaviour. Values appear to be changing in a very fluid manner with some overall trends which are spreading power relationships more evenly (i.e. the role of women, the place of minorities and diversity, human rights) which probably reflects better availability of information to support choice, and better education. The fluidity comes from different rates of value drift that are probably determined by the nature of the starting position; that is the playing field is not level.

How Global Trends influence Sustainability Issues.

Every trend discussed above has a number of affects that influence the sustainability outcomes that are at issue. These affects are complex and sometimes contradictory, but it is often possible to identify major and minor effects (Table 1).

Trend	Major influence	Major Effect	Minor Influence	Minor Effect
Population growth	Increases consumption	Primary GhG driver
Urban Migration	Increases consumption	Primary GhG driver	Could increase or decrease consumption	Adds to high order innovation capacity
Standard of Living aspirations	Increases demand for non-essentials	Hi order GhG driver	Increases educated pool	Adds to high order innovation capacity
Consumption	Drives Production	Primary GhG driver
Production		Primary GhG driver	Innovation here can lessen GhG production
Innovation	Drives change in production demand	Increase total GhG production	Drives change in production efficiency	Reduce GhG per unit production
Conflict	Destroys existing infrastructure	Increases demand (remediation)	Degrades productive capacity	Reduces Supply – increases demand.
Globalisation	Levels global inequity	Increases demand	Local increase in inequity	...
Governance
Institutions

Table 1 - GhG Influence / effect matrix

Even a cursory analysis at a very high level can demonstrate that the major contributor to GhG emissions is the demand associated with population growth. Secondary and tertiary influences relate to the global increase in living standards and globalisation pressures which are adding to the increase in demand and consumption. It is probably unlikely that the human species will make any fundamental shift in the desire to own material goods and generally improve their lot, nor would it be reasonable to expect the poorer people in the world to do so. So a mechanism for delivering more goods and services to a rapidly growing proportion of a rapidly growing population, needs to be found in the very near term if the sustainability outcomes that are being discussed are to be achieved. As the mechanism by which our society organises labour and other resources to satify this demand for goods and services, it is to "Business" that this task will fall. Yes the government and society will intervene to encourage an accelerated response, but it is Business that needs to deliver.

One observation that should be made is that 'business' is the act of production to meet demand. This means that a primary driver for businesses is to influence the increasing of demand for goods and services. Making things and selling them is at the heart of our economic activity, even if those things are not necessary to fulfil the basic needs of living. The reduction of GhG production will clearly entail a reduction in demand overall, as well as a change to the way production processes and use of resources are achieved, a situation that is obviously counter to the way business has been conducted for the last 15000 years. In as much as this GhG reduction will require a change in the hearts and minds of the people, it is likely to fail. The emotional drives that cause us to consume will not be likely to change, and so the challenge for Business is even greater.