Reducing environmental impacts via improved tyre wear management

Most open pit mines around the world involve processes that are highly dependent on haulage by trucks. This setting implies that the consumption of tyres increases with the scale of mineral production. Moreover, the majority of the mining industry has adopted increased production strategies to absorb costs. Haulage costs are strongly related with seasonality, however most management tools ignore this variable. Growing demand requires the development of new tyre wear management techniques that favour the reduction of waste generation. Tyre wear management systems integrated into mining operations are still a novelty. The present work aims to develop quarterly mining scheduling that allows the management of tyre wear. Simulation techniques were used through multivariate linear regression to consider the climatic seasonality. The models have deviations of less than 5% compared with the real data. By using quality tools it was possible to detect operational failures that undermine the rational use of tyres. Further analyses of the results have shown that the proposed method has the potential to save up to 8.9 t of tyre rubber in only one quarter. Supporting safe decisions to rationalise the use of tyres represents a relevant contribution to the mining industry. Responsible mining requires each input to generate the expected result while minimising losses and excessive consumption of natural resources. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.