Innovation and technological development have been an essential component of business strategy in every sector across the globe. Mining is no exception. Technological progression is yielding far-reaching improvements in safety, sustainability and operational efficiency throughout the value chain. In South Africa, and globally, AECI Mining Explosives is celebrated for being at the forefront of innovation.
The company continues to invest significant money and resources into research and development (R&D) in its quest to assist the mining industry to achieve better blasting outcomes.
“We pride ourselves on developing innovative solutions in the initiating systems and commercial explosives space. That’s how we remain at the forefront of technology and constantly pursue sustainability and continuous improvement,” says Ashlin Pillay, Product Portfolio Manager – Electronic Initiation Systems at AECI Mining Explosives.
“With over 30 years of experience in pioneering the electronic delay detonator industry and developing class-leading blast initiation technologies, AECI Mining Explosives possesses some of the most talented minds delivering robust and reliable systems that are aligned to inherently safe design principles.”
Inherent safety
Pillay explains that inherently safe design principles span the entire product range. This ensures there is no compromise and, as a result, all our electronic initiation systems and detonators benefit from the same intrinsically safety features,” he says.
The company has tested its electronics extensively. “As an example, we’ve subjected them to high voltage, which simulated a lightning strike. This resulted in uninitiated detonators due to the designed protective circuitry. We’ve ensured by design that our detonators are only initiated by our control equipment,” he explains.
AECI Mining Explosives is thrilled to announce a further development in its extensive electronic initiation systems offering. The DigiShot® Ranger has been purposely designed to cater for smaller mines, quarries and civil blasting operations. In line with inherently safe design principles, the DigiShot® Ranger’s built-in long-range antenna enables the system to transmit a safe encrypted blasting signal up to 3 km away from the blast as long as there’s a line of sight maintained. This affords the user options to blast remotely if required. As a result, fewer people are close a potentially hazardous area during blasting times. Considering that mines are constantly faced with the safety and wellbeing of their people, employing AECI’s DigiShot® Ranger is a certain way of mitigating risk.
“We’ve been working tirelessly to improve our offering for mid-tier open cast mines, civil blasting activity and quarrying operations. The original DigiShot® system is a reputable and accomplished product. However, advancement in technology allows us to better support modern-day customer and system requirements,” says Pillay. “The lessons we have learned from the DigiShot® system have been engineered onto a technologically advanced platform concurrently integrating new technology, data and third-party requirements to create the DigiShot® Ranger.”
Building on strong foundations
Pillay adds that the DigiShot® Ranger works with AECI’s fourth-generation detonators. This enables storage of a wide variety of data on the detonator and tagger, including bench activity. The last detonator check function also ensures that all detonators on the string receive the blast command.
“The new system keeps the portability and ease-of-use of the original DigiShot® system requiring minimal training, but the DigiShot® Ranger doubles the detonator capacity (600 detonators vs the original’s 300), and gives the operator flexible tagging options, plus automatic detonator detection,” says Pillay.
LogShot® is a complementary software package that informs users of the blasting activity and allows operators to extract detailed, post-blast, activity logs. “This is very useful for consolidating the activity of the blast itself, along with the inventory management of detonators, while highlighting typical problems users may have experienced,” says Pillay.
“The DigiShot® Ranger also logs user interface activity, which makes it easy to conduct operator safety audits as it can be used to determine if there is supplementary operator training required.”
Customers can now easily build their very own blast library on ViewShot® Express, detailing blast design parameters, which may be used for future blasts in similar geological conditions during blasting. This is an important safety aspect, but can also help to improve operational efficiencies.
Attention has been given to device ergonomics and user-friendliness, with the DigiShot® Ranger offering improvements in both areas. The flexibility in tagging methods defines multiple options for the user to select when tagging to allow for both traditional tagging (for users who are comfortable with this methodology), as well as the more modern tag-by plan option (where the blast design is created on the ViewShot® Express and downloaded to the CE4 tagger via USB or WiFi). The latter allows for tagging on-bench with delay and location from the pre-designed blast plan, which mitigates user input errors.
With smarter tagging methodologies, movement on the bench can be reduced and optimised. The tagger has been designed to function as an inherently safe device and cannot generate the required blast voltage or blast commands to initiate the blast – the blast command is stored in a Near Field Communication (NFC) Blast Card.
“As a responsible supplier, we also focus on recovering equipment at the end of its life cycle, to manage the responsible disposal of the entire system,” says Pillay.
ESG considerations
ESG is a fundamental element in the way that AECI Mining Explosives conducts business across all its operations and product ranges. Tenacious consideration is afforded to all three aspects of ESG – social, environmental and governance.
With the DigiShot® Ranger, for example, the focus on safety and operational efficiency addresses the social part of ESG, while the improved blast efficiencies irrefutably contribute to the environmental aspect.
Furthermore, excessive wastage is reduced through the long-range communications capabilities of the device, which directly translates to the reduction of on-bench harness wire consumption. The detailed blast logs that are generated assist with governance by improving reporting and compliance.
“At AECI Mining Explosives, our focus is on continuous improvement along the whole value chain,” says Pillay. “The DigiShot® Ranger evolution is just one example of the Company’s holistic and flexible approach, which aims to help customers on their unique journey to better blasting outcomes.”
