1 min read / March 6, 2024 / Staff writer
Komatsu’s Performance Assurance (PA) program helps mining customers uncover and achieve untapped potential, helping them realize the most value from their Komatsu technologies. Regular site visits, done remotely where necessary to ensure health and safety protocols, conducted by experts in both mining and Komatsu technology solutions, help mine sites worldwide drive significant improvements in productivity, efficiency, and safety.
A large coal mine in Indonesia leverages Komatsu’s MineCare® Maintenance Management system, as well as the DISPATCH® FMS and ProVision® Machine Guidance systems, to optimize their operations.
Recognizing erosion of their profit margins resulting from excessive haul truck fuel consumption, the mine requested help from Komatsu’s PA team to identify the root cause and improve their fuel burn rates.
The mine also reported excessive oil filter events, identified in real time by their MineCare system, which was severely affecting overall engine reliability. Blocked oil filters indicated heavy contamination in engine oil, resulting from friction-related metal particles and combustion byproducts, that caused the oil to thicken and lose its lubricity and viscosity.
As a result, the truck engines were working harder to overcome the oil’s sludgy composition – burning more fuel and causing the engine to run hotter and less efficiently. The overworked engine also reduced the haul truck’s horsepower and caused excessive, unnecessary engine wear, potentially threatening the truck’s long-term durability.
To monitor the mine’s fuel burn rates, the PA team leveraged the site’s existing MineCare system to initiate Trend Monitoring for the affected haul trucks – collecting fuel consumption rates, engine load, and payload data.
The team then coached the site’s MineCare users to identify critical issues, such as low injector pressures and oil filter blockages, and established custom, User-defined alarms to notify them, in real time, to these issues.
Finally, the team helped the mine standardize their work order method to ensure proactive action against events affecting fuel burn rates, especially:
By carefully monitoring, and proactively addressing, potentially-critical issues that were directly affecting the haul trucks’ fuel consumption, the PA team and MineCare system helped the site improve their fuel consumption by more than 18%, from an average 373 litres per hour prior to Komatsu's involvement, to 305 litres per hour (at max engine load and empty payload11) after, as shown in figure 1.
This equates to a potential ~US$160,000 fuel savings per year, per truck 2. 21 of the mine’s 39 trucks of this make and model were affected by injector and oil filter issues; extrapolating the $160,000 annual savings across all 21 affected trucks equates to an annual fuel savings of nearly US$3.4 million.
Additionally, since the mine’s maintenance staff were now monitoring for these potential issues, and leveraging the MineCare system’s user-defined alerts to identify problems before the OEM sensors did, they were able to pinpoint and remedy these issues before they could become major inhibitors of efficient fuel consumption.
As a result, the number of fuel injector and oil filter blockage events were reduced from a peak of 255,000 OEM events per week (before Komatsu’s involvement) to 0 OEM events per week after (figures 2 and 3).
Fuel represents a large portion of many mining organizations’ operating costs. By optimizing their fuel consumption and minimizing their unnecessary fuel burn, this coal mine, with the help of the Komatsu PA program, was able to reduce their average fuel consumption by more than 18%, saving an estimated US$3.36M in fuel costs per year across their affected trucks.
Figure 1 The mines haul truck fuel consumption rate declined by 18 after Komatsu's involvement
Figure 2 After completing the necessary maintenance identified by Komatsu and the new MineCar
Komatsu case study Indonesia.