Mining giant Rio Tinto will explore the potential for converting its huge Pilbara railway network from diesel to hybrid power in an attempt to cut fuel costs and improve its carbon footprint.
The company yesterday formally marked the completion of its $US940 million ($1.36bn) AutoHaul project, which has fully automated its fleet of more than 200 locomotives. The 2.4km self-driving trains, which have been described as “the world’s biggest robots”, haul 13,000 wagons and almost a million tonnes of iron ore across the Pilbara each day.
The executive responsible for the project, iron ore infrastructure boss Ivan Vella, said the company was studying whether the monster trains could be converted to hybrid engines to further the network’s efficiency. READ NEXT
“Imagine a giant battery on one of those locomotives that is taking energy from the train as it is braking, storing it, and then it can use it when it needs power on the network,” Mr Vella said.
“The other (idea) is moving our emphasis from diesel towards gas, because that’s obviously an improvement. There are still some emissions there, that’s why we contemplate a hybrid as well, but that would reduce the emissions impact from those trains.”
Each 40-hour trip from Dampier on the coast to Rio’s inland mines and back consumes about 5000 litres of diesel fuel.
The Pilbara topography means a hybrid system would be suited to harnessing the power of the trains’ brakes and charging a sufficiently large battery during inward and outward trips.
The AutoHaul system has eliminated the need for each train to stop and change drivers at points of the journey. Previously, there would be three to four driver changes on each loop.
Rio Tinto says automation eliminates 1.5 million kilometres a year of road travel by removing the need to transport drivers out to the trains.
Several heavy haulage rail operators from North America are looking closely at the potential of automating their own networks.
WA Mines Minister Bill Johnston said AutoHaul showed Western Australia could take technological challenges elsewhere in the world.
“It emphasises that Western Australia’s mining industry is successful not because we are good at quarrying but because we are good at applying technology to solve problems,” he said.
The network started running automated trains in 2017 and became fully automated last year.
Mr Vella said that while there had been some teething problems during the transition to automation, he was “pleasantly surprised” with the progress of the rail network to date.
About 95 per cent of the automated trains were completing their journeys without human intervention.
“When you start something like this where technology is involved, you always expect challenges and reliability issues to work through,” Mr Vella said. “But the ramp-up has gone much quicker and much smoother than we had actually hoped.” The reporter travelled to Karratha as a guest of Rio Tinto PAUL GARVEY
RESOURCES REPORTER
Paul Garvey has been writing about the resources industry for more than 14 years. Prior to joining The Australian's Perth bureau, he spent two years writing for the paper out of Hong Kong. He has also been a mi... Read more
PLS Price at posting:
70.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)