Aluminium company Alcoa Australia is using drones to carry out a range of tasks across its mining and refining operations, and this is just the beginning of its journey.
Technological advancements are giving rise to a range of equipment that is seeing an uptick in applications across various industries. In the mining industry, one of the most adopted is drones, with mine owners and operators finding innovative ways to implement these technologies across their operations.
From identifying nesting hollows in trees at its mine sites to inspecting confined spaces for repair and maintenance requirements, Alcoa Australia is adopting drone technology in a range of ways.
Alcoa Senior Digital Specialist and chief drone pilot, Andrew King, said the technology can provide substantial safety benefits while enabling many tasks to be performed more rapidly and with a greater degree of accuracy.
“Inspections at heights, in confined spaces and in other hard to access locations become far more straightforward,” Mr King said.
“We’re also able to put drones into environments far sooner than we might be able to put people in there because of risks such as chemical or dust exposure.”
This has led to significant reductions in downtime and costs. Mr King said these factors, along with the ability to overcome resourcing issues, are delivering considerable savings.
“In 2023, cost benefits were in the millions of dollars with one drone operator, and we expect that with additional operators allowing us to address a broader range of tasks, those savings could be increased significantly when deployed across the entire business,” Mr King said.
Drone footage of a washer inspection at Alcoa’s Pinjarra Alumina Refinery.
Complementing the workforce
Alongside the uptake of modern technology across industries was the fear that workers may see their jobs replaced by these innovations. However, companies that are adopting these technologies alongside workforces are reaping the most benefits.
“This is not about replacing jobs but getting safer, smarter and faster in the ways we operate,” Mr King said. “We’re training more people to use drones so they can enhance ways they approach a range of everyday tasks.”
Mr King said the innovation is not in the drones themselves, which he described as nothing more than “flying selfie sticks”, but in the range of accessories that can be used along with them. These accessories include high-tech cameras and sensors, in addition to tools for detection, collection and carrying.
These kinds of technologies allow drones to be used for tasks such as wear and corrosion inspections, while thermal imaging technology could spot potential issues and even assist in determining the size of hollows used by animals, including black cockatoos.
“Thermal imaging allows us to determine the size of hollows – indicating if they are likely to be used as habitat – so we can identify trees to be protected before mining gets underway,” Mr King said.
Drone operators take a photo during a confined space inspection.
Upskilling workers
While artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are advancing to enable autonomous flying, Mr King said many of the current applications require highly-skilled operators. The rigorous training these operators must undergo typically lasts between six and nine months for dedicated pilots.
As well as developing other specialised skills, this training allows drones to be manoeuvred in hard-to-access locations and enables them to take high-resolution photos and videos to inform repair and maintenance requirements.
However, Mr King said ‘citizen pilots’ require less comprehensive training, and can rapidly realise the benefits that introducing drones into their workflows can produce.
“When I first helped with mine surveying work there was a bit of concern that we’d be replacing people with drones,” Mr King said.
“But two years later we’ve increased the mine survey team from three to ten people and they’re using drones quite comprehensively because of the valuable data that can be collected, analysed and used to inform continuous improvement in the ways we manage our mining operations.”
Mr King said that coupled with the company’s Power BI application – which can help transform data into coherent, interactive insights – Alcoa Australia is able to analyse large volumes of geological, hydrological and other data quickly to make very precise decisions.
Counting the cost
Adopting advanced technology can sometimes come with a hefty price tag. Costs for drones and associated equipment can range from anywhere between $500 and $150,000. As such, Mr King said that operating the equipment safely and with extreme precision is vital – hence the requirement for comprehensive training.
Over the past five years, there have been just two casualties in Alcoa Australia’s drone family – and to unlikely predators.
Mr King said that wedge-tailed eagles will readily attack drones that fly into their territory, but fortunately the two drones that fell victim to Australia’s largest bird of prey were lower cost models. Nevertheless, Alcoa’s drone pilots are taught about eagle ‘escape and evasion’ procedures and know to stay out of the air if eagles are spotted in the vicinity.
Future applications
The future applications are broad, and Mr King said that embracing autonomous operations and machine learning are on the cards to assist with tasks such as scheduled inspections and surveillance operations.
“There are some exciting machine learning opportunities, including identifying exceptions. That means instead of having to monitor hours of footage, we can be alerted to the issues and act quickly and efficiently to avoid potential problems or resolve them,” he said.
“That could be as simple as looking for rocks or potholes on haul roads, through to identifying unplanned movement of animals, equipment or people across site.”
As well as assisting to streamline the everyday operations onsite, these technologies can also assist with bolstering an operation’s sustainability credentials.
Mr King said that Alcoa Australia has explored various remote sensing technologies to improve and streamline rehabilitation design, execution and monitoring. Successful trials in this area have led to the integration of drones to assist with monitoring requirements.
A project that is currently underway is investigating the use of drones to inspect established areas of post-mining rehabilitation.
Alcoa drone pilot Andrew King prepares to inspect ship loading facilities at Kwinana.
Under the rehabilitation completion criteria that Alcoa Australia works to, target numbers for native jarrah and marri trees are required per hectare. With hundreds of hectares of rehabilitation occurring each year, resourcing inspections is challenging. Mr King said the use of drone-mounted sensors to determine different species and identify individual trees from above was showing great promise.
“As people across our operations become aware of how we’re currently using drones, they come to us with new ideas,” he said.
“We’re evaluating the use of autonomous drones for fertiliser delivery across areas being rehabilitated – a task currently requiring the use of helicopters – and are even thinking of things like delivery of spares to machinery operators in the field to further reduce downtime.
“The business is very supportive because there are compelling cases for all the applications we have implemented so far. If anything, we must narrow down the use cases to prioritise those that can offer immediate benefits with improvements in safety and accuracy being the primary objectives.”
Equipment enhancements and innovations are showing no signs of abating, and mining organisations that can embrace these technologies can not only realise cost-savings and project efficiencies, but can also unlock a range of applications.
Featured image: An operator navigates a drone through rehabilitated forest at one of Alcoa’s bauxite mines in Western Australia. Images: Alcoa Australia
