After months of work and in the presence of workers and company managers, Lomas Bayas mining, a company Glencore, carried out the start of the first autonomous oil rig in the company’s operational business.
The company highlighted the milestone as it is the first autonomous equipment to be commissioned under the company Lomas Lab Project, the Glencore laboratory, which aims to develop and promote various innovations and automation projects that will then be replicated worldwide.
In this sense, they emphasized that the initiative means improving safety and operational efficiency for the company, since they are automated devices that can be controlled remotely and manage to isolate workers from the risks of direct operations.
Pablo Carvallo, General Manager of Compañía Minera Lomas Bayas, stated: “The operation of this first autonomous drilling rig represents a major milestone for the company, which has turned 25 years old.” a break between a past with a lot of history, a lot of heritage and a look to the future under the eaves of technology. This is something that today makes us deeply committed to this vision and concept that we developed called Lomas Lab.”
For his part, Enrique Caballero, regional technology manager at Glencore, said: “The Autonomous Drilling Machines project is extremely important as part of our transformation strategy at Glencore.” is the starting point of the transformation in Lomas Bayas and Lomas Lab with the implementation of autonomy“.
“This initiative was born as There is a need to look into the health and safety conditions of our workers At the same time, it was launched as an isolated project aimed at integrating this Mining 4.0 into our Glencore operations and Lomas Bayas in particular,” Caballero added.
The mining company explained that this equipment is Glencore’s starting point for automation and the gateway to other transformation processes for Glencore Cobre in Chile. The next step corresponds to the project autonomous trucks, powered by electrical energy via overhead lines (trolley)one of the most relevant technologies in the industry.
In this regard, Marcelo Zúñiga, Lead Delivery Technology at Glencore commented: “This is the first of four autonomous drilling rigs, marking the start of the entire drilling fleet as well as the new Lomas Lab projects.”
“This ramp-up phase is important to create synergies between the support areas to ensure correct change management and the introduction of this new operating model, with a focus on eliminating people’s exposure to noise and dust and working remotely in a comfortable space for operators,” he added.
Lomas laboratory
Lomas Lab is Glencore’s research and development proposal The aim is to establish Lomas Bayas as an exporter of knowledge, experience and technological development worldwide. This makes Chile and the Antofagasta region a world leader in knowledge and technology, the company commented.
In this context, they explained that this initiative is a working philosophy developed by Glencore and Lomas Bayas strives to promote the integration of high-quality innovations through a Piloting Center This expands Lomas Bayas’ installed capacity for more than 25 years to develop tests for new technologies that are scalable to other Glencore operations.
This makes Lomas Bayas a creator of methods and models to safely and efficiently implement future projects elsewhere on the planet, they said.
