Dredge manufacturers outline trends, developments

Archibald

Sonar is just one part of the automation puzzle.

As workforce shortages continue to plague operations, automation is looked at as a way to make dredging more effective and efficient while minimizing the number of people required on a dredging plant.

“The theme is efficiency,” Archibald says. “Even though we would love to be able to provide as many jobs as we can, at the end of the day, we are eliminating the need for operators at locations. We’re providing good jobs for the people that work for us, but more often than not, we’re eliminating the need for labor in locations, which is not something anybody’s complaining about.”

Archibald adds that Supreme Manufacturing is always aiming to improve its automation technology, ensuring operators reach their full potential. He says Supreme also plans to incorporate sonar mapping into its dredges to allow customers to look back at data that is typically wiped at the end of a day.

“While we have great automation in our dredges, it’s something that we are always chasing product refinements [in],” Archibald says. “We want to make sure that when a customer is mining their deposit, they know that they’re getting everything. They know they’re getting max exploitation of that deposit. There’s never going to be a customer that’s going to look at one of our dredges and say: ‘That’s too sophisticated, that’s too advanced.’ The more advanced and user-friendly we can make it, the better.”

According to Johnson, automation’s advantages aren’t limited to human interfacing. Because automation gathers data at an exponentially higher rate than a human, he says the ROI is very short.

“Let’s say you have an operation panel that has a lot of gauges on it that tell you what’s going on,” Johnson says. “How often would you think an operator sitting in a control cab looks at a particular gauge? Once every five seconds? Once every 15 seconds? Maybe three times a minute? Automation is looking at the value of that gauge 60 times a second. It makes those decisions very quickly.”

An example of DSC Dredge automation in action is in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. The company is building three 30-in. dredges for oil sands in the area, and those dredges are unmanned – with the operators in an office seven miles away.

“The market is headed that way,” Johnson says. “We have automated haul trucks, autonomous dredging is coming. It hasn’t been done yet that I know of. … We see this type of technology used in other industries, but until that first person will take a chance and make that decision to make theirs autonomous, it doesn’t happen.”

Johnson’s hope for automation is not to remove the human element altogether, but for producers to see the technology as paramount to optimize the dredging process and the operators involved.

“What if I could automate the dredge so that every operator was optimized,” Johnson says. “In a lot of cases, we don’t want to necessarily replace the operator, we just want to make him Superman.”

Expect the use of sonar to become more prevalent in dredging operations in the years to come. Photo: P&Q Staff

Digging deeper

Another trend dredge OEMs currently see is a movement to dig deeper into mineral reserves.

Permits outline the physical boundaries dredging operations must abide by while collecting material. One boundary receiving increased attention is the depth to which operators can dig.

“Very often, what our customers are chasing is the ability to go deeper than what they are initially permitted to go,” Archibald says. “Their permit may only allow them to go 50 ft., but they know there may be 100, 150, 200 ft. of material there. So how do they go after it? They have to apply for a permit to go deeper, which is very often tricky.”

Crowe echoes Archibald’s sentiment. Since joining Rohr-Idreco, Crowe has seen an amplified push for deeper dredging.

“Every machine that we look at now is getting more and more focused on how deep you can go,” he says. “We’ve got suction dredges that will go 200 ft. deep. That’s unheard of. We’ve got clamshell machines that go to 180 meters, somewhere in the neighborhood of [590] ft.

“We’re getting requests to replace draglines with dredges because draglines can’t go deep enough anymore,” Crowe adds. “People are starting to value the reserves under the reserves. Land used to be a commodity that anybody could just go buy. That’s not the case anymore. We’re all figuring out ways to go deeper and deeper.”

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