On the 24th of October the ¡VAMOS! partners together with Advisory Board members and interested external parties – such as geologists and researchers from companies and institutions, local people etc - were present at the ¡VAMOS! technology Demonstration Day, at the Magcobar flooded mine pit, in Silvermines, Ireland. In total 85 visitors participated in the field demonstration to raise awareness of the innovative technology with stakeholders and local communities, DAMEN said in its press release.
The ¡VAMOS! project is funded by the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Featuring a total of sixteen partners from nine EU countries, ¡VAMOS! seeks to address the EU’s need for (critical) raw materials, by making possible the extraction of mineral deposits from inland water-bearing areas. To reach this aim, the partners have developed an innovative system whereby a remotely operated mining vehicle is launched from a waterborne carriage.
The Demo Day started with an essential briefing that covered an introduction to the ¡VAMOS! concept, legal issues, logistics and practicalities for the visit. The briefing included an interesting talk about the future plans for the brownfield site involving the development and construction of a 360 megawatt, zero-emission hydro power station on the open-cast mining site, which has been closed since 1993.
In addition, there were presentations on the regional and site geology and historical mining heritage. The session ended with the important safety briefing before participants were transported to the mine site.
The visit to the ¡VAMOS! mining technology at work started on shore, with the participants being shown “EVA”, an automated underwater vehicle that is used to assist in precise positioning, navigation and situational awareness of the Mining Vehicle and its surrounding environment, and that can execute preliminary surveys of underwater mine sites.
The visitors were then taken by tender boat across the lake to the Launch & Recovery Vessel, where they were able to view the Mining Vehicle being deployed and winched up from the bottom of the mine where it has been working in recent weeks at various depths up to 57m, cutting in various rock and operating conditions, and pumping the cut material to a deposit on shore as a slurry.
Visitors were then shown the Control Cabin and Data Centre, the hub of the ¡VAMOS! project during the trials. Here they had a hands-on experience with the virtual reality human-machine interface. From here, all the components of the technology are controlled and real-time data on the operations is collected. In combination with sensors and sampling in and around the pit registering water quality, the VR system is also used as an environmental compliance monitoring tool.
Participants were asked to give feedback after the visit on their thoughts with regards to future exploitation of a system such as ¡VAMOS! and visitors coming from the community around Silvermines were asked about their perception of the operation taking place in their neighbourhood.
“The ¡VAMOS! team has successfully demonstrated their ability to use the prototype mining system in very hard rock. State-of-the-art electronics and visualisation has been used to control the operations. All this was done with great consciousness and care for safety, the environment and involvement of local stakeholders.” said Sander Steenbrink, General Manager Corporate Research and Development at Boskalis from the Netherlands, and Advisory Board member for the ¡VAMOS! Project.
Damen Dredging Equipment, being one of the main industrial partners within the ¡VAMOS! Consortium designed and built the aforementioned Launch & Recovery Vessel, plus the Slurry System on board of the Mining Vehicle. Frank Bosman, RD&I Development Manager of Damen’s Product group Dredging is the Project Manager for this scope: “This project has given us the platform to develop a dual stage slurry pump, which can be used in any mining or dredging situation where a high discharge pressure is needed and only limited space is available. Its further features, such as a high efficiency and large ball passage, have proven themselves in the ¡VAMOS! field trials, to be of the same high quality of any other DAMEN dredge pump.”
The ¡VAMOS! trials will conclude early November, after which the on-site team – consisting of SMD, Damen, Sandvik, InescTEC, Fugro, Zentrum für Telematik, Fugro and BMT Group Ltd – will demobilise from the Irish site. In the coming months the test results will be evaluated, and reporting to theEU will follow.
Damen Shipyards Group
Damen Shipyards Group operates 33 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 9,000 people worldwide. DAMEN has delivered more than 6,000 vessels in more than 100 countries and delivers some 180 vessels annually to customers worldwide. Based on its unique, standardised ship-design concept DAMEN is able to guarantee consistent quality.
Damen’s focus on standardisation, modular construction and keeping vessels in stock leads to short delivery times, low ‘total cost of ownership’, high resale values and reliable performance. Furthermore, DAMEN vessels are based on thorough R&D and proven technology.
Damen offers a wide range of products, including tugs, workboats, naval and patrol vessels, high speed craft, cargo vessels, dredgers, vessels for the offshore industry, ferries, pontoons and superyachts.
For nearly all vessel types DAMEN offers a broad range of services, including maintenance, spare parts delivery, training and the transfer of (shipbuilding) know-how. DAMEN also offers a variety of marine components, such as nozzles, rudders, anchors, anchor chains and steel works.
Damen Shiprepair & Conversion (DSC) has a worldwide network of sixteen repair and conversion yards of which twelve are located in North West Europe. Facilities at the yards include more than 50 floating and (covered) drydocks, the largest of which is 420 x 90 metres, as well as slopes, ship lifts and indoor halls. Projects range from the smallest simple repairs through Class’ maintenance to complex refits and the complete conversion of large offshore structures. DSC completes around 1,350 repair and maintenance jobs annually, both at yards as well as in ports and during voyage.
About ¡VAMOS!:
Estimates indicate that the value of unexploited European mineral resources at a depth of 500-1,000 meters is ca €100 billion, however, a number of physical, economic, social, environmental and human constraints have as yet limited their exploitation. ¡VAMOS! will provide a new Safe, Clean and Low Visibility Mining Technique and will prove its Economic Viability for extracting currently unreachable mineral deposits, thus encouraging investment and helping to put the EU back on a level playing field in terms of access to strategically important minerals. Deriving from successful deep-sea mining techniques, the ¡VAMOS! mining solution aspires to lead to: Re-opening abandoned mines; Extensions of open cut mines which are limited by stripping ratio, hydrological or geotechnical problems; and opening of new mines in the EU. ¡VAMOS! will design and manufacture innovative automated excavation equipment and environmental impact monitoring tools that will be used to perform field tests in two mine sites across Europe with a range of rock hardness and pit morphology. ¡VAMOS! will:
1. Develop a prototype underwater, remotely controlled, mining machine with associated launch and recovery equipment
2. Enhance currently available underwater sensing, spatial awareness, navigational and positioning technology
3. Provide an integrated solution for efficient Real-Time monitoring of Environmental Impact
4. Conduct field trials with the prototype equipment in abandoned and inactive mine sites with a range of rock types and at a range of submerged depths
5. Evaluate the productivity and cost of operation to enable mine-ability and economic reassessment of the EU’s mineral resources
6. Maximize impact and enable the Market Up-Take of the proposed solutions by defining and overcoming the practicalities of the concept, proving the operational feasibility and the economic viability
7. Contribute to the social acceptance of the new extraction technique via public demonstration in EU regions
This project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 642477.