Estimate Fuel Consumption - Best Approach

[Hroark24]

Hi Guys,

I have have four different fleet configurations for an underground mine that I want to evaluate costs for (some configurations have fewer larger equipment while others have more smaller equipment). I am stuck at estimating diesel consumption for the different fleets which I think could have an impact on the final decision and therefore should be included into the operating cost estimates.

What is the best approach for solving this? What parameters could let me come up with the best estimates, and, would you guys know any good ressources worth looking into for this kind of situation?

There was a formula presented on a different thread that suggested to assume that 0.4lbs of diesel is consumed per break horsepower - hour. This is easy to follow if I know the average percentage of bhp being used by the equipment, but, this seems complicated to predict with any accuracy for each piece of equipment. Could I instead approach this by considering how much material will be moved during each shift, for example, how much distance each equipment will travel at different loads and what engine is powering them to estimate diesel consumption?

How do huge mining companies estimate these costs?

Thanks, if more details would be helpful please let me know.

 

[miningman]

Sounds suspiciouslly like homework to me. If not, and you really do have four options under consideration, then you need to sharpen up your pencil and reduce your options by half. The cost of fuel is relatively insignificant compared to the cost of labour and the different development costs associated with different sized drifts to accommodate differing sized equipment.

A few years ago I managed to achieve a 30% improvement in the efficiency of my haulage fleet by increasing the size of the engines and the size of the truck boxes.......I didnt even consider fuel consumption!!!!!!!!!!!