CMP secures fleet of electric trucks for its leached tailings project

The first battery-powered mining cargo transport driven by the company arrived at the Planta Pellets facilities in Huasco. With a capacity of 55 tons, a series of industrial pilot tests were carried out for future operation at the depot.

Thursday, June 22, 2023 - With the commitment to maximize energy efficiency and reduce emissions in its operations, Compañía Minera del Pacífico (CMP) celebrated the arrival of the first electric mining truck built by the company Yutong at its Pellet Plant, located in Huasco, Atacama region.

This vehicle is the first of a total fleet of four that are about to be incorporated by the mining company, each with a capacity of 55 tons of cargo. Its main function will be to transport tailings from the unloading building to their final disposal in the Filtered Tailings Facility (DRF), which is about to start operations.

Once the modern truck arrived, a series of pilot tests were carried out inside the Pellet Plant, simulating the transfer of the filtered tailings, which is composed of a solid material, easy to handle and with a low percentage of humidity. As a result of the successful results obtained after the test, CMP secured the purchase of the entire fleet of trucks.

"In view of our goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030, it is very relevant to announce the unprecedented arrival of the first electric truck at our facilities, which also corresponds to the first Yutong mining vehicle at mining sites in Chile. The incorporation of this technology helps us to have more sustainable processes, thus consolidating our purpose of creating a different kind of mining for the development of the territory and its people", said CMP's general manager, Francisco Carvajal.

Regarding the characteristics of the vehicle, Isabel Morales, head of CMP's Filtered Tailings Deposit project, explained that "we are going down with the truck loaded and this will act as an electric generator, which will allow us to charge the vehicle's batteries while we are descending. Then, we will go up empty using the energy we have generated during the descent. The arrival of this type of transport represents an advance towards a new concept of electromobility in mining, optimizing energy efficiency in our operations".

To this, Yutong Group sales manager Joyce Ren added that "if we compare it with a diesel truck, the energy efficiency is more than 60% and the protection levels are higher than IP 68, which is the highest level in the industry".

Filtered Tailings Deposit Project

According to the company, the filtered tailings project provides a sustainable solution for the final disposal of the resulting tailings generated in the Pellet Plant process in Huasco. The tailings are inert and harmless, since no pollutants or toxic elements are used in the iron recovery process, but rather physical and magnetic processes. Thus, it is harmless for the life and health of people and the environment.

The tailings will be arranged in five terraces, each ten meters high, which will be progressively closed by covering them with granular material and sand, which will allow the area's native vegetation to be replenished through an innovative phytotechnology program currently being developed in conjunction with the Pontificia Universidad Católica, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, the Universidad de Santiago and the Universidad de Atacama.

The technological solution also considers processing the tailings with three vertical plate-type filter presses, which will discharge the material with less than 20% moisture into a confined conveyor belt that will take it from the filtering plant to the discharge building, to be then transported in electric trucks to its final disposal at the deposit site.

The recovered water will return to the process, reducing fresh water consumption at the pellet plant by approximately 5,200 m3 per day. All this is possible thanks to the filtering technology applied to the tailings, which results in a drier and much safer material to be stockpiled.