SA-MANUFACTURED SAFETY SYSTEM INSTALLED AT MONGOLIAN COPPER MINE

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ According to the miningweekly.com website on February 21, an emergency fall-arresting system (EFAS), developed and manufactured in South Africa by conveyance safety solutions provider Horne Group, was commissioned this month at a large copper mine in Mongolia. Horne Group engineers have been on site at Number One shaft at the Mongolian copper mine since early January testing and calibrating the EFAS to ensure that commissioning proceeds on schedule and on time for the Mongolian mining inspectorate. Commercial production at the mine will begin immediately afterwards. The EFAS, which is a dual-purpose pro-duct that delivers a safe-stop to a mine cage in free fall and the standard chairing function needed at mine shaft stations, is a radical departure from safety dogs and other devices traditionally used to arrest mine cages under emergency conditions. The EFAS offers mines the advantage of controlled cage deceleration, and works equally well on wooden and steel shaft guides, as opposed to safety dogs, which do not offer controlled deceleration, and can only be installed in mines with wooden guides. The EFAS system uses a hydraulic accumulator that operates in combination with Levelok guide clamps – which is also a Horne Group product – running along the shaft guides. Under failed rope conditions, a valve on the EFAS hydraulic accumulator auto-matically opens to force hydraulic fluid, under regulated pressure, to the system clamps, activating them and bringing the cage to a safe halt. The accumulator recharges to full pressure each time the cage is stopped at a shaft station. Mining electronics company Guduza System Technologies, previously known as Grintek Mining Electronics, is also on site at the mine working alongside Horne Group as the South African company responsible for EFAS communications with the winder room.