Reducing Fuel Consumption of Haul Trucks in Surface Mines Using Artificial Intelligence Models

Energy saving has become an important aspect of every business activity as it is important in terms of cost savings and greenhouse gas emission reduction. This study aims to develop a comprehensive artificial intelligence model for reducing energy consumption in the mining industry. Many parameters influence the fuel consumption of surface mining haul trucks. This includes, but not limited to, truck load, truck speed and total haul road resistance. In this study, a fitness function for the haul truck fuel consumption based on these parameters is generated using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). This function is utilised to generate a multi-objective model based on Genetic Algorithm (GA). This model is used to estimate the optimum values of the haulage parameters to reduce fuel consumption. The developed model is generated and tested using real data collected from four large surface mines. It is found that for all four mines considered in this study, the haul truck fuel consumption can be reduced by optimising truck load, truck speed and total haul road resistance using the developed artificial intelligence model.