Sustainable open pit fleet management system: integrating economic and environmental objectives into truck allocation

ABSTRACT

Fleet management systems in open pit mines make two important semi-dynamic and dynamic decisions to maximize utilization of available equipment: the decision of allocation and the decision of dispatching the trucks to the shovels. In this paper, we propose a bi-objective mathematical model that incorporates the minimization of carbon emission into the allocation optimization model. We also consider different inputs that might impact upon truck allocation decisions such as the fleet size, truck velocity, truck age groups, etc. The presented mathematical model is examined using two different case studies from an iron mine and a copper mine containing a different number of shovels, dumps, and trucks. The results reveal that the developed model enhances the production performance while controlling emissions. It is indicated that the average truck velocity and, the age of trucks are among the critical factors, which can highly affect the amount of carbon emissions.

KEYWORDS:

• Open-pit mine planning
• multi-objective optimization
• truck allocation
• mathematical programming
• fleet management system
• carbon emission
• production planning
• truck-shovel system
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).