Modern Mining October 2016

SAFETY IN MINING

crowded PDS market

remarks. “So even before the latest legislation came into force, we were in a position where we had a market that was broadly receptive to the PDS concept. The new legislation, how- ever, means that even those companies which were sceptical of its benefits are now required to implement PDS and this has given a further boost to already healthy sales.” In the years it has been in business, Booyco – which counts most of the major ‘blue chip’ mining companies as its customers – has installed its proximity detection systems at mines all over South Africa. “South Africa accounts for the bulk of sales but we do have our products in use at mines in both Zambia and Madagascar,” says Lourens. “Over the years we’ve equipped around 45 000 people and 5 000 vehicles and we believe we are the market leader in Southern Africa.” He adds that Booyco has seven branches in South Africa, providing an extensive service ‘footprint’ throughout the country. Booyco’s PDS – developed in collabo- ration with German company SELECTRONIC but assembled

locally at a facility in Jet Park, Johannesburg – employs very low frequency ( VL F ) a n d r a d i o

frequency (RF) tech- nology. Pedestrians are equipped with two-way RFID tags installed in their cap lamps while vehicles are fitted with VLF antennae which create stable fields of a prede- termined size and shape around the vehicle. When a pedestrian enters the zone in which

first customer was one of the large South African coal mining companies. In 2015, however, we extended the product to surface by adding GPS technology to the mix. Our surface system has proved exceptionally popular

Above: Booyco’s PDS is assembled locally at the company’s Jet Park facility. Left: The PDS transfers in- formation between users via Booyco Electronics’ human machine interface.

and now accounts for a major part of our sales.” Given that the PDS field is relatively young, there is a clear need for some standardisation of the technology, argues Lourens. “At the moment, there are no standards or specifica- tions governing the design and manufacture of proximity detection systems – and, in fact, no real agreement even on what exact capabili- ties a PDS should have,” he says. “One result of this is that the various PDS products on the market can’t ‘talk’ to each other. This is unnec- essarily restrictive and tends to lock mines into

the field is established, the tag is activated and a warning signal is triggered and simultane- ously the operator of the vehicle is also warned that a pedestrian has entered the danger zone. The VLF antennae create warning zones of up to 15 m. The size of the warning zone that can be achieved is dependent on the power available – for example, from intrinsically safe (IS) power supplies or DC/DC converters – as well as the vehicle’s physical size. Says Lourens: “Originally our PDS was developed for use underground and in fact our

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October 2016  MODERN MINING  35