CASE STUDY 1
USING IoT TO MONITOR THE LARGEST
GOLD MINE IN THAILAND
Akara Resources is a subsidiary of the ASX listed Kingsgate Consolidated Limited. This company
is known as the leading gold producer in Thailand as it owns the most important and largest
gold mine in the nation, known as Chatree. This gold mine is a very complex mine around
300 kilometres away from Bangkok.
However, the mine was causing an adverse impact on local communities located near the
mine. The local community and government regulator created constant pressure on the mine
operators by suspending the mine operations.
The EnviroSuite facilitates an innovative solution to mine-operator with its advanced
system to handle risks of damage on the community. It e ectively helps them to track new
evolving issues by considering real-time data than just estimations.
This project lead by Pacifi c Environment has the main objective is to improve Akara’s
commitment to its corporate and social responsibilities. However, the objectives could be
further expanded into four di erent actions.
• The real-time monitoring of air quality and meteorological updates,
• A special module for predictive and risk handling operations,
• Complaint handling, and
• Blast management.
They have installed smart sensors to regulate the air quality parameters and to examine
real-time changes in weather. The saved data from the sensor module could be accessed for
users to report compliance and to backtrack for accountability. They have used hydrogen
cyanide (HCN) and temperature sensors to measure some of the most important parameters.
The communication nodes have been directly connected to EnviroSuite Cloud Platform
by using 3G communications. This helps them to maintain a very strong environmental
management system that has been adjusted to social licenses and regulatory to improve the
relations with Public Regulation Organizations. The smart environment modules have been
well designed to meet the demands and regulations of municipalities and governments for
Smart City projects. It has been well calibrated which enables it to monitor environmental
parameters like humidity, temperature, pressure, particle matter in the air and 16 types of other
gases. It is a very well-known fact that the miners who work in such mines are continuously
exposed to some health risks. They are in constant contact with various substances that could
cause severe damage to the respiratory system. If we could regulate and monitor the quality in
such mines, then a lot of threats could be reduced in order to improve the working conditions
of the workers.
The outcome of the project has been very successful. It has further enhanced the envi-
ronmental management in the region and has brought a higher level of accountability and
transparency. The data obtained from the air quality module can be monitored and analysed in
real-time. The same project can be deployed in other mines as well. The same platform has been
used previously in other projects of the mining sector of coal and iron ore.
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