Haulage System Selection for Parvadeh Coal mine Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods

One of the key components of any project, especially mining projects, is the selection and design of haulage equipment. In most mining activities, which sometimes contain the mining machinery, haulage costs form a major part of the operating expenses so that the issue becomes a matter of concern for mine managers. The process of selecting the haulage system is not a crystal clear one because of various factors affecting the selection, leading to the complexity and multi-criterion characteristic of it. Therefore, the use of multi-criterion decision-making methods can help to solve this problem. The TOPSIS, AHP, VIKOR methods among the multi-criterion decision-making methods are some options based on priority ranking. In this paper, the loading systems of conveyors, wagons and winches as well as the locomotives and wagons are investigated. Then, the aforementioned systems are used to make a hybrid based on eight criteria, which yields the best loading system for the Parvadeh coal mine in Tabas. In order to use the above methods, some integration techniques were utilized because the results were not consistent with each other in some cases. After integrating the results of the ranking methods, the conveyor haulage system was eventually introduced as the best option.