TOMAGO equipment company BME is retrofitting diesel-powered underground mining machines with batteries and hopes to be manufacturing the vehicles in the Hunter within five years.
Operations manager Ryan Lehman said yesterday that BME and affiliated company CME employed about 120 people at Tomago and 30 at Emerald in Queensland.
A crew of about 10 at BME were working on a batch of 10 diesel tool carriers - machines that could be kitted out for various uses including front-end loaders, forklifts and work platforms.
Mr Lehman said lithium-ion battery power was increasingly popular in mining.
He said the machines were being used in various places around the country, including a NSW copper mine and a WA gold mine.
He said BME, through its partner 3ME Technology, was working with government regulators in NSW and Queensland on having their battery-powered vehicles certified for use in underground coal, where the risk of explosions from from coal-gas made safety the main priority.
Mr Lehman said progress had been made since the Newcastle Herald reported on the first battery truck a year ago.
He said the International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassified diesel in 2012 from a probable to actual human carcinogen.
Mining was under pressure to change its practices, especially underground, where exhaust exposures were high.
Mr Lehman said emissions from mining operations accounted for about 4 per cent to 7 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, about one-third of it from diesel machinery.
He said ventilation to dilute diesel fumes used between a quarter and a half of an underground mine's energy needs.
He said battery conversion was not cheap, but it saved substantially in fuel costs and had health and environmental advantages.
