An Upper Hunter engineering company says it has manufactured the first dust suppressing dump truck in Australia.
Austin Engineering, based at Muswellbrook, has built two of the trucks, which will be soon used at a local coal mine.
It is hoped the new trucks will reduce the dust emissions, with the Environment Protection Authority recently introducing the Dust Stop Program which aims to achieve an 80 per cent reduction in dust.
Austin executive general manager, Tim Ekert says dumping coal or overburden is one of the major sources of dust emissions at coal mines.
“It’s got a revolutionary floor design, it literally controls the flow of material as it dumps out of the body,” he said.
“So the material comes out and sheers of itself and comes out in a more controlled manner which then reduces the dust during dumping.”
Mr Ekert says the dump trucks, which have been built at its Muswellbrook plant, are already operating overseas.
“We’ve got a number of these running around in mines in north America where we’ve built them with an operation we’ve got over there but these will be the first couple in a Australia,” he said.
“It’s always good to be able to display the benefits locally rather than be able to say we’ve got some operating overseas so it’s a very exciting time for us.”
