CASE STUDY Shovel Fragmentation Metrics™ 15% Reduction ...Rock fragmentation directly affects the...
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ShovelMetrics™ CASE STUDY 01 Introduction Rock fragmentation directly affects the excavation and transportation of ore from the mine to the processing plant. Effective blasting can produce a desired fragmentation, which will contribute to optimized transportation and processing. Challenges At a Teck Coal mining operation in British Columbia, 80 to 100 million cubic meters of waste rock is blasted every year. After blasting, the waste material is excavated and removed in order to reach the coal seam. Poor fragmentation may result in longer digging cycles and reduced digability which in turn causes increased equipment maintenance costs. Excessive blasting is unnecessary and not cost effective. Fragmentation Analysis System Fragmentation Analysis Logs 15% Reduction in explosive usage
Transcript of CASE STUDY Shovel Fragmentation Metrics™ 15% Reduction ...Rock fragmentation directly affects the...
ShovelMetrics™
CASE STUDY
01
Introduction
Rock fragmentation directly affects the excavation and transportation of ore from the mine to the processing plant. Effective blasting can produce a desired fragmentation, which will contribute to optimized transportation and processing.
Challenges
At a Teck Coal mining operation in British Columbia, 80 to 100 million cubic meters of waste rock is blasted every year. After blasting, the waste material is excavated and removed in order to reach the coal seam. Poor fragmentation may result in longer digging cycles and reduced digability which in turn causes increased equipment maintenance costs. Excessive blasting is unnecessary and not cost effective.
Fragmentation Analysis System
Fragmentation Analysis Logs
15% Reductionin explosive usage
ShovelMetrics™ Fragmentation Analysis System
Solution
Drill and Blast engineers at this mine decided to conduct a series of controlled experiments to optimize their blasting procedures. Over a 2-year period, starting in January 2012, the engineers carefully reduced the blasting powder factor and performed fragmentation analysis to measure shovel digging time. At each step when the powder factor was reduced, ShovelMetrics™ was employed to perform fragmentation analysis and measure the resulting effect. The expectation was to see higher percentage passing sizes for the blasted rocks as the powder factor is reduced. The Fragmentation Analysis feature of ShovelMetrics™ made this step possible.
Over the 2-year period, reduction of the powder factor increased the 80-percentile (P80) size by over 20%. However, the loading time for the shovel digging cycle showed no increase and therefore, did not influence the efficiency of the excavation. Powder factor was reduced by 15% which resulted in saving 8.6 million kilograms of explosives for the mine.
" Powder factor was reduced by 15% which resulted in saving 8.6 million kilograms of explosives for the mine. "
Figure 1. Results-PF since 2012 by Bauer, F, 2014.
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References
Bauer, F., “Blast Optimization through Long Term Fragmentation Analysis”, International Society of Explosives Engineers Conference, Denver, CO,
2014.
