Face to Surface II
The objective of the project is to increase production capacity and reduce production cost for Sublevel Caving mines by optimizing fragmentation, using optimized blast hole sizes, improved chargeability, new technique for boulder handling and improved overall production planning.
Except for the overall objective, “increase production capacity and reduce production cost” the project will develop production tools for material characterization for charging support. The project will also provide a deeper understanding of how hole sizes influence ground vibrations, develop procedures for how production planning can be improved using machine monitoring and generate a better and deeper understanding of how mobile boulder breakers can reduce production disturbances.
The underground mining process, from in-situ characteristics of the rock mass to the final mill product, consists of a chain of unit operations that all impact, and are influenced by, fragmentation. From a production point of view, fragmentation is a key parameter for the function of many of the included unit operations and for the total production. The fragmentation varies due to, for example, rock mass strength, presence of joints, chosen explosive, specific charge (kg/m3) and quality of drill holes. The fragmentation will influence the ability to load, haul and later crush the rock further downstream in the process flow. Furthermore, the possibility to automate different process steps is strongly dependent on the ability to control fragmentation.
The efficiency and result of the unit operations such as drilling, blasting, loading and crushing depend on the rock properties, which vary throughout a mine. Today, the operations are not well adapted to the actual rock properties, giving a non-optimized flow in the production process. The development of good models for design, optimization and control of size reduction processes is absolutely necessary to achieve efficiency and recovery goals set in the SMIFU vision.
Project funding: Face to Surface II is part of the Strategic innovation programme for the Swedish Mining and Metal producing Industry, SIP-STRIM, which is supported by VINNOVA, FORMAS and the Swedish Energy Agency (Elforsk).
Project partners: LTU, LKAB, AGIO System och Kompetens AB, EPIROC
Anna Gustafson, Håkan Schunnesson, Daniel Johansson and Sohail Manzoor
Contact
Anna Gustafson
- Professor
- 0920-493309
- anna.gustafson@ltu.se
- Anna Gustafson
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