Sustainable Quality Drilling
This project will focus on identification of a fundamental setup that is required for transforming MWD data and hole deviation data into sensible design parameters and to integrate them in blast design theories. The project provides an opportunity to develop methodologies that will facilitate the decision making and blast designing. This will lead to improved sustainability by adaptively charging boreholes avoiding excessive fines production, boulders formation and toxic gases.
The ore production in almost all hard rock mines in the world is based on drilled holes in which explosives are entered to fragment the rock into manageable material for the following process. Production hole drilling is therefore a key activity for the mines influencing economy, productivity, resource efficiency, social and environmental impacts.
One major challenge for past, todays and future mining industry is the ability to drill long, straight production boreholes. Depending on the mining method, borehole deviation can either influences the planned production cost or causes excessive ore loss. From a production point of view hole deviations causes inhomogeneous explosive energy distribution, with high values when holes are closer than designed and low values when holes deviate away from each other. This in turn causes inhomogeneous fragmentation with high numbers of boulders and fine fragments.
Measurement-While-Drilling (MWD) means that a series of parameters are measured, during drilling of production holes by which the hardness and fracturing qualities of the rock in contact with the drill bit is calculated. The hardness parameter when calibrated is an estimate of strength of the in-situ rock. Therefore, a 3-Dimensional model of the in-situ rock with detailed strength and fracturing quality can be obtained and used in the subsequent step, i.e. blast design, to achieve better fragmentation.
A better prior knowledge of site-specific rock mass characterization, mechanical properties and drill quality helps to improve blasting and crushing practices by suppressing the amount of fines and oversized fragments at the source rather than dealing with them afterwards and by reduction of the amount of emitted explosive toxic gases and nitrogen leakage into the environment. The results will help provide a basis for a more sustainable and economically viable mining industry, which is needed to facilitate sustainable production of metal and minerals for society and infrastructure.
Project partners: Epiroc
Project financier: The work is conducted with-in the Strategic innovationprogram Swedish Mining Innovation (SMI), a joint effort of Vinnova, Formas and Swedish Energy Agency.
Contact
Armin Iravani
- Associate Senior Lecturer
- 0920-492177
- armin.iravani@ltu.se
- Armin Iravani
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