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By C L. McIntosh

The west coast of New Zealand’s south island is host to a large number of placer goldfields that stretch from the Westport area in the north to Gillespies Beach in the south and inland to the foothills of the Southern Alps. This area is host to a large number of alluvial, glacial and strand line deposits ageing in range from Recent to Tertiary. In recent years exploration models have been developed for off shore placer deposits on the continental shelf.Gold mining on the west coast has exploited placer gold resources from the 1860s to present, and with the recent surge in the gold price the industry is currently undergoing a resurgence. The current increase in mining is dominated by small-scale mechanical operations usually involving one to two people at each site; a few larger operations also exist such as the Grey River Dredge.Mining methods range from using floating bucket dredges to small diggers. Some of the mining technologies used are similar to those employed during the great gold rushes of the 19th century. Exploration and grade control techniques can be very rudimentary often relying on previous sampling programs or wide spaced bulk sample drill holes. Some bulk sample drilling is used on the larger operations as a form of grade control, most of the small operations tend not to use any ore control sampling prior to mining. Extraction techniques relying on simple gravity based designs with riffle tables or spirals are the most commonly used. Environmental standards are very high within New Zealand and require operators to return mined areas to preagreed to landforms. The high rainfall experienced on the west coast causes challenges to operators in regard to water quality. Technical issues combined with often limited capital provide for challenges to the operations.

Aug 22, 2011

By T Raynlyn, A Edenton, M Adam, R J. Holmes, J R. Manuel, N Ware, R Smyth

Due to ongoing demand and increasing depletion of high-grade iron ore resources from large deposits, Australian iron ore producers are developing smaller size deposits to maintain current export levels. The iron grade, mineralogy, chemical and physical characteristics of iron ore fines being mined from different deposits vary considerably. It is therefore imperative to develop long-term strategies to maintain the quality and consistency of iron ore fines while moving to a larger diversity of smaller deposits. Blending is a common practice in sinter plants as it is almost impossible to produce a high performance sinter mixture displaying the required characteristics from one single ore. Blending is also one of the most effective options being used by iron ore producers to ensure the long-term stability of their products while increasing production. When designing a blend, the blend components are selected to support each other to achieve the required overall balanced metallurgical performance of the final product at a relatively low cost. To do so, a fundamental understanding of the key characteristics of iron ore fines and their potential impacts on the iron ore sintering process and sinter quality are required. In this paper, the sintering process and sinter structure have been analysed and the key factors affecting the sintering performance of iron ore fines, including productivity and quality, identified. Under fixed sintering conditions, the granulation efficiency, nuclei stability and the volume and properties of the primary sinter melt are believed to have important impacts on both sintering productivity and sinter quality. Discussion is then focused on the effects of ore chemical, physical and mineralogical characteristics on the key factors identified and in turn the consequences for sintering productivity and sinter quality.

Jan 1, 2009

By C Donnelly

Redpath Australia is using a unique mining method for the Australian underground coal industry at Kestrel Mine Extension in the Bowen Basin, Central Queensland.The project involves completing two separate drifts from the surface for access to the German Creek Coal Seam located approximately 230 m below the existing surface. The scope of work is primarily the construction of two drifts; the first is 1577 m at 1 in 6 gradient and the second 1874 m at 1 in 8 gradient. Each drift has been developed by a Mitsui S200 roadheader with modifications to allow for a continuous tunnelling/mining cycle operation. A shotcrete boom has been fitted to the left hand side of the machine with the operators console located at ground level. Another operators console is elevated on the right hand side of the machine to allow operation of the rotary drill boom which is mounted on a slide rail to allow flexibility of positioning depending on the stage of the cycle. In support of the roadheader activities, an integrated conveyor system mounted on a sliding floor arrangement is able to be advanced as the mining face progresses. This sliding floor consists of four 1.5 m × 6 m sections that utilise hydraulic rams to ‘walk’ inbye, allowing room for installation of precast concrete floor panels for final floor completion. This method borrows from the tunnelling and construction industries to eliminate place-change delays in the mining cycle by enabling complete ground support installation without retreat of the primary development machine from the face. The aim is to reduce the project duration with the completion of final floor and services to within 30 m of the operating face as it advances.

Mar 21, 2011

By M English, M Yumlu

At times of high metal prices, mining projects that have previously been put into the ætoo hard basketÆ are now being more closely examined. Typically these projects include the potential recovery of small mineable tonnes with high contained metal values and often with poor ground conditions. For many underground mining projects, the drift and fill method is viewed as a high-cost method and a æmethod of last resortÆ. As a result the method is not well known in Australia and it is the authorsÆ view that the method is under utilised. The drift and fill method can be applied to a variety of underground mining situations and is a preferred method for some orebody geometries and where ore recovery is viewed as a key to project success. This paper examines some of the critical mine planning and backfill issues involved with the drift and fill mining method.

Jan 1, 2008

The mining industry has expanded significantly in the Pacific Region over the past two decades through a mix of new developments and brownfields expansions of existing operations. Despite this overall success there are also a number of well publicised examples of less than successful minerals ventures. These problem developments highlight the fact that success cannot be taken for granted and that rigorous planning and attention to detail is essential. The dominant growth has come through expansion of existing businesses, notably alumina, iron ore and coal, achieved through both efficiency gains on existing plant and step change capacity additions such as new mines and/or expanded processing plant. This expansion has largely been linked to increased market opportunities. The major issues are the quality and extent of the host resource, achieving the market targets, and the efficiency of the expansion effort. There can be also a range of site specific issues which need to be addressed. The development of new greenfields operations is often more complex as it can bring a wide range of new issues. Depending on the nature of the development, and the companies involved, these can extend from initial financing through to obtaining a market position. Incorporating major new technology and/or establishing infrastructure and attracting staff to remote locations can also add significant challenges. This paper outlines many of the critical factors which need to be considered prior to proceeding with major expansions or greenfields developments. These will be linked to a number of developments in the region over the past decade.

Jan 1, 2004

By P Woodward, T Ly, N Muhamad

OZ Minerals' Prominent Hill copper-gold concentrator is located 650 km north-west of Adelaide in the Gawler Craton of South Australia. The concentrator was built in 2008 and commenced commercial production in early 2009. The Prominent Hill concentrator is comprised of a conventional grinding and flotation processing plant with a design capacity of 8 Mtpa. The flotation circuit includes six rougher cells, an IsaMill for regrinding the rougher concentrate and a Jameson cell preceding the three stage conventional cell cleaner circuit.Since its commissioning, the Prominent Hill flotation circuit has been the focus of a series of projects aimed at continual performance improvement. This has been achieved by a systematic approach of project identification, evaluation and implementation which has led to a progressive improvement in flotation performance. Innovations that have been successfully implemented include aspects of cell design and operation, and reagent suite optimisation.Improvements to the mechanical cells initially focused on the installation of a modified rotor-stator design in the rougher circuit, as recommended by Outotec. Isolated cells were fitted with this technology and proven to provide a benefit for copper recovery before the design was trialled in subsequent cells along the bank. Based on this success, further modifications were made to other aspects of the rougher and cleaner cells.Laboratory trials conducted at Prominent Hill involve a screening process identifying potential reagents from a list of products, which are then rigorously tested in the laboratory before one is selected for trial in the concentrator. Where these reagents have demonstrated a statistical improvement in performance they have typically been incorporated permanently into the flotation circuit. This paper discusses the process of continual improvement at the Prominent Hill flotation circuit and the optimisation achieved by the implementation of key initiatives.CITATION:Woodward, P, Muhamad, N and Ly, T, 2013. Optimisation of the Prominent Hill flotation circuit, in Proceedings MetPlant 2013 , pp 431-444 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Jul 15, 2013

By G Jones

The Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) has been procuring the expansion of their underground mass rapid transit rail network at a prodigious rate since the first line opened in 1987. Four lines (149 km) are currently operating and several more lines are at various stages of planning/construction; one of these is the Downtown line stage 2 (DTL 2).DTL 2 contract C917 was awarded in September 2009 for S$320 M. On 18 June 2013 the original contractor became insolvent, leaving the works incomplete. Following a fast-tracked tender process, McConnell Dowell was awarded the S$254 M contract on 29 August 2013 to complete the works. This contract includes two underground stations constructed by cut-and-cover methods and twin bored tunnels between the stations. Each tunnel is 1400 m long, excavated by earth pressure balanced (EPB) tunnel boring machines (TBM) at an average depth of 20 m and segment lined to 5.8 m inner diameter. The tunnel alignment is located under a busy five-lane road lined with prime residential real estate and congested with utilities.To compound the difficulty the tunnels are located within the notorious Bukit Timah Granite formation. This has a very wide range of strength, from below 1 MPa to over 300 MPa. This strength range is a consequence of six weathering grades, from soil to fresh rock, with the fresh granite causing severe abrasion problems. The various grades can occur within a very short distance of each other. Consequently, the problem of supporting a mixed face exists, particularly in the intermediate weathering grades where intact rock is encountered in the invert and corestones within a loose soil matrix in the crown, which can increase the instability by allowing the ground to flow into the TBM.The focus of this paper will be the excavation of the bored tunnels by EPB TBM used by McConnell Dowell to complete these challenging works.CITATION:Jones, G and Shepherd, J, 2014. Earth pressure balanced tunnelling in a dense urban environment, C917A, in Proceedings 15th Australasian Tunnelling Conference 2014 , pp 41–50 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Sep 17, 2014

By Kavanagh M. E, Henley R. W

The Meekatharra mining district lies in the northern pan of the Murchison Province of the Archaean Ynlgam block of Western Australia. Since dis- covery of the Paddy's Flat belt in the district in 1897 total gold production has been 67 tonnes and a further 33 tonnes in resources have been defined by drilling. The Paddy's Flat gold deposits occur within the Gabanintha Formation, a basal formation of the Murchison greenstone sequence containing komatiitic basalts, ultramafics and minor banded iron formations. The regional control on the distribution of deposits is an anastomosing shear belt which extends over 350 km and incorporates the Mt Magnet, Reedys and Meekatharra deposits. The following gold deposit styles may be recognized based on lithological association and alteration: Albite porphyry hosted, Carbonate-fuchsite- quartz alteration hosted deposits, Banded Iron Formation hosted sulphide replacement gold deposits and quartz vein deposits. With the exception of the banded iron formation hosted deposits, the Paddy's Flat alteration zone shows strong similarities to the alteration styles at Kerr-Addison (Ontario).

Jan 1, 1991

By A Stradling

For a geometallurgical program to be successful, linkage must be made between the geologists and geostaticians who understand and model the orebody, the metallurgists who determine the value that can be extracted from the different geometallurgical units, and the mine planners who develop and optimise the plan to extract maximum economic value from the resource. One of the primary purposes of geometallurgical models is in the determination of the economic cut-off between ore and waste. Recognition of the level of confidence required in the estimation of grade, throughput and recovery is critical to the planning of a successful geometallurgical program. It also helps clarify the scope of work needed to mitigate risk at each stage in the development of a new mine projectThis presentation provides some of the author’s experience with development and application of geometallurgical models for existing base metal operations. It discusses how geological units defined by lithology, structure, alteration etc, can be translated into geometallurgical ore types defined by mineralogy, ore hardness, and flotation behaviour. Examples of how these characteristics have been used to estimate key economic parameters such as mill throughput and flotation recovery at two brown-field operations are provided. The first example relates to the modelling of metallurgical performance at Teck’s Red Dog zinc-lead mine in Alaska. Prior to 2000, zinc, lead and silver recoveries from a block of ore at Red Dog were either assumed constant, or were varied according to simplistic models. Throughput was not thought to vary substantially between blocks, so an average value was used for each blended stockpile. It is quite possible that some ore-value blocks were classified as waste, and some waste-value blocks treated as ore, as a result of poor understanding of the true economic cut off across the wide range of ore types observed at Red Dog. After an extensive flotation test program, the first assay-based zinc recovery model was developed for the Main pit reserve in 2003.**This is an abstract only. No paper was prepared for this abstract**

Sep 5, 2011

By F Ramos

Conventional techniques for resource estimation generally involve the laborious analysis of variograms and the specification of parameters for covariance functions. In large deposits, construction of resource models and their update require significant amount of manual work, expert knowledge and time. In this paper we take a machine learning view to the problem of resource estimation. This is a non-parametric Bayesian method, leading to automatic parameter estimation (learning). Through Bayesian learning, the parameters of the model can be obtained by optimising a quantity known as the marginal likelihood. The main advantage of this approach over conventional maximum likelihood estimators is that the objective function incorporates the OccamÆs razor principle. This allows the comparison of different statistical models û for example, models designed with different covariance functions û and naturally penalises complexity, thus avoiding overfitting. Our technique presents significant flexibility for the definition of mean and covariance functions and permits the usage of more sophisticated models.The second contribution of this work is the formulation of a data fusion mechanism that continuously updates the resource model. As mining progresses, more information becomes available. For example, the hardness of the rocks can be measured while drilling blast holes, grades of ore and contaminants are obtained from cone logging. This information is in general available at a finer spatial resolution but can be more uncertain. The data fusion mechanism can seamlessly estimate the uncertainties of the different types of information and fuse them as new measurements are acquired. This procedure can significantly improve the quality of the resource model, defining new grounds for stochastic mine planning. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in estimating iron ore deposits by integrating information about different grades.

Sep 26, 2011

This presentation is a 20 minute snippet of my professional career, and my progression in the mining industry, from a lazy uni student to an up-and-coming blast engineer in the middle of a mining boom.My name is Daniel Hepburn and I am a blasting engineer for Orica Mining Services. I graduated from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), in Melbourne in 2003. I completed both of my final year projects with Orica Quarry Services and was offered an assistant shotfiring job, which I accepted and worked for eight months. Having missed the cut-off date for the Orica graduate program, I planned to work with Quarry Services until the following year where I hoped my marks and the experiences I had gained would secure a graduate position. I didnÆt have to wait long, as in August of that year, I was offered (and I accepted) a graduate position in Perth as a technical services engineer for Orica Mining Services. The Orica graduate program is based over two years, and consists of real roles from day one; however, there is also opportunity to fast track the program for high performers. There is a structured rotation, from site to site, interstate or even international if you are so inclined. This includes the backpacker program, which allows graduates to experience the Orica culture in countries of their choice. There are also opportunities to try cross-functional roles in the different Market segments within Orica. I was lucky in that I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to work, so I stayed in Perth for my entire graduate program. I was also lucky enough to be fast tracked and finished my graduate program in 15 months. At the end of 2005 I accepted a position as an open cut blasting engineer based in Perth and even in such a short period of time I have already completed a number of major accomplishments. Some of these accomplishments are described below. This paper is available as a PowerPoint presentation only.

Jan 1, 2006

Gold was discovered at Waihi in 1878. In 1987 the modern Martha Mine opened in the middle of the town of Waihi. Newmont Waihi Gold as the current licence holder has been operating the mine since 2000. The current open pit was scheduled to stop production in mid 2006. An underground mine is currently being developed to the east of the town.   In 2001 serious subsidence issues from historical underground mine workings outside the mining licence and the forecast closure of the open pit acted as a catalyst for the development of new communication initiatives.   In this context Newmont Waihi Gold and the Hauraki District Council initiated a community consultation process with the people of Waihi. The Waihi Community Consultation Committee (WCCC) was established in May 2003. After an initial brief to act as a forum for community participation in closure and rehabilitation of the Martha Mine, the group quickly took on a much more proactive role working towards the long-term social, environmental, cultural, economic and spiritual sustainability of Waihi.   In the course of over three years of meetings all groups represented on the committee have presented their views, developed ideas and established an organisational structure to bring those ideas to fruition. The challenge now is to work together to consolidate likely options, seek sources of funding, produce business proposals and implement the plan for the future of Waihi.   This paper backgrounds the experience to date and describes the outcomes of the process. For more detail on process considerations this paper should be read in conjunction with Part C by process facilitators, T Clark and S Stewart. For more detail on progress towards the groupÆs goals and future possibilities, this paper should be read in conjunction with Part B by Vision Waihi Trust CEO, E Morrow.

Jan 1, 2006

By M J. Davies, R S. Davies

Despite increased expenditure, the global discovery rate of world-class ore deposits has been in decline for over a decade (Schodde, 2017). Mineral exploration has traditionally followed an empirical approach, searching for evidence of mineralisation upon the surface of the planet, then drilling to define the extent of an ore body beneath the surface. As outcropping deposits in well-defined areas are depleted, there is a need for exploration to extend to less well-explored search spaces. One popular new frontier is exploration at greater depths beneath the Earth's surface. However, exploring for deep deposits with limited surficial evidence requires the implementation of predictive targeting methodologies (Hronsky, 2011; McCuaig & Hronsky, 2014). The Mineral Systems Concept (Hronsky & Groves, 2008; McCuaig et al., 2010) provides a framework for predictive exploration targeting. Ore deposit formation is recognised to be a focused mineralising event. These events represent self-organising critical systems and are underpinned by the interaction of complex, non-linear processes. Through the collection and analysis of datasets that map mineralising processes, it may be possible to predict the size and location of resultant ore bodies. CITATION: Davies, M J and Davies, R S, 2018. Beyond below-ground geological complexity: Developing adaptive expertise in exploration decision-making, in Proceedings Complex Orebodies Conference 2018, pp 95–98 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 21, 2018

By S L. Martin, M Wimberger

The binary indicator coding of assay and lithological data according to a single criterion or multiple criteria is a powerful technique for representing mineralised shapes through the modelling of probabilities. This can be as simple as using a single indicator to model the probability of occurrence of a condition, usually a grade threshold or a lithology, but it can also be used with a number of categories. Case studies are presented to show the power of this approach, where the geological controls on mineralisation or on the distribution of a rocktype or alteration, often coupled with mineralisation, are unclear. The categorical approach is often used as a de facto grade filter in disseminated or stockwork mineralisation. The ultimate expression of the indicator formalism is in multiple indicator kriging (MIK), where a conditional distribution of probabilities is generated for each estimation panel. This has applications in recoverable resource estimation, as the input for continuous or categorical simulation, where the distribution of sample grades is multimodal, or when there are superimposed mineralisation events with different orientations. However, in some cases, MIK is being used as an excuse for ignoring a quality geological interpretation. Examples from the public domain show the abuse of the categorical and MIK approaches to modelling probabilities, together with a plea for greater consideration of the geology.

Mar 22, 2022

By G J. Lyman

Sampling of grain for mycotoxins is challenging in that some mycotoxins, such as Ochratoxin A (OTA), have very low permitted levels and the kernels carrying the mycotoxin may be highly localised within the bulk of the grain as ‘hot spots’. Sampling for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be fraught with similar problems, especially if the contamination is adventitious and random. Incremental sampling under these circumstances can be shown to lead to a high variance in the sampling result.A new design of sampler for grain and other free-flowing particulates has been developed that is effective in practically eliminating the sampling variance due to distributional heterogeneity (DH).This paper introduces the design and argues that the sampler should be free of sampling variance due to DH.CITATION:Lyman, G J, 2017. A new sampler for grain and other free-flowing particulates, in Proceedings Eighth World Conference on Sampling and Blending , pp 277–280 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

May 9, 2017

By T W. C Stambolie

Coalmines, like any other mine, generally involve the classic three-staged approach to mining studies; namely concept, pre-feasibility study (PFS) and feasibility studies (Cusworth, 2012). Subsequent to these studies, and in instances parallel to these studies, the commitment to an environmental impact statement (EIS) is made in order to secure both state and federal development consent. In recent times, the sentiment to both mining and coal is changing whereby the traditional approaches to mine planning and economic evaluation is complicated by evolving environmental legislation, expectations and time frames. It is all too common to take shortcuts in the development of projects in order to create the perception of cost savings and expediting the delivery timeline. Atkins (2016) points out that: boards of so many small to mid-tier mining companies, and a few majors, focus on relentless project delivery too early in the project process, with so little time and effort applied to risk analysis and option development. Unforeseen risks can cost any timeline or budget far more than the effort required assessing and mitigating these. The ultimate risk to any feasible coal project is that of environmental approval and achieving development consent.CITATION:Stambolie, T W C, 2016. A black canvas – planning a greenfield coalmine in New South Wales, in Proceedings Life-of-Mine 2016 Conference , pp 31–35 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Jun 28, 2016

By C Jones

Ridgeway Deeps is a block cave (BC) located down dip of the operating Ridgeway sublevel cave (SLC) mine. The BC is located approximately 210 m vertically below the lowest SLC level and approximately 1100 m below surface. Due to the mine layout containing a number of common pieces of key infrastructure the activities of both were interlinked.When investigating project construction options for the BC, a number of potential risks were identified including a conflict of priorities between operational and project deliverables and the varying safety and work methods between an owner mining approach in the SLC and a potential contractor workforce in the BC. This led to a review of the construction philosophy and the opportunity to utilise the existing SLC workforce as the basis of all activities in the mine. It was identified that a number of synergies existed with the current SLC operators and mine supervision including common work practices and the opportunity to build on the unique SLC skills of the operators and supervisors which could then be used at other Newcrest caving mines.With the commitment to this philosophy of building on the existing SLC crews and supervision the number of employees reporting through the superintendent underground operations grew from 95 to 245. This increase led to a restructuring of the reporting and work requirements of the superintendent, foremen and shift bosses. In order for the foreman and shift bosses to focus on running the larger crew numbers for the full 12 hour shift the mine superintendent became a pseudo human resources manager taking over all non-mine focused activities including overtime allocation and work and behavioural performance management. In simple terms, ensuring there were competent bums on seats when and where required. As the additional workers were recruited to top up the existing employee numbers, their employment history was used to place them in the most suitable roles. For example, those with building industry experience were placed on the civil construction crews and those with a farming background were used as truck drivers, nippers or on the service crews. To cope with the increased number of new starters a number of key personnel were seconded from the crews into the training group to act as on shift trainers. This initially caused a reduction in mine performance as the main operators were reassigned but it proved a valid move as the time for new operators to reach acceptable levels was significantly reduced with safe operating standards being maintained. This paper discusses how the Ridgeway Deeps Project was delivered on time and under budget whilst at the same time retaining its position globally as an operation to be benchmarked against.

Mar 21, 2011

By J Greberg

This paper discusses the use of simulation in the mine planning process. A case study on the Newcrest Cadia East project is presented, and the challenges and possibilities for using simulation as a tool for mine planning and scheduling is discussed.The simulation study presented in this paper was performed during the project’s prefeasibility stage, and focused on the planning and scheduling of the development of panels in the future mine. The Cadia East project will be the largest underground operation in Australia and the first using panel caving. Simulation was used in order to optimise the development of panels; it was mainly used in order to verify the plans for the development process and allocate resources in an optimal way. The work was performed as an iterative process and adjustments to the plans were made according to simulation results. Bottlenecks were identified and different scenarios were tested.The results from the simulation study shows how different operational constraints affect the planned development process and how changes in priorities can be necessary in order to maintain a high development speed. Furthermore the study shows how changes in planned mine layout requires changed strategies, and how this was solved using the simulation tool.In this paper the authors critically discusses the use of simulation in mining operations: what are the limitations and challenges of using simulation as a tool for mine planning and scheduling, what are the benefits, and what do we aim for in the future?

Nov 22, 2011

By P F. Hodkiewicz

"Our understanding of mineral resources relies on three basic steps: data capture data interpretation model construction. Until recently, all three of these steps required significant time and manual effort to produce a single resource model for mine planning, typically taking more than a year to progress from drilling to the final block model. Over the past several years, BHP Billiton has been developing innovative workflows in rapid resource modelling projects to significantly reduce these time constraints and make the process more productive by replacing manual activities with automated ones. Rapid resource modelling is the process of combining recently developed off-the-shelf technology with internal technology developments to fundamentally change the way we collect, interpret, model and evaluate geoscience data. Initiatives include automated systems and standardised workflows to make it safer, faster and cheaper to continuously update multidiscipline resource models. Specifically, rapid resource modelling workflows combine: real-time analysis of drill holes and drill samples with downhole tools and hyperspectral scanning systemsautomated interpretation of drill hole intervals based on pattern-recognition algorithmscontinuous modelling workflows using implicit modelling software. This paper outlines technology developments and workflows that provide a more thorough understanding of mineral resources to support faster and more informed strategic, planning and production decisions.CITATION:Hodkiewicz, P F, 2014. Rapid resource modelling – a vision for faster and better mining decisions, in Proceedings Ninth International Mining Geology Conference 2014 , pp 183–188 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Aug 18, 2014

By D Piason

Newstan Mine commenced mining operations in 1887 and has since undertaken extensive mining within the Young Wallsend, Great Northern, Fassifern, Borehole and West Borehole coal seams using a range of mining methods including board and pillar mining and longwall mining.Newstan Mine is planning to extend the existing mine workings using longwall and miniwall mining methods to produce up to 4.5 Mt/a of run-of-mine (ROM) coal for at least 25 years. The planned extension in the Main East and South West sections will involve developing new longwall panels and related mains headings. The new area contains higher specific gas emissions (SGE) than previously experienced at Newstan Mine. To achieve the optimum ventilation requirements for the longwall operation in this new area, a new ventilation shaft was designed to be constructed using the blind boring method in the South West Headings section.This paper presents the shaft design parameters and selection criteria for the construction of the new ventilation shaft, including the construction phase and the holing process to connect the shaft to the underground workings. The paper also discusses future ventilation requirements for Newstan Mine.CITATION:Piason, D, 2015. South-west ventilation shaft project at Newstan Mine, in Proceedings The Australian Mine Ventilation Conference, pp 229–238 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Aug 31, 2015