How to Choose Open-pit Mining Equipment?

Open-pit mining is a project that extracts useful minerals from the earth's crust in an open environment using mining, tunneling, and transportation equipment, which mainly composed of drilling, blasting, excavating and loading and transportation. These four operations are closely related to open-pit mining equipment and are the key to open-pit mining engineering.

The cost of open-pit mining is mainly composed of the loss of mining equipment and fuel consumption. Therefore, the choice of mining equipment will play a dominant role in the process and cost of open-pit mining.

This article will share how to choose open-pit mining equipment reasonably.

The selection process of open-pit mining equipment is generally to select the appropriate loading equipment first，and determine the supporting transportation equipment. And then choose drilling equipment. When the main equipment is properly matched, then to confirm the auxiliary equipment

(1) Choice of Excavator

The choice of excavator is a complicated process, which is mainly determined according to the conditions of mining and stripping quantity, physical and mechanical properties of ore rocks, mining technology and equipment performance, so as to give full play to the efficiency of mine production equipment. The production equipment of each process should be mutually adapted and matched reasonably.

Whether to choose the electric shovel or hydraulic shovel excavator must be carefully considered. When the power condition is good and the types of ore are few, the electric shovel excavator should be preferred when there is no need to separate. When the bucket capacity of the excavator adapted to the mine is greater than 10m³, the electric shovel should be selected, and the hydraulic shovel should be selected for the bucket capacity less than 10m³.

(2) Choice of Loading Equipment

When loading equipment is used as auxiliary equipment in open-pit mine, it is necessary not only to consider whether the main technical performance, such as rated load and traction force, can meet the requirements of complexity of mine production, but also to consider the influence of the scattered operation items on the efficiency of loader. When you have requirements for ore blending, you should first set up a storage yard near the crushing station, and the transportation of the prepared ore from the storage yard to the crushing station is generally completed by the frontloader. The size of the frontloader should be selected according to the ore quantity and transportation distance.

Transportation accounts for 40% to 60% of the total cost of open-pit mining, so the choice of transportation equipment is very important.

The choice of transportation equipment for open-pit stopes mainly depends on the development and transport mode. When the transportation distance of ore rock is short, the single vehicle transportation should be considered first. When the distance of ore and rock transportation is long, it is necessary to determine whether to use single vehicle transportation or joint development transportation through technical and economic comparison. The main factors that affect the choice of development transportation methods are the natural geological conditions, mining technical conditions, and economic factors.

When using automobile transportation, it is necessary to consider its compatibility with the excavator. It is generally believed that when the haul distance is 1km, the automobile with 2 to 4 buckets should be used. When the haul distance is 2km, the automobile with 3 to 5 buckets should be used. When the haul distance is 3-5km, the automobile with 4 to 6 buckets should be used.

Drilling rig is a kind of equipment that is easily overlooked, because it occupies a small proportion of production cost. But drilling rigs are the open-pit mining equipment that is the easiest to realize automation.

Roller-bit hole rig is suitable for drilling operations of various hardness rocks. The first choice for drilling equipment in large and medium-sized mines is roller-bit hole rig.

For small and medium-sized mines with medium-hard rock and some special requirements, such as slope holes, anchor cable holes, and drain holes, it is more appropriate to use down-the-hole drills.

The choice of auxiliary equipment is mainly based on the production equipment. When the main equipment is large, the size of the auxiliary equipment should be increased accordingly.

Crawler bulldozers support loading and transporting equipment by leveling explosive piles, clearing topsoil, road construction, and occasionally trimming slopes. For hard rock mines, the use time of the bulldozer is required to be 20% to 30% of the use time of the excavator. Usually when the load capacity of dump truck is more than 100T, you should choose the crawler bulldozer with power greater than 380kW.

The grader should be selected according to the length of the transportation road and the driving density. For mines with long haul roads and high traffic density, you should consider choosing a grader with high power. Generally large mines should choose graders with the power greater than 198kW.

The main reason why wheel bulldozers can be used as auxiliary equipment is their high maneuverability and they can replace crawler bulldozers and graders. The wheel bulldozer can be selected according to the power of the crawler bulldozer and the grader. Its power should be greater than the power of the grader but less than the power of the crawler bulldozer.

Open-pit mining equipment is steadily developing in the direction of large-scale, automated, intelligent, and informationalized. Reasonable choice of open-pit mining equipment can effectively reduce mining costs and strive for greater benefits.

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