Open-pit mining

Open-pit mining
El Chino, located near Silver City, New Mexico, is an open-pit copper mine
A coquina quarry.

Open-pit mining or opencast mining refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow.

The term is used to differentiate this form of mining from extractive methods that require tunneling into the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful minerals or rock are found near the surface; that is, where the overburden (surface material covering the valuable deposit) is relatively thin or the material of interest is structurally unsuitable for tunneling (as would be the case for sand, cinder, and gravel). For minerals that occur deep below the surface—where the overburden is thick or the mineral occurs as veins in hard rock—underground mining methods extract the valued material.

Open-pit mines that produce building materials and dimension stone are commonly referred to as quarries. People are unlikely to make a distinction between an open-pit mine and other types of open-cast mines,[citation needed] such as quarries, borrows, placers, and strip mines.

Open-pit mines are typically enlarged until either the mineral resource is exhausted, or an increasing ratio of overburden to ore makes further mining uneconomic. When this occurs, the exhausted mines are sometimes converted to landfills for disposal of solid wastes. However, some form of water control is usually required to keep the mine pit from becoming a lake.


Contents

Extraction

Open-pit mines are dug on benches, which describe vertical levels of the hole. These benches are usually on four metre to sixty metre intervals, depending on the size of the machinery that is being used. Many quarries do not use benches, as they are usually shallow.

Most walls of the pit are generally dug on an angle less than vertical, to prevent and minimise damage and danger from rock falls. This depends on how weathered the rocks are, and the type of rock, and also how many structural weaknesses occur within the rocks, such as a fault, shears, joints or foliations.

The walls are stepped. The inclined section of the wall is known as the batter, and the flat part of the step is known as the bench or berm. The steps in the walls help prevent rock falls continuing down the entire face of the wall. In some instances additional ground support is required and rock bolts, cable bolts and shotcrete are used. De-watering bores may be used to relieve water pressure by drilling horizontally into the wall, which is often enough to cause failures in the wall by itself.

A haul road is usually situated at the side of the pit, forming a ramp up which trucks can drive, carrying ore and waste rock.

Waste rock is piled up at the surface, near the edge of the open pit. This is known as the waste dump. The waste dump is also tiered and stepped, to minimise degradation.

Ore which has been processed is known as tailings, and is generally a slurry. This is pumped to a tailings dam or settling pond, where the water evaporates. Tailings dams can often be toxic due to the presence of unextracted sulfide minerals, some forms of toxic minerals in the gangue, and often cyanide which is used to treat gold ore via the cyanide leach process. This toxicity has the potential to negatively impact on the surrounding environment.

Open-cast, or strip, coal mining at Garzweiler, Germany
Open-pit sulfur mining at Tarnobrzeg, Poland currently in land rehabilitation process

Rehabilitation

After mining finishes, the mine area must undergo rehabilitation. Waste dumps are contoured to flatten them out, to further stabilise them. If the ore contains sulfides it is usually covered with a layer of clay to prevent access of rain and oxygen from the air, which can oxidise the sulfides to produce sulfuric acid, a phenomenon known as acid mine drainage. This is then generally covered with soil, and vegetation is planted to help consolidate the material. Eventually this layer will erode, but it is generally hoped that the rate of leaching or acid will be slowed by the cover such that the environment can handle the load of acid and associated heavy metals. There are no long term studies on the success of these covers due to the relatively short time in which large scale open pit mining has existed. It may take hundreds to thousands of years for some waste dumps to become "acid neutral" and stop leaching to the environment. The dumps are usually fenced off to prevent livestock denuding them of vegetation. The open pit is then surrounded with a fence, to prevent access, and it generally eventually fills up with ground water. In arid areas it may not fill due to deep groundwater levels.

Typical open cut grades

Gold is generally extracted in open-pit mines at 1 to 2 ppm (grams per tonne) but in certain cases, 0.75ppm gold is economical. This was achieved by bulk heap leaching at Alkane Minerals Ltd. Peak Hill mine in western New South Wales, near Dubbo, Australia.

Nickel, generally as laterite, is extracted via open-pit down to 0.2%. Copper is extracted at grades as low as 0.15% to 0.2%, generally in massive open-pit mines in Chile, where the size of the resources and favorable metallurgy allows economies of scale.

Materials typically extracted from open-pit mines include:

Open-pit mines

Super Pit gold mine.

This list includes only those large open-pit mines for which an article exists in Wikipedia.

Argentina

Australia

Bulgaria

Canada

East Pit of Sherman Mine in Temagami, Ontario, Canada

Chile

Colombia

  • Cerrejón – coal mine in Guajira Department.

Egypt

  • Sukari gold mine

Germany

Tagebau Jänschwalde.
  • Tagebau Garzweiler – lignite mine.
  • Tagebau Hambach – lignite mine.

Indonesia

Kyrgyzstan

  • Kumtor Gold Mine – gold mine in Tian Shan Mountains at 4,000-4,400 m (14,000 ft) above sea level.

Mongolia

Namibia

  • Rossing – uranium mine.
Open Cast Mine, Uncovered Coal Seam, Kai Point Coal Mine, New Zealand

Peru

  • Yanacocha – gold mine.
  • Toquepala – Porphyry copper.

Portugal

Romania

  • Berbeşti Coal Mine – coal mine.
  • Motru Coal Mine – coal mine.
  • Rovinari Coal Mine – coal mine.

Russia

The Udachnaya pipe in Russia.
Abandoned baryte mine shaft in Perthshire, Scotland; an example of small scale open pit mining

South Africa

  • The Big Hole, a former diamond mine in Kimberley, dug to 240 m (790 ft) between 1871 and 1914, making it the deepest hand-excavated pit in the world. Now a museum.
  • The Jagersfontein Mine, operating between 1888 and 1971. This was hand-excavated to 201 m (660 ft) by 1911, and the hand-dug pit was sightly larger than the Big Hole.

Spain

Sweden

  • Aitik-gruvan in Gällivare, copper mine with side production of gold and molybdenum.

United Kingdom

United States

The Lavender Pit, Bisbee, Arizona

Zambia

See also

References

  1. ^ (Spanish) Emed Mining gestiona reapertura al turismo de Corta Atalaya en mina Riotinto, eleconomista.es, 2007-12-09. Accessed online 2010-01-06.
  2. ^ "Second Largest Open Cast Mine". Times of Zambia. http://www.times.co.zm/news/viewnews.cgi?category=8&id=1193485069. Retrieved 2009-01-28. 

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • open-pit mining — [ō′pən pit΄] n. a method of mining, usually for metallic ores, in which the waste and ore are completely removed from the sides and bottom of a pit which gradually becomes an enormous canyonlike hole: see also STRIP MINING * * *        surface… …   Universalium

  • open-pit mining — [ō′pən pit΄] n. a method of mining, usually for metallic ores, in which the waste and ore are completely removed from the sides and bottom of a pit which gradually becomes an enormous canyonlike hole: see also STRIP MINING …   English World dictionary

  • open pit mine — noun a mining operation in which blocks of ore carrying earth are dug from the surface, creating a large quarry like pit. –open pit mining, noun …  

  • Open-pit coal mining in the United Kingdom — The United Kingdom produces about ten million tons of coal a year [1] from open pit mines. The majority comes from Scotland [2], with the largest operator there being the Scottish Coal subsidiary of Scottish Resources Group [3]; they are rather… …   Wikipedia

  • open-pit — /oh peuhn pit /, adj. Mining. noting or pertaining to a type of surface mining in which massive, usually metallic mineral deposits are removed by cutting benches in the walls of a broad, deep funnel shaped excavation. [1910 15] * * * …   Universalium

  • Hull-Rust-Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine — Infobox nrhp | name =Hull Rust Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine nrhp type = nhl caption = Carloads of iron ore being filled at the mine in 1941 location = Hibbing, Minnesota nearest city = lat degrees = 47 lat minutes = 27 lat seconds = 00 lat… …   Wikipedia

  • mining — /muy ning/, n. 1. the act, process, or industry of extracting ores, coal, etc., from mines. 2. the laying of explosive mines. [1250 1300; ME: undermining (walls in an attack); see MINE2, ING1] * * * I Excavation of materials from the Earth s… …   Universalium

  • Mining — This article is about the extraction of geological materials from the Earth. For the municipality in Austria, see Mining, Austria. For the siege tactic, see Mining (military). For name of the Chinese emperor, see Daoguang Emperor. Simplified… …   Wikipedia

  • Mining industry of Russia — The mineral industry of Russia is one of the world s leading mineral industries and accounts for a large percentage of the Commonwealth of Independent States production of a range of mineral products, including metals, industrial minerals, and… …   Wikipedia

  • Mining in Afghanistan — It is estimated that forty million years ago the tectonic plates of India Europe, Asia and Africa collided in a massive upheaval. This upheaval created the region of towering mountains that now includes Afghanistan. That process also deposited… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”