A OPEN PIT MINING AÇIK OCAK MADENCİLİĞİ

23 rd
According to Lopes, the biggest costs of
mining with conveyor belts are divided
between dismantling and loading. The costs
of loading are meaningful because they
encompass two operating activities: loading
and transportation of the material from the
mine to the belts both performed by the
loaders. The transport by conveyor belts
represents only 9% of the costs in this
mining method (Lopes, 2010).
Since the decade of 1960, some Brazilian
mining companies are employing this means
of transportation, which offers several
advantages, such as: the ability to beat up to
30% slopes, lower operating cost than the
conventional mining method with
transportation by trucks, low maintenance
cost, significant reduction of occupational
accidents and mainly reduction of carbon
dioxide, dust and noise emission. Figure 3
shows a conveyor belt from Germano Mine.
It belongs to a company called Samarco
Mineração.
decrease of operating costs. With the
increasing demand for higher productivity
and lower operating costs, a growing number
of companies recognize the benefits of
mobile crushing. A mobile crusher is shown
in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Mobile crusher fed by a loader.
The junction of a mobile crusher with a
conveyor belt form a system called In-Pit
Crushing and Conveying. Currently, the
most advanced transportation method is the
self-propelled crushing system. It consists of
self-propelled equipment which moves
through belts. The ore is removed by
excavators, fragmented in a mobile crusher
and propelled to the conveyor belt without
the need of the loaders loading the ore at the
conveyor. This system is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 3: Conveyor belt from Germano
Mine.
Around the decade of 1950, the mobile
crushing system emerged. This system is
characterized by the crushing taking place
inside a pit. According to Schröder, in 1953
the Thyssenkrupp built the first mobile
crusher, which was used in lime extraction
on a mine in Germany (Schröder, 2003).
With the creation of these mobile
crushers, after the dismantling, the ore began
being comminuted still in the pit, loaded by
loaders up to the conveyor belt to be sent,
either to the processing plant, either to direct
dispatch to clients. This brought a further
Figure 5: Self-propelled crushing system.
Lopes conducted a study in a mine called
Alegria to Samarco Mineração in the region
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