Open mining technique for unconventional mineral deposits
- 1 — Ph.D., Dr.Sci. professor National Mineral Resources University (Mining University)
- 2 — Ph.D. assistant lecture National Mineral Resources University (Mining University)
Abstract
Nowadays the majority of deposits are successfully exploiting by mining enterprises with the help of traditional excavation and loading equipment. Typically, metals, construction materials, etc. are mined and extracted on these deposits, but modern society is progressing and producing new requirements to metals properties for creating a new type of equipment. The metals with new properties are located in unconventional areas: either in technogenic deposits (overburden dumps, tailings, etc.) or in hard-to-get natural formations. Technogenic mines, being a tailing of Kachkanarsky mining and processing plant, are referred to such unique deposits, which have expensive metals (scandium, gallium, strontium, titanium), as well as the natural deposit – rhenium deposit, located in the crater of an active volcano. Potentialities of open mining in the largest rhenium deposit with complex environmental occurrence have been analyzed in the paper. Temperature measurement results of adjacent strata and a temperature scheme of the host rocks on a separate site and the entire field have been presented. An open mining technique for a primary mining area as well as perspective methods of rock preparation for excavation, applicable to this particular deposit, has been considered.