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Open Cast Mining

Open-pit mining, or opencast mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts minerals from an open pit, commonly used for minerals close to the earth's surface. It offers benefits such as ease of mass production, lower costs, and reduced safety hazards compared to underground mining. The process involves creating benches for excavation, managing water pressure, and transporting materials via haul roads.

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80 views2 pages

Open Cast Mining

Open-pit mining, or opencast mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts minerals from an open pit, commonly used for minerals close to the earth's surface. It offers benefits such as ease of mass production, lower costs, and reduced safety hazards compared to underground mining. The process involves creating benches for excavation, managing water pressure, and transporting materials via haul roads.

Uploaded by

beatozgikush
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

What is open-pit mining?

Open-pit mining, also known as opencast mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts minerals
from an open pit in the ground. Open-pit mining is the most common method used throughout the
world for mineral mining and does not require extractive methods or tunnels. This surface mining
technique is used when mineral or ore deposits are found relatively close to the surface of the earth.
Open-pits are sometimes called ‘quarries’ when they produce building materials and dimension stone.

Benefits of open-pit mining include:

Ease-of-use for mass production

Small shut-down expense

Ability to mine selectively for certain grades of ore

Comparatively small crew size

Elimination of safety hazards that can accompany complex underground mining operations

Easy drainage of subsurface water

No machinery restrictions - even heavy and bulky machinery can be utilized

Lower capital and operating costs

Materials commonly extracted from open-pit mines include:

Bitumen

Clay

Coal

Copper

Coquina

Diamonds

Iron

Gold

Gravel and Bedrock

Granite
Gritstone

Gypsum

Limestone

Marble

Molybdenum

Silver

Uranium

Phosphate

Open-pit mining, also known as opencast mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts minerals
from an open pit in the ground. Anglo American utilizes open pit methods in its global operations.

Open-pit Mining Operations

Open-pit mines are dug on benches that are between four and sixty-meters in size, depending on the
size of machinery used to excavate. The walls of most open-pit mines are dug at an angle and include
steps to prevent avalanches from occurring inside the build site. The incline section of the wall is called
the ‘batter,’ and the flat part of the step is called the ‘bench’ or ‘berm.’

In some cases, de-watering bores are drilled horizontally into the walls to relieve water pressure, which
can destroy the walls if not properly addressed.

A haul road is dug at the side of the pit to form a ramp for ore-carrying trucks to haul material to and
from the mining site.

After the physical mine infrastructure has been built, production activities include drilling, blasting,
excavation, loading and transporting broken ore.

Waste rock is piled up near the edge of the pit and spreads both horizontally and vertically. This is
known as the ‘waste dump’. The

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