Chapter Four

Production Operation and Auxiliary

Operations

Complied by Siraj 5/20/2024

Chapter 4: Production Operations and Auxiliary Operations
4.1 Introduction to production cycle
4.2 Drilling-Rotary, Rotary Percussion, diamond core methods
4.3 Blasting and Rock fragmentation: Introduction to explosives and
Precautions
4.4 Loading: Types of loading
4.5 Haulage: Types of haulage, Hoisting - inclined and vertical
4.6 Auxiliary Operations: Ventilation, Power supply, Pumping, Lighting
 4.1 Introduction to Production Cycle
Two fundamental operations in production cycle: 1. Unit operations involved in production cycle
can be divided into two types:
 Rock breakage or Winning;
Accomplished by drilling and blasting or excavation to free the resource from the
Earth / freeing the ore from orebody,

 Materials handling
Loading, haulage (horizontal transport), and hoisting (vertical or inclined
transport to the surface) i.e., transporting the ore to the mineral processing plant.
 Basic production cycle in terms of unit operations, as follows:
1. Harder Materials:
Drill Blast  Load  Haul
2. Softer Materials:
Excavate  Load  Haul
Production cycle= Breakage Handling

= (Drilling + Blasting) + (Loading + Transport)

 4.2 Drilling
 Drilling is a cutting process that uses a drill bit to cut or enlarge a hole of
circular cross section in solid materials.
 Drills (Penetration)
 Create a hole of a certain diameter and depth.
 Its goal is to create empty hole, the hole is to accept explosives.
 The drill bit is a rotary cutting tool, often multipoint. The bit is pressed
against the work-piece and rotated at rates from hundreds to thousands of
revolutions per minute.

 Some of the drilling types are: Rotary drilling, Percussion drilling and
Diamond core drilling.
Four components of a drilling system.

1. Drill, the energy source, is the prime mover, converting energy from its
original form (fluid, electrical, pneumatic, or combustion engine drive) into
mechanical energy.

2. Rod (or drill steel, stem, or pipe) transmits energy from the prime mover or
source to the bit or applicator.

3. Bit is the applicator of energy in the system, attacking rock mechanically to

achieve penetration.

4. Circulation fluid cleans the hole, controls dust, cools the bit, and at times
stabilizes the hole.
Selecting of drilling method depend on
 Nature of terrain.
 Required depth of holes.
 Rock hardness.
 The purpose for which holes are required to be drilled.
 Size of the project

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Compiled By: Assnake 5/20/2024
 4.2.1 Rotary Drilling
 Rotary air blasting uses sharp /blade bit or roller cone bit to cut and break rock with a simple
blade mounted on rotating drill rod.
 The bit breaks and removes the rock, either by crushing and chipping or by plowing and
scraping. The air cools the bit and flushes the cuttings back to the surface.
 When the circulating fluid returns to the surface, it takes the rock chips produced by the rotating
bit.
 Drill cuttings and air are returned from the annular space between the drill pipe and the
borehole wall upwards from bit face to the surface.


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Fluid circulation
approaches:
a) direct; (b) reverse

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 Rotary drilling is one of the most
popular drilling technique for large
surface mines.
 It is used in soft rock materials or to
drill through the top layer of
decomposed rock and soil to get a
fresh rock sample from the bedrock
below.
 One of the most effective and common
methods of drilling.
 It is used in the construction, mining,
and oil industries.
 The rotary drill rig consists of a
prime mover, hoisting equipment,
rotating equipment, circulation
equipment all perform tasks crucial
to drilling a well or hole.
 With the help of pneumatics,
hydraulics or an electric motor,
high torque and rotation are
transmitted from the prime mover
to the drill, which sits on a mast
above the hole.
 Rotary Drilling Components
 Varying degrees of technology has
contributed to rotary drilling.
 The basic process of rotary drilling
involves a sharp drill bit being
rotationally driven into rock.
 Using a system of prime movers,
hoisting equipment, rotating
equipment, and circulation
equipment, the basic rotary
drilling technique can operate
without problems.
Source of Power
 The diesel engine is the most common
source of power for rotary rigs.
 The energy is transmitted from these
prime movers to the rotary, hoisting
and circulating equipment.
 On larger rigs, power might also be
transmitted for lighting, water, and
compression requirements.
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 Hoisting Equipment
 The hoisting equipment of the
rotary system is used to raise
and lower the tool in and out of
the well or hole.
 Hoisting equipment is necessary
as the drill can sometimes weigh
thousands of pounds.
 The height of the hoisting
equipment helps stabilize the
system.
Compiled By: Assnake
Rotating Equipment
 Rotating equipment is
essentially a piece of equipment
that interprets the power
transmitted from the prime
mover and puts it into action,
rotating the drill bit.
 In turn, a swivel, which is
attached to the hoisting
equipment, provides support for
the weight of the drill string in a
way that enables it to rotate
uninterrupted.
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 Circulation System
 The circulation system is
responsible for cooling and
lubricating the drill bit to keep
it at its optimal performance.
 In addition, the circulating
system removes cuttings and
debris, and coats the walls of
the well with a mud-type cake
to facilitate circulation.
Rotary Drill Bit
 The rotary drill bit is located at the
bottom of the drill string. It is the
hard, chiseled, sharp tip that makes
contact with the rock formation and
drills through it to produce a hole.
 It does this by breaking and
dislodging rock. There are many
different types of drill bits designed
to facilitate the breakage of different
types of formations.
 A blade or drag bit comprises steel
and tungsten carbide, the steel tooth
rotary bit, and polycrystalline
diamond bit are some
 4.2.2 Percussion Drilling
 Percussion drilling is a drilling
technique in which a drill bit
attached to rope or cable is
repeatedly raised and lowered,
impacting soil and rock and making
the hole deeper.
 In hard rock types to penetrate to
depths of several hundred meters,
both for exploration and blasting.
 This drilling allows for
uncontaminated chip samples in all
formation types.
Compiled By: Assnake
 It is more expensive and require
more equipment, their accuracy
makes it one of the most
popular drilling techniques for
mining exploration.
 Modern percussion drilling
may also be called cable
drilling and uses an engine and
cable to drill holes that may be
hundreds of feet deep.
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 Air Percussion drilling is used
most frequently in mineral
exploration industry.
 Compressed air is used to remove
the drill cut from the hole and
efficiently advance the drilling
depth.
 The air is injected between the
two pipes and exits the drill pipe
behind the bit
 The drill uses a pneumatic
reciprocating piston-driven
'hammer' to energetically drive a
heavy drill bit into the rock.

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 Reverse Circulation (RC) Percussion Drilling

 Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling uses the dual tube

pipes allowing the high pressure air flow down the
hole along the space between inner and outer tubes
and to return sample cuttings along the inner tube.
 Separating flows of samples from high pressure air
injecting down hole allows to obtain non
contaminated samples as the rock cuttings are
travelling inside the inner tube and at no time were
in contact with the wall of the hole.
 The RC percussion technique used for drilling hard
rocks uses drill bits in a shape of flat head cylinder
with tungsten carbide buttons .
Compiled By: Assnake 5/20/2024
 RC drilling is preferred to diamond core
drilling by being cheaper and faster.
 RC rigs that are used for drilling hard rocks,
such as granite, volcanics, or metamorphic
schists and gneisses, which is activated
pneumatically by compressed air.
 A piston of the hammer is striking top of the
drill bit transferring the energy created to the
rock face.
 Piston cycles from 1650 to 2000 beats per
minute.
 Rock chips are then removed from the face and
brought to the surface through the inner tube.
where they are transported through the cyclone
and sample splitting devices.
Figure RC drill rig: (a) general view of the RC drill rig
operating inWestern Australia; (b) double wall drill rod; (c) 5/20/2024

RC drill bit; (d) cone splitter for correctly reducing the

 4.2.3 Diamond core drilling
 It requires a high level of expertise and skill. Diamond core drilling:
(a) Surface drilling using
 It uses industrial diamonds to drill rock strata. truck mounted drill
rig, Guinea;
 Core of rock remains in the middle of the tube then (b) underground
drilling, skid
taken as a core sample. This core is analysed for its mounted rig,South
Africa
composition as well a relationship between rocks.
Core drill is designed to remove a cylinder of material.
Material left inside the drill bit is referred to as the
core.
 Two ways samples taken from diamond drill bit.
 Conventional coring: entire core barrel pulled to
surface.
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 Wire-line coring: raising the inner pipe to the surface

 Matrix hardness, diamond size
and dosing varied according to
the rock which must be cut.

 Holes within the bit allow water

to be delivered to cutting face.
 This provides three essential
functions; lubrication, cooling,
and removal of drill cuttings
from the hole.
Figure Drill Core Sample from
Akobo gold South-Western
Ethiopia.
 Drilling of 1200 to 1800 meters
is common and at these depths,
ground is mainly hard rock.

 Diamond rigs need to drill

slowly to lengthen the life of
drill bits and rods, which are
very expensive.
 4.3 Blasting and rock fragmentation
 Rock blasting is the controlled
use of explosives and other
methods such as gas pressure
blasting to excavate, break down
or remove rock.
 It is practiced most often in
mining, quarrying and civil
engineering such as dam or road
construction.
 Rock blasting uses many different
varieties of explosives with different
compositions and performance
properties.

 Higher velocity explosives are used
for relatively hard rock in order to
shatter and break the rock, while low
velocity explosives are used in soft
rocks.
 The most commonly used explosives
in mining today are ANFO based
blends due to lower cost than
Dynamite.
 ANFO (or AN/FO, for ammonium
nitrate/fuel oil) is a widely used bulk
industrial explosive mixture.
 It consists of 94 percent porous
ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3), (AN) that
acts as the oxidizing agent and
absorbent for the fuel – six percent
number 2 fuel oil (FO)
 ANFO has found wide use in coal
mining, quarrying, metal mining, and
civil construction in undemanding
applications where the advantages of
ANFO's low cost and ease of use matter
more than the benefits offered by
conventional industrial explosives.
 Dynamite is an explosive material
based on nitroglycerin, using
diatomaceous earth or another
absorbent substance such as
powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or
wood pulp.
 Dynamite is a high explosive, which
means its power comes from
detonation rather than deflagration.
 Dynamite is mainly used in the
mining, quarrying, construction, and
demolition industries, and it has had
some historical usage in warfare.
 4.4 Loading
 Loading is one of the most important
activities carried on in mine.
 The material is blasted (fragmented) and
excavated is loaded from the working zone
(loading site), to the processing mill
(material of economic interest) or to
disposal area (gangue material).
 Loading is done by different loading
machines and then the next step haulage
or hoisting will proceed.
 Equipment used in loading harder ores are
used for both excavating and loading
softer ores.
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 Draglines
 Draglines have the ability to excavate huge
quantities of material then to place that
material at quite a distance from the
dragline itself.

Shovels
 Have the ability to load large
quantities of material, but less than
draglines.
 Shovel loads material at the same level
as the shovel is sitting up to the height
of the shovel’s boom.
 Excavators

 These excavators had the advantage of being able to excavate or load below
or above the level at which the machine is sitting.
 They also have the ability to be rather selective in what they remove.
 The wire ropes on electric shovels have been replaced with hydraulics.

Hydraulic excavator
Traditional excavator
4.5 Haulage and Hoisting
 Bulk materials in mining are
Mine truck
Haulage conveyer
transported by Haulage Haulage truck
Haul train
(horizontal) and Hoist
(vertical) systems.

 Haulage trucks and conveyers

are prevalent in surface mining.

 In underground mining rail,

trucks, shuttle cars and
conveyers are widely used.
 Belt conveyors
 Belt conveyors are for both surface and
underground.

 Belt conveyor consists of the belt,

constructed of multiple ply to provide the
required strength and wear resistance;

 Belt is constructed into a closed loop and

stretched between a head and tail pulley.

Belt conveyors example from a surface mine.

 Hoisting systems
 Underground mines is accessible only through a shaft
sunk from the surface to the working levels.
 Workers and supplies access the mine goes through the
shaft, also ore have to come out. This is called hoisting.
 Three major components of a hoist are skip holds the
ore& attached to the winder on the surface by wire
ropes, headframe and hoist winder (winch and drum).
 Headframe supports the sheave wheel over which the
wire rope is connected to the skip.
 As the drums in the surface hoist house wind the rope
onto the drum, the skip is pulled to the surface.
 Modern hoists are powered using electric motors
Hoist system for an underground mine
 Auxiliary and Unit operations

 Those activities which are  Those activities which are conducted

essential to maintain safe and sequentially in a production cycle i.e.,
cutting and hauling the ore and
productive operating conditions
supporting the immediate exposed roof
are known as auxiliary after ore removal are called unit
operations. operations.
 These include ground control,  Unit operations are planned and
ventilation, haulage, drainage, conducted so as to use the auxiliary
power supply, lighting, and services most effectively for sustaining
health and safety as well as
communications.
productivity at the locations of the
mining activity.
Compiled By: Assnake 5/20/2024
 In summary…..
 During development and exploitation, to extract rock, soil, ore or waste, different
types of operations are employed, known as ‘unit operations’.

 These operations if directly contributing to mineral extraction, then they are

referred as ‘production operations’.

 The supplementary steps that support the production cycle are ‘auxiliary
operations’, they include: power supply, communication, pumping, waste disposal,
fresh and clean environment etc…

 Rock breakage in rocks is accomplished by drilling and blasting.

 Material handling by loading or excavation and haulage (Transport).

 Transport can be two types: haulage (horizontal) or hoisting (vertical or inclined).

Compiled By: Assnake 5/20/2024
Thanks a lot for staying with me

Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do