EXPLOSIVES AND BLASTING
Initiating change
With Orica’s WebGen wireless initiation system, it
is now possible to allow traffic to safely flow over
a loaded blast in surface operations, providing
full flexibility in pit access and availability as well
as significantly improving vertical advance and
efficiency across the load and haul cycle, the
company says
Having sweated all the assets possible to bring down their
cost base, mining companies are now addressing the front end
of the process to cut costs further. Dan Gleeson looks at how
the explosives and blasting sector is responding
The mining industry is consistently told it
needs to remove its ‘silo’ mentality and
integrate downstream and upstream
operations to produce the most productive, costefficient
and safe results at mine sites.
Arguably, there is no better place in the mine
to start such integrated thinking as on the bench
in the open pit, or at the face underground.
The placement of drill holes and explosives,
and the initiation and detonation of these
explosives, start off a rock reducing and refining
process that has ramifications as far down the
chain as the metal and mineral recovery stage.
Those with an interest in the explosives and
blasting sector are aware of this, having
developed solutions or partnered with companies
in the supply chain to provide evidence of how its
products benefit the overall mining process.
Solutions such as FRAGTrack ® and ORETrack ®
from Orica, and Tagnex ® from Enaex were
designed to collect valuable information at
various points of the mining process to feed back
to the drill and blast engineers.
Both companies have also partnered with
OEMs such as Epiroc, MacLean Engineering,
Magotteaux and others to further improve the
benefits their existing explosives and blasting
offering can have on the industry.
These products and partnerships allow these
engineers to become much more involved in the
success of a mining operation. No longer
segregated from the rest of the process, they can
take pride when their optimised work results in
higher recoveries or lower processing costs and
take some blame should the expectant mill feed
not be up to scratch.
These engineers are being armed with more
solutions to help them increase accuracy, safety
and consistency at their stage of the mining
process.
Going wire-less
The removal of wires on explosives and blasting
products is aiding optimisation of the process.
Whether it be wireless detonation or initiation
systems, those in the blasting game think the
eradication of wires could act as a catalyst
towards a more sustained move towards
automating the drill and blast process.
Orica’s WebGen™ fully-wireless initiating
system was launched back in early 2017 as a
16 International Mining | JULY/AUGUST 2020