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PASTE & TAILINGS
Putzmeister’ s pump solution for Pengzhuang
Shandong Energy Group has successively built a series of coal mines for safe and efficient production. One is the Pengzhuang Coal Mine which is owned by Linyi Mining Group Heze Coal and Electricity Co and is located near Yuncheng, in the west of the Shandong Province. The Penzhuang coal mine paste filling station construction project contract with a total investment of more than RMB 70 million(€ 8.5 million), covers an area of 2.5 ha and it is designed for an annual filling capacity of 800.000 t.
The construction content includes crushing and screening system, belt conveyor system, storage system, weighing agitator filling system and other key process links, a total of 12 units of engineering. This project is of great significance in terms of releasing resources during mine construction, reducing cave-in disasters and extending mine life.
It is the first backfilling station construction project in the Juye coal field. Increasing production volumes made it as necessary to find an alternative solution for the resulting tailings to the previous rock filling as did the fact, that there is a lane from a high-speed train track nearby. Backfilling improves mine stability as well
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atmosi. com as operational efficiency. It enhances safety, particularly near critical infrastructure like rail lines. The available material are cemented coal mine tailings with a dry solids content between 75-77 %.
The maximum particle size is 25 mm. Up to 200 m ³/ h pumpable cemented coal mine tailings are pumped underground with a max delivery pressure of 100 bar. The assumed filling efficiency is 90 %. To require the necessary volumes Putzmeister calculated the best option was a KOS 25.150 High Pressure Double Piston Pump operated with a HA 2XL 2 x 500 Hydraulic power unit and a SEP 2 control board. The delivery quantity is 200 m ³/ h with average duration of the operation 10-16 h / day, maximum delivery pressure of 100 bar and maximum dry solids content of 77 %.
A new oil sands mining method incorporating paste backfill
A recent paper from Sue Longo at WSP and Scott Morton at Drift Resource Technologies outlined a new alternative mining method to limit surface impacts with potential in oil sands mining in Canada as well as in bauxite mining in South America.
There are considerable
Putzmeister KOS 25.150 with hopper at Pengzhuang
environmental challenges associated with both traditional oil sands extraction methods. The truck and shovel method results in the production of tailings, which need to be managed to maintain chemical and geotechnical stability and immobilise any constituents of concern. It also requires a large area of land for the external tailings facility( ETF). There are also permitting and environmental regulations that must be followed, in addition to the operational and closure requirements for ETFs.
Trucking also uses large amounts of diesel fuel for transport of the oil sands. In SAGD it is the large amounts of natural gas used for warm water extraction that create environmental hurdles from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective.
The new method of oil sands extraction targets mid-depth oil sand reserves and can be applied to smaller-scale oil sands reserves that do not meet the requirements for truck and shovel or the SAGD method. The primary target area is‘ the Middle’ deposit, which is approximately 6 % of the Athabasca oil sands and covers 9,600 km 2, with 102 billion barrels of oil in place. The new technology being developed has a focus on extraction without the required land disturbance of truck and shovel and the mass infrastructure of the SAGD method. Called gravity-assisted bitumen extraction( GABETM), it is a patent-pending process for net-zero bitumen recovery and extraction that the authors say will eliminate the requirement for tailings facilities and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while utilising waste streams from other industrial processes.
In addition to reduction in land use and greenhouse gas emissions as compared to traditional oil sands methods, GABETM is also designed to incorporate the use of tailings in the backfill. The tailings produced from the oil sands extraction will be combined with a binder to create a paste backfill to fill the underground voids created from oil sands extraction.
To start the process, a traditional
International Mining | MARCH 2026