Mine excursion
Accessing the seams
Coal unearthed at Khanye is railed to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, and then exported.
[16] MINING MIRROR JUNE 2019
CMS uses sequential strip-mining methods
to unearth the three coal seams at South
Pit. “The three main seams that we mine are
2 Upper Seam, 2 Lower Seam and 1 Seam.
Whenever we do mine a patch of 3 Seam it
is sent to the plant separately and blended
with the other coal in the processing
operation,” he says.
The overburden consists of a soft sub-soil
clay, which occurs on top of a two- to eight-
metre-thick sandstone layer. The first coal
seam (2 Upper Seam) is encountered at the
bottom of the sandstone, about nine metres
from surface, but it dips and the sandstone
seems to disappear halfway through the pit.
There is a thin shale band on top of 2 Upper
Seam. The strip ratio is on average about 2:1
in this area.
Underlying the shale is 2 Lower Seam,
followed by a parting which is about one-
and-a-half to four metres thick, before
1 Seam is accessed. As soon as the coal
has been removed, sequential roll-over
rehabilitation takes place. “We will be
opening three benches at a time, so we will
be mining one of the seams at all times.
In other words, there will always be coal
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