What is underground mining called?
Underground hard-rock mining refers to various underground mining techniques used to excavate “hard” minerals, usually those containing metals, such as ore containing gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, nickel, tin, and lead.
What are the three types of underground mining?
Underground mining methods become necessary when the stripping ratio becomes uneconomical, or occasionally when the surface use of the land would prohibit surface mining. Underground methods are traditionally broken into three classes: unsupported, supported, and caving methods.
What are the problems of underground mining?
In underground mining operations, unique dangers include the possibility of cave-in, mine fire, explosion, or exposure to harmful gases, in addition, dust generated by drilling in mines places miners at risk of developing serious lung diseases. In any system of mining there is potential environmental risks introduced.
What is the deepest type of underground mining?
AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng gold mine, located south-west of Johannesburg in South Africa, is currently the deepest mine in the world. The deep underground mine employs a sequential grid mining method. The shaft-sinking process at Mponeng began in 1981 while gold plant complex and the shafts were commissioned in 1986.
Why mining should be stopped?
Mining activities increase the volume and rate of exposure of sulfur-containing rocks to air and water, creating sulfuric acid and dissolved iron. This acid run-off dissolves heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury which leach into ground water aquifers and surface water sources, harming humans and wildlife.
How does underground mining impact the environment?
Mining: Environmental Impacts Mining can pollute air and drinking water, harm wildlife and habitat, and permanently scar natural landscapes. Modern mines as well as abandoned mines are responsible for significant environmental damage throughout the West.
What are the 2 main types of mining?
Mining techniques can be divided into two common excavation types: surface mining and sub-surface (underground) mining. Today, surface mining is much more common, and produces, for example, 85% of minerals (excluding petroleum and natural gas) in the United States, including 98% of metallic ores.
What are the 3 types of mining methods?
Mining Methods
- Open Cut. Open cut (or open pit) mining involves digging and/or drilling and blasting to remove the resource or ore for processing.
- Dredge mining.
- Shaft.
- Decline or tunnel.
- Block cave.
- Continuous Mining.
- Longwall Mining.
- Coal Seam Gas (CSG)
Which is the world’s deepest mine?
Mponeng gold mine
The Mponeng gold mine located in the Gauteng province of South Africa, is the deepest operating mine in the world.
How is the development of an underground mine?
For an underground mine the development stage is considerably more complicated. Some of the development components of an underground mine are illustrated in the figure. The principal means of access to an underground ore body is a vertical opening called a shaft.
How are the elevators used in underground mining?
At regular intervals along the shaft, horizontal openings called drifts are driven toward the ore body. Each of these major working horizons is called a level. The shaft is equipped with elevators (called cages) by which workers, machines, and material enter the mine. Ore is transported to the surface in special conveyances called skips.
How are underground mines different from open pit mines?
In open-pit mines this consists of building access roads and stripping the overlying waste material in order to expose the ore and establish the initial bench geometries. For an underground mine the development stage is considerably more complicated.
How is waste rock transported in underground mines?
Some common alternative techniques for ore transport are conveyor belts and truck haulage. Vertical or near-vertical openings are also sometimes driven for the transport of waste rock, although most mines try to leave waste rock underground.