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Diamond mine reduces on-site fuel consumption

13th December 2013

By: Anine Kilian

Contributing Editor Online

  

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Diamond producer De Beers South Africa, which is 85%-owned by British mining major Anglo American, achieved a 6% reduction in fuel consumption this year at its Limpopo-based opencast Venetia diamond mine, owing to the use of lighter-weight bowls in its mining trucks.

Speaking at the launch of the Venetia underground construction phase last month, De Beers Venetia mine GM Ludwig von Maltitz stated that the new lightweight bowls weighed 4 t less than their predecessors, enabling mining trucks on site to carry an additional 4 t per trip.

“We use Caterpillar 793 trucks that carry a payload of 225 t and Caterpillar 789 trucks that carry a payload of 180 t on the mine, as well as seven Caterpillar 1660 shovels in the pit. “So far, we have changed the bowls of 26 large Caterpillar trucks,” he said, adding that the company aimed to change the bowls of all the large mine trucks on site within the next year.

He noted that 13 smaller trucks, which will soon reach the end of their operational lives, will not be subject to any change and that new shovels will be introduced when openpit mining ends in 2018.

“We acquired two new shovels, which will start operating at the mine towards the end of the year,” he said.

Venetia, which is situated in the north-east of South Africa, near Musina, comprises 12 kimberlite pipes and currently mines two of the largest pipes in a single opencast operation.

The mine will produce three-million carats before year-end.

“We have three major orebodies that we are mining – K1, K2 and K3. “The K1 orebody is 330 m below surface and will be mined to 450 m below surface, representing another eight years of mining before the new Venetia underground project begins accessing the same orebody from the bottom,” he noted.

The K2 orebody is currently 250 m below surface and will be mined to 350 m below surface.

“Those two orebodies are the future of the mine,” said Von Maltitz, adding that the opencast mine was operating with seven 600 t shovels that took four passes to load trucks.

He added that K3 would be depleted in the next three years, after which De Beers would shift its focus to the K1 and K2 orebodies.

Meanwhile, Von Maltitz noted that De Beers’ mining right at Venetia comprised 2 200 ha, which is 7% of the total land owned by the company. The remaining 93% is controlled and managed by the Venetia Limpopo Ecological Reserve.

“The underground operation will start taking effect in 2021 and the decline of the shaft, which will be implemented to access the ore while the tunnels are still being developed, will be completed in 2018,” he said.

Von Maltitz explained that high-wall integrity was a critical component of the safety and future of the mine.

“The high walls give a fairly straight cut, which we achieve through presplit drilling, with a 7 PNH 250-mm-diameter ridge,” he said.

He noted that the mine produced 38-million tons a year of waste and 6-million tons a year of kimberlite ore, adding that De Beers was mining at a strip ratio of 1:8.

“This means that, for every ton of kimberlite being mined, 8 t of waste is removed,” he said.

Process
“We start with bench preparation – small machines that prepare the faces and areas for the drill rigs to drill,” stated Von Maltitz.

He explained that explosives manufacturer AEL conducted the charging and blasting at the mine and the company also determined what the fragmentation of the material would be.

“After we blast, we haul the waste to the dumps on the northern side of the pit and send the kimberlite to the crusher, where the ore-processing starts. “At the main stockpile, the kimberlite goes through washing and screening, secondary crushing and dense-media separation processes, where diamond-bearing material will naturally sink to the bottom and the waste will naturally float to the top,” he noted.

He further explained that the bulk of the waste was then separated and dispersed into three areas.

“The diamond-bearing material is transported to the recovery stage, while fine material is transported to fine residue deposits and coarse residue deposit gets stockpiled,” he stated.

Once at the recovery stage, the luminescent characteristics of diamonds are used in conjunction with X-ray technology to determine the amount of diamond in the diamond-bearing material.

“The diamonds are then sent to our sorting house where a hands-off, yet manual, sorting process takes place, whereby sorters put their hands into permanently mounted gloves, which are inspected hourly,” he said.

The diamonds are weighed, after which they are sent to the Kimberley-based diamond trading company (DTC), in the Northern Cape.

“Afterwards, they are exported to the State diamond trader and the DTC in London, where the selling process takes place,” he concluded.

Edited by Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

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