Reducing costs of retrieving low alkali aggregates in NY quarry
Document type: Case Study

QUARRY CASE STUDY

Reducing Costs of Retrieving Low Alkali Aggregates
in NY Quarry
 PROJECT SUMMARY PROJECT GOALS
HIGH ALKALI BENCH CREATES CHALLENGE IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY OF THE MINE
FOR NY CEMENT PRODUCER The customer’s desire was to easily dig approximately 30%
The chemistry on the upper 5 to 12 metres of the aggregates of the low alkali located in the lower 20m of the bench.
bench contains a high alkali material that is not desirable
to send to the plant. The goal was to cast the bottom 20m of aggregate low
 alkali bench out into the pit while, in same event, blast the
This high alkali affects the cement quality. top 6m of high alkali material into a manageable size with
 the majority staying in the power trough of low alkali blast.
The project scope was to segregate\remove this area, post
one bench blast event, leaving good quality aggregate Basically, allow the high alkali material to be blasted in
material for cement production. place and simply fall.

Previously, the customer blasted and removed the top 6
metres of the bench with small diameter short holes and
scalped off the high alkali material.

They then drilled and blasted the low alkali material as
normal production blast.

This proved to be costly as well as time consuming with
additional ramps and the mucking of a split bench.

 Aggregate quarry.

QUARRY CASE STUDY

TECHNOLOGY APPLIED VALUE ADDED
ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY ALLOWS SAVINGS OF $0.15 PER TON WITHOUT
ACCURATE DECK TIMING TO SEGREGATE HIGH INCREASING AMOUNT OF EXPLOSIVES
AND LOW ALKALI AGGREGATE REQUIRED
The initial trial blast consisted of two decks with the bottom DynoConsult saved the customer $0.15 per tonne
15m of the deck initiated first and the top 6m of the deck compared to the traditional drilling, blasting and scalping
initiated second, having a 200ms later delay time. of the top 6m.

The blast event took weeks of deliberation and planning The success of the blast allowed easy digging of the low
and included decking the aggregates bench in order to alkali material needed for cement production.
allow segregation of the top 6m of an 25m bench which
contained too high of alkali to blend in cement mix. The remaining 500,000 tonnes on this bench was removed
 utilising the best blasting practice developed as part of
Digishot Plus® electronic detonators initiated the bottom DynoConsult customer focus and long-term commitment.
deck of low alkali with a down the face delay timing of
16 ms, 165 ms between rows and initiated the top 200ms There is a possibility of drilling and blasting up to 1.5 million
later. tonnes per year using this method. This would result in
 significant savings for both production of cement stone
This resulted in slower delay time down face in order to and aggregate material.
keep minimum forward movement.

This delay sequence proved successful as the upper
portion of the bench remained in place while the lower
portion was fragmented and displaced into the quarry pit.

Quarry blast.

Quarry seams.

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