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US 10,689,981 B2Granted
Method of moving material
AssigneeOpti-Minez Pty Ltd
InventorsDavid John Hall, Cameron Albert Mitchell Voss, Lachlan Yeldham
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The invention is directed to a method of strip mining that involves dividing the pit into blocks in a diamond shape arrangement with an angular advancing strike face and removing waste material from each diagonally adjacent block so as to minimize the amount of waste material pushed by dozers and maintain the incline of ramps to gradients of 10% or less so that trucks can take mined ore from the pit.
Claims10
A method of strip mining to mine an ore seam including
- dividing a pit into a plurality of blocks where each block is orientated along a mining strike length in a diamond pattern formation to present an angular advancing strike face;
- moving overlying waste material from a first block of said plurality of blocks to access the ore seam wherein the waste material is divided into an upper cut volume and lower cut volume, the upper cut volume is removed out of the pit and the lower cut volume is moved into a first adjacent pit void;
- mining the ore seam in the first block;
- identifying a second block of the plurality of blocks that is diagonally orientated with respect to the first block and along the mining strike length;
- moving an upper cut volume from the second block to the first block and a lower cut volume of the second block to a second adjacent pit void to expose the ore seam;
- and
- mining the exposed ore seam in the second block;
- wherein the steps of moving waste material and mining the exposed ore as performed with respect to the second block are repeated with the remainder of the plurality of blocks.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.