Quarry

Limestone Quarrying Operation
Name: Adil Khan(Trainee Mining Engineer )

Department: Mining & Auto
Submitted to: Manager Muhammad Zahid
Date: November 27, 2022
Contents:
Quarrying and Historical quarrying techniques
MODERN QUARRYING PROCESSES AND TECHNIQUES:
Bestway Mianwali Quarry and operation
Bench blasting
The importance of drilling in quarries

Quarrying
The concept of quarrying has been around since the dawn of civilization, with many different working
techniques having been developed.
A quarry is typically defined as being a surface excavation for the production of rock as the principal
product. As such, it differs from an open cast, open-cut, surface or open-pit mine in that the rock itself is
the valuable commodity, rather than a specific mineral within the rock mass.
Quarrying is used mainly in the production of construction and building materials, such as solid stone or
crushed rock for aggregates, or for raw materials for processes such as cement manufacture. As a
technique, quarrying is normally only used where raw materials of adequate quality and size cannot be
obtained economically by other means. Since natural sand and gravel are not always readily available, for
example, a large proportion of the world's annual output of aggregates is produced by quarrying and
processing rock.
Historical quarrying techniques
Rock has been quarried for the construction of buildings and monuments since before recorded history.
There is certainly evidence for stone production in ancient times from numerous sites around the world,
although it is unclear at which stage formal quarries began to emerge, rather than people just making use
of naturally occurring boulders.
Within recorded history, we have a better understanding of some of the techniques used in quarry
operations. In the Egyptian dynastic period, for instance, construction of the earlier pyramids depended
mainly on limestone that was quarried using copper hand tools, while later pyramids, although built
mainly of mud brick, still used quarried stone for facing. Granite was also a major building material,
especially for detail work, and was quarried directly from the bedrock at locations close to some of the
country's largest monuments. Ancient Egyptian stoneworkers cut trenches all the way around the blocks
of granite that they wished to extract, isolating them from the bedrock, with the rock then being broken
free using massive wooden levers.
The Romans also quarried rock on a vast scale for their construction projects, both for buildings and
monuments. A wider range of rock types was produced, including fine marble, which was used for
artwork such as sculptures and in public architecture. The Romans used quarry hammers to isolate the
blocks they wanted, then used metal wedges to pry them free from the bedrock.
In the absence of modern technology such as drills and explosives, rock-splitting required the use of other
approaches, such as wedging or fire setting. The use of wetted wooden wedges inserted in natural cracks
or in shallow holes, with the swelling of the wood causing the rock to split, dates back to ancient times, as
does fire-setting. Producing the stone needed for the construction of Great Zimbabwe, for example, is
believed to have relied on fire setting to split building blocks from natural granite outcrops, making use of
the observation that the local rock weathers naturally along planes of weakness that could be exploited in
this way.
Modern Quarrying Processes and Techniques:

Development of most modern rock quarries involves stripping the overlying soil and weathered rock to
get to the hard rock underneath. This is then worked in a 'bench' system, removing the rock in layers that
can be returned to year after year as the quarry is developed. The quarry becomes deeper with each
subsequent bench, with stepped benches reaching up to the original surface.
With few exceptions, modern quarries rely on drilling and blasting to fragment the rock, which is then
loaded onto off highway trucks or belt conveyors for transport to a processing plant of some sort. Loading
is usually done with wheel loaders or excavators, which combine adequate loading capacity with
maneuverability. This allows them to move from area to area within the quarry, as needed. Where
blasting results in the formation of large boulders that are too big for the loading equipment to handle,
secondary breaking will be needed, either by drilling and blasting individual boulders or by using
excavator-mounted hydraulic hammers to break them. The exceptions to drill-and-blast include the
production of dimension stone, where the demand is for large pieces of rock rather than fragmented
material for further processing.
The production of dimension stone, which is involves carefully splitting large blocks of raw stone away
from the quarry face, using wedges or diamond-impregnated wire saws. Another exception is where the
rock is soft enough to be ripped, using a large dozer or a ripper tine mounted on a hydraulic excavator,
with the dozer then being used to push the broken rock onto a
hopper or mobile crusher which feeds a belt conveyor system.
Quarry design depends on a number of factors including the pre-
existing topography, intended output, infrastructure
and environmental footprint. In general, however, quarries can be
grouped into five principal types – hillside, hilltop, valley
bottom, coastal and combined – as illustrated below.
Fig(a) Quarries types
Bestway Mianwali Quarry:

Bestway Mianwali quarry is a type hill side quarry shown in fig(b), the strata are soft so no need of
drilling and blasting operation. The materials are excavated by mean of dozer or ripper and excavator.
Fig (b) Hill side Quarry in development stage

Fig(c). Loading Point
Using top slicing quarrying method in this method removing/excavation of materials in layers. The
materials are excavated by ripper and then dozing with the help of dropping chutes by dozer to the
loading point shown in fig(d), from where materials load to dumper by loading machines.
Fig(d). Dropping chutes and loading points
Quarry operation: Before starting of mining operation surveying will be done for main haul road,
preparation of benches selection of loading points for different raw materials like high grad limestone,
Fig (e) Reconnaissance Survey by BCL Team
max limestone and low materials which
should be helpful for managing the homogenization of pile according to QC demand.

Fig(f) Haul Road Survey using total station
After surveying the area where mining operations would be done should be clears from bushes, tress and
unwanted materials who’s harmful for mine machineries and crusher. According to the crusher capacities
you should need to prepare minimum loading points which will be provide raw materials in such a way
that there will be no stoppage in crusher operation.
No of loading Points selection depends on
 Deposits chemistry
 Crusher capacity
 Loading machines
 Hauling machines capacity
 Cycle time of hauling machines
 Distance from crusher to loading points
 Geology of deposits
 Dozing machines
Loading points should be decided by mutual discussion with QC to achieve the required quality of raw
materials in such way that there will be no downsizing and the quality is also maintains. For this purpose,
you should need to take samples from these points before starting the mining operations. After sampling
its should be clear for you that which points have which types of materials. So according to demand you
easily managed the quarry operation if you know the chemistry of the deposits/loading points. For BCL
Mianwali Limestone crusher we prepare six loading points. Capacity of the crusher is 1500 ton/hour.
Fig(g) Sample Boy sampling of point
After deciding of numbers of loading points you should needs to clear and well maintain the haul road for
machinery movements. After that you should need to rectify numbers of loaders, excavators, dumpers,
dozers etc. for optimum operation, which will be necessary for mining and raw materials provision.
Numbers of machines are depending upon the following parameters
I. Crusher capacity
II. Crusher to quarry distance
III. Cycle time of haul machines
IV. Road grad and width
V. Loading machine capacity
VI. Dumper capacity
VII. Seasons
Bench blasting:
Bench blasting is the most widely used method of production blasting in quarrying, strip mining and
construction excavation. This involves drilling inclined, vertical or horizontal blastholes in single- or
multiple-row patterns to depths ranging from a few meters to 30 m or more, depending on the desired
bench height. Where the excavation is shallow, less than 6 m (19.7 feet), one level may suffice. In deep
excavations, a series of low benches, offset from level to level, are recommended for operational
convenience. The bench height is often two-to-five-times the burden distance, while the ratio between the
burden and the spacing is typically between 1:1.25 and 1:2.
The material must have a certain strength and hardness, and the crushed particles must acquire a defined
shape, quite often with a rough surface. Consequently, soft sedimentary rocks and material that breaks
into flat, flaky pieces are often unacceptable as raw materials for aggregate. On the other hand, igneous
rocks such as granite and basalt, as well as highly metamorphosed rocks such as gneiss, are well-suited to
aggregate production.
The importance of drilling in quarries
Since drilling is a critical part of the quarry production process, the best planning, figuring, calculations
and explosives are worthless if the area to be blasted is not drilled properly and responsibly. Basically, if
the drilling goes bad and is off pattern, the entire blasting operation will fail. Drilling in any surface
mining or quarrying environment invariably follows a pattern that has been designed to take into account
natural parameters of the rock including hardness and strength, the presence of planes of weakness such
as faults or fracturing, and the degree of fragmentation needed in the blasted product. The drill pattern
will be designed according to hole spacing (along the bench) and burden (distance from the front free
face) for a given hole diameter, and thus stipulate the amount of explosives needed for each charged hole.
Generally, a less powerful drill rig that produces small diameter holes will have to drill on a closer
pattern than a machine driving a larger-diameter bit. Drilling is normally done using heavy-duty Down-
The-Hole (DTH) and top hammer drill rigs. In Epiroc's case, these rigs can be equipped with the Hole
Navigation System (HNS) which gives operators the ability to drill parallel holes with precision and
complete drill plan accuracy.
The drilling and blasting sequence are. If the drill rig operator is instructed to remain on a specific pattern,
he must do so and not alter it unless authorized. The operator must also keep the blaster-in-charge
informed of any changes in the rock while drilled, or indeed any mistakes, so that the blaster can make
any necessary adjustments to the charge. The drill rig operator should tell the blaster about fractures or
other abnormalities in the rock, changes in the strata and sand or mud seams in the rock, so that
explosives can be loaded in the hole with these factors taken into consideration.
The operator must also inform the blaster-in-charge of any 'short' holes – holes that are not drilled to the
expected or planned depth. In other words, the driller is the blaster's eyes on the ground and, as such, can
make or break a blasting operation. This information can also be extracted from the quality log available
on SmartROC drill rigs. Quarry operators commonly design fragmentation blasts for safety, economy,
ease of use at the primary crusher, and even public relations, but they often forget about quality.
The blast layout must be properly engineered, documented and adhered to for maximum consistency.
Varying the blast pattern may mean changes in the product size across the operation. Smaller shot rock,
resulting in less crushing at the secondary and tertiary stages, may mean less improvement through
crushing, so the mineral quality and/or physical properties of the product may be affected. Conversely, it
is important to remember that size-reduction through crushing becomes more expensive as the material
being crushed gets smaller, so in some respects it can be beneficial to reduce the crushing duty by
increasing the initial fragmentation at the quarry face. There is also the question of transport, since
loaders, trucks and belt conveyors will have a maximum rock-size constraint, above which boulders will
need expensive secondary breaking.

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Limestone Quarrying Operation

Name: Adil Khan(Trainee Mining Engineer )

Quarrying and Historical quarrying techniques

MODERN QUARRYING PROCESSES AND TECHNIQUES:

Bestway Mianwali Quarry and operation

The importance of drilling in quarries

Modern Quarrying Processes and Techniques:

Bestway Mianwali Quarry:

Fig (b) Hill side Quarry in development stage

max limestone and low materials which

should be helpful for managing the homogenization of pile according to QC demand.

Fig(g) Sample Boy sampling of point

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