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SA's largest backfill plant nearing completion
Mining Weekly reports that construction of the largest cemented full plant tailings (FPT) backfill plant in Gold Fields' South Deep gold mine in Westonaria, is nearing completion, almost 20 years after backfill operations began at the mine in 1993 with the sinking of a 2 988 m twin shafts at South Deep mine.
At the time, the location of the shafts required the main shaft pillar to be mined out and backfilled at a depth of 2500 m below collar using a crushed waste/cyclone classified tailings backfill.
"The primary purpose of backfill at South Deep today is to provide regional support for mined-out areas of up to 30 m, to maximise ore extraction, and reduce the underground ventilation and refrigeration requirements," Construction firm Murray & Roberts Cementation mine engineering manager Rob Bradley says. "In addition, surface environmental pollution is mitigated by the depositing of tailings underground." According to Mining Weekly, tailings will be transferred from the gold plant to be temporarily stored in four storage tanks, previously used in the gold leaching process, and will either be pumped back to the gold plant or to the backfill plant, depending on the backfill requirement.
Read the full article on www.miningweekly.com.
