Justification of the Relationship of Production Capacity and the Parameters of the Blocks at Surface Mining of Existing Kuzbass Quarry Fields

Abstract

Today, up to two-thirds of the world’s minerals are mined in an open, more economical way. However, at the same time, billions of tons of overburden are extracted, which are piled in the dumps, where they are polluted, lose their value and, in addition, reduce the quality of the environment. The possibility of industrial use of various rocks of from quarry field characterizes the complexity of minerals extracted by surface mining. Currently, there are no clear criteria for determining the size of blocks when designing enterprises for open pit mining. In most cases, when designing open pit mines, a quarry field is conventionally divided into several blocks, which does not always ensure the optimal production capacity of the mining enterprise due to the uneven distribution of reserves in the block contours. Because of that, during the transition from one block to another, a decrease in the production capacity of the enterprise can be noted. To avoid productivity decreasing, the precise analysis of the block parameters must be performed.