Blast Improvements with Electronics at Sunrise Dam Gold Mine

The theoretical benefits of electronic detonators have been reasonably well documented. To support this, a practical comparison was made between the performance of the standard shock tube system, NONEL, and a high precision electronic system, HotShotÖ, at the Sunrise Dam Gold Mine. The expected benefits from electronic detonators to Sunrise Dam were identified prior to the trial. Based on these, a number of objectives were set to demonstrate the value of the HotShot system. These are an improvement in fragmentation leading to an increase in productivity, less oversize rehandling, increased throughput and more uniformity in muck pile movement. To maintain the integrity of the trial, the nominal timing of the shots was kept exactly the same, thereby restricting any performance improvements to the precision of the electronics. Accordingly, adjacent shots were chosen with consistent geology. Video footage was taken of the blasts and vibration monitoring was carried out by fixed geophones throughout the mine. Spot heights of the muck pile swell were taken immediately after the blast and heave profile graphs were generated for comparison. Video footage was taken for a period of three hours for both shots to analyse cycle times of the excavator and trucks. PITRAM data was also collected for analysis. As far as practicable, the ore was taken to the same finger on the run-of-mine (ROM) pad to assist in single sourcing for the crusher and to allow oversize to be separated out. From specific metrics taken during the trials, it was shown that the expected improvements due to the high precision timing of electronics were realised in all areas.