Draw Control in Principle and Practice at Henderson Mine

INTRODUCTION The Henderson Mine, located near Empire, Colorado, utilizes a continuous panel caving system to extract ore as one of the world's major producers of molybdenum. Any mine using a caving-by-gravity technique of mining must rely on closely controlled draw of the caved ore. This control is essential to insure proper caving action, to avoid damaging load concentrations of weight and to minimize the dilution of ore with waste material. Henderson is no exception. Draw control is a major factor in all production planning, from long- range plans to short-range and day-to-day ore scheduling. Draw control is reviewed constantly and administered daily in an effort to optimize production efficiency, ore recovery, and cave management. MINING METHOD The cave at Henderson is massive, moving slowly through large panels that are 244 m (800 ft.) wide by 610 m (2,000 ft.) long. Generally two cave areas are drawn at one time. The areas under active draw vary in size but can be as large as 244 m (800 ft.) by 244 m (800 ft. ) containing 400 draw points. Each draw point contains 45,360 mt (50,000 st) on the average and takes about two and one half years to exhaust. A complete panel is worked for seven to ten years. No pillar exists between panels, but rather a buffer zone of broken ore, or "static face," is left in each panel to be drawn with the adjacent, yet-to-be-caved panel in efforts of minimizing dilution of a working area from an exhausted one. (Figure 1) Production drifts are driven on 24.4 m (80 ft.) centers through the ore body. Between the production drifts are funnel-shaped draw bells on 12.2 m (40 ft.) x 24.4 m (80 ft.) centers to receive ore from the cave. Each bell is accessed by two draw points, one from the production drift on either side, thus forming a 12.2 m (40 ft.) x 12.2 m (40 ft.) draw pattern. Extraction of the ore is by rubber-tired, 3.8 m3 (5 yd3) load-haul-dump equipment. The LHDs then tram the ore a maximum of 49 m (160 ft.) to ore passes. Cave initiation and bell development are done from the undercut drifts which are parallel to and 17 m (55 ft.) directly above the production drifts. Longhole rings are drilled and blasted from the undercut drifts to define the bells and establish the undercut for caving. (Figure 2) DRAW CONTROL Since the cave line at Henderson is constantly advancing, it is necessary to be continually initiating new cave at one end while exhausting it at the opposite end. There must exist, therefore, an angle on the ore-waste contact in the broken rock from initiation to exhaustion. The basic concept of draw control is to keep this angle as smooth and even as possible, particularly at the time of exhaustion. If this is achieved, draw points are exhausted more or less in a line, avoiding pockets of remaining ore surrounded by exhausted areas. These pockets would cause spotty ore extraction at the time of exhaustion, increasing the amount of dilution occurring while introducing the potential for significant weight problems in the production area. To arrive at the desired angle on the ore- waste contact, maximum tonnage percentages are assigned to each row of draw points increasing at 10% or 15% increments (depending on cave size and velocity of draw) working away from the cave line. The available tonnage indicated by these percentages is the maximum allowable tonnage to be extracted from each draw point until the available tonnage percent- age is increased. As the cave moves, these percentages increase for each draw point regularly. However, in general the tonnage drawn from each draw point is kept at about 50% of this allowable maximum in order to maintain adequate available tonnage in the cave to sustain production for seven months if cave initiation were to cease. This available tonnage cushion is a safeguard built into the draw control program at Henderson to accommodate fluctuations in the rate of cave advance. When draw points move past the row of 100% tonnage availability, they are drawn past the desired 50% at the same increments per row until exhausted. (Figure 3) To achieve proper draw control, the number of LHD buckets to be taken from each draw point is assigned daily. The actual buckets taken, which may at times deviate from the