Challenges

CLOSED ON: 14 APR 2019  |  REWARD: INR 10,00,000
Reward money is paid in exchange of legally acquiring the solution, implementing it to solve the problem and meeting the success criteria. Milestones for paying the reward money would depend upon the complexity of challenge and maturity of the proposed solution, which would be discussed with the solver as soon as the proposed solution is selected by us.
Closed

Short Description:

Develop an alternate mining technology to produce ores at lesser cost from 120m deep opencast mine.

Challenge Details

Shovel dumper combination is being currently used for excavation of ores. The lowest level of excavation is limited by allowable slope angle and ultimate pit limit. We aim to do a further excavation of up to 20 m beyond this pit limit. The problem with this is the stabilization of the pit wall which will collapse beyond 6 m excavation. Hence, it is not possible to mine ore below the ultimate pit level through open cast route.

The cost of excavation in the current method is increasing with depth because of higher excavation of Over Burden (mining waste) for mining same quantity of Ore. The current ratio of ore to overburden is 1:5. If the ore only could be excavated, or the amount of overburden could be reduced, then the cost of mining will come down significantly.

 

Thus, we are looking for low-cost alternate technology for the mining of ores from opencast mines keeping in mind the following aspects:

  1. The solution should comply to all statutory requirements.
  2. Pit slope shall be within the prescribed levels.
  3. Strata conditions are not consistent across the opencast mine.
  4. The solution should reduce Mining operation cost by 15%.
  5. The production should be increased by 1.5 Times.
  6. No unsafe mode of operations allowed.

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