Super-Pit-Goldmine

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The Super Pit Gold Mine (English: Super Pit gold mine or Fimiston Open Pit ) is Australia's largest gold mine, which is operated in the open pit and the fourth largest in the world. The Super Pit is located in the Goldfields - Esperance control rooms on the Goldfields Highway on the south-eastern end of Kalgoorlie, the largest town in the Australian outback ..

The mine extends over approximately 3.5 kilometers long, 1.5 kilometers wide and 360 meters deep. The mine is so deep as Uluru is high and has about the same extent.

Operators, owners and employment

Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd ( KCGM ) operates the Super Pit, a company that is owned in half of Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining. The mining industry supports 850,000 ounces per year (28 tons ) of gold.

On the site of the mine more than 550 people are employed. The company also holds before training programs for Aboriginal people without mining experience and for technicians and truck drivers.

History

The area of Kalgoorlie - Boulder is the traditional Aboriginal land of Maduwangka.

1893 began the European colonization as the Irish Paddy Hannan, Dan Shea and Tom Flannagan found gold near Mount Charlotte, which led to an Australian gold rush, as a result the place Kalgoorlie in 1903 grew to 30,000 inhabitants. After the announcement of this discovery, prospectors penetrated further into this area and in the gold field of today's Super Pit gold was mined only in the late 1890s, which was called the Golden Mile. The miners quickly became clear that more gold was in depth and so many small mines, which ranged in the ground into arisen. The mines merge into a single mine, tried the businessman Alan Bond in the 1980s, they failed. The origins of the Super Pit are probably in the year 1989 as Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd several mines to a work united. Barrick Gold took over the shares in the Super Pit in December 2001, when she took over the Homestake Mining Company. Newmont was three months later another owner than the Normandy Mining took over in February 2002.

Geology

The mine is located in a geological formation of Western Australia, the Norseman - Wiluna Greenstone Belt.

The gold-bearing veins of the mine emerged from a series of steep shearing of the solid rock, and they formed the so-called Golden Mile dolerite. The dolerite of mine who runs the goldhaltigste material in Australia, consists of more than 2000 cores, extending 5 km long and 2 km wide and 1 km deep. The veins vary in size, are generally mined only the veins which are 10 meters long and 6 meters wide.

The rock in which are the veins of gold, is a shattered tholeiitischer gabbro. Depending on the concentration of minerals pyroxene and olivine, plagioclase and ilmenite and high quartz concentration have emerged in granophyrischen rocks in the volcanic vents. These compounds intruded before 2,675 million years ago in a composed of hornblende, plagioclase and quartz chimney. The vents are the same age and its contents from the same rock composition. In addition, there are small craters lamprophyre.

There were several upheavals that occurred in a very limited area of a few kilometers before 2.67 billion years, while the Golden Mine fault was divided into an eastern and a western zone, the lead ore veins with gold, fell steeply, the main arteries leading to the northwest, run intersecting veins in a north - north-west and the counter veins in west-north - north direction.

The mineralization took place within the brekkzierten veins and minerals were influenced by the shape of leaves held foliation. Furthermore, an alteration took place, the transformation of minerals in a rock to secondary minerals. The most distant zones of the fault include chlorite - calcite. Chlorite and calcite were removed by sericite and iron-rich carbonates, a few meters from the vent edges replaced. The most altered rocks contain siderite, vanadium- rich sericite and chlorite no. The include the least altered rocks hematite and anhydrite.

Erminerale be found on the mine site, such as pyrite, chalcopyrite, and a few sulphides, silver tellurides, mercury, lead and gold. The ore is generally difficult to melt. In the gold-bearing deposits about 30 % gold, 25 % gold tellurides, 35 % of gold in pyrite and 10% contained finely divided gold in pyrite, which is not visible to the eye. In the veins of the gold shares hundreds or thousands of reach of grams per tonne. On average, however, are 2.5 grams per ton of stone reached.

Mining operation

The rock in the mine is drilled using conventional technology, then the holes filled with explosives and detonated. Each year, 15 million tons of rock after blasting with shovels that lift 60 tons of rock and Greater dump trucks that can load 225 tons, moved. The day 240,000 tonnes are transported. The ore is transported to two plants in the Fimiston and Gidji system. Before the gold is recovered, the ore is crushed.

The mine is operated 365 days a year in two-shift system in every 12 hours.

Dump truck transport

A single loaded dump truck

Look at a tieflegenene degradation level

View of the interior of the mine

Gold mining and environmental

Crushing, grinding and frothing of the ore and the extraction of gold takes place in the Fimiston plant and it continues in the Gidji system.

The gold deposits with tellurides and pyrite in the rock are extraordinary. To win the gold, the rock must be crushed first. Then it will generate a Flotationverfahren subjected to the gold-bearing pyrite concentrate. This is in a small smelter outside of Kalgoorlie melted for the gold from telluride to free.

The separation of rock and gold is done by gravity and the carbon -in - leach operation. The processing of the rock is carried out in this method, after comminution of the rock, flotation and cyanidation involving activated carbon.

In the process of cyanidation gold is chemically bound in highly toxic leachates. After filtration and precipitation occurs brown slurry, from which, after washing and drying, by reduction of raw gold. This process produces hydrogen cyanide and cyanides, which may escape into the environment in spite of recycling of the liquor. All materials incurred in this process are toxic. Although these are easily decomposed and degraded in nature, yet the resulting large slag heaps and cyanide dust may be distributed in an uncontrolled manner by wind and water, uncontrolled discharge of toxic substances into the environment and cause serious ecological damage.

Production figures

Production figures by year:

Tourism

The mine can be visited between 7:00 to 19:00 and explosions can be seen from a vantage point on the Goldfields Highway in Boulder daily.