Client

Isabelita - Summa Gold

Product

DaveyTronic® SP Evolution

Application

Open Pit Mining Gold Extraction

Situation

Isabelita is a gold mining project in the eastern slope of the Andes mountain, about 180km from the city of Trujillo in Peru at 3,600 meters above sea level.

The site proximity to communities and small-scale mines in the surroundings, results in an especially sensitive blasting process.

On some occasions, the evacuation radius affects roads around the mine, generating issues with the adjacent communities.

Additionally, the various small-scale mines that surround the site is another of the limitations that Isabelita faces, restricting not only the schedule but the duration of the entire blasting process.

Challenge

The challenge was to reduce the blasting process times.

An average firing in Isabelita considers the initiation of three blasts.

Considering the particular conditions under which the mine operates, the time between the end of a blast and the beginning of the next one becomes relevant. Thus, a reduction of these intervals enables:

Solution

As a solution, the option of using DaveyTronic® Onetouch Multiblast mode was proposed.

In this blasting mode, the fire sequence is triggered with a single fire order.

The Onetouch Multiblast option enables intervals between one and five seconds to be set between blasting, reducing operational times by almost two minutes.

Considering that the inspection of detonators and line connections, firing capacitors charging and fire order, are performed simultaneously on all remote firing equipment with a single order, the process is also simplified for the system operator.

Benefits

The Onetouch Multiblast implementation in Isabelita represents a 4 minute savings in the trigger of 3 consecutive blasts. An important fact is that this time reduction considers a cleared evacuation radius.

A daily saving of this size represents over 24 hours per annum with an evacuated site.

Finally, all improvements represents a joint work with Isabelita and Davey Bickford Enaex, understanding the challenges and local environment to find solutions according to the client requirements.