underground ore Movement 1287

• Screw feeders
• Bin ventilators
• Apron feeder to the primary crusher
• Dust collection/suppression system
• Eccentric trolley removal cart
• Personnel elevator
• Air cannons
• Water booster pumps
• Service trolleys
• Conveyor gravity take-up service winch
• Conveyor belt rip detector
• Conveyor belt weigh scales
• Vibratory feeders
• Sampling station
Underground crushing installations are high-capital-cost items,
due to fixed equipment costs and large-scale excavations
required to house the system. Crusher installation capital-cost
estimates should include equipment costs plus the following
direct and indirect construction costs:
• Excavation and ground support
• Mechanicals
• Concrete
• Electrical
• Structural steel
• Instrumentation
Indirect costs can fall within a range of 40% to 60% of the
direct costs.

integration Aspects
As mentioned in the introduction, each step in a mining
system value chain consists of an upstream buffer, an ore-
handling process that upgrades the ore to another value
state, and a downstream buffer. The upstream buffer in most
Courtesy BHP Billiton Olympic Dam. operations will be the storage capacity of uncrushed mate-
figure 12.8-15 Primary cone crusher and rock breaker at rial available for crusher feed. Within typical feed crushing
olympic Dam mine configurations this may be in the form of one or a number of
stockpiles, or live capacity within one or a number of ore-
passes. Downstream buffer is the capacity of crushed material
with a pneumatic impact tip to move material around on the
storage between the crushing discharge and the next step in the
grizzly and impact oversize until it passes. Fixed rock break-
materials-handling system (e.g., truck, conveyor or skip load,
ers can be operated from a remote operator’s cabin or even
and transport). Where such upstream and/or downstream buf-
from the surface to reduce the installation size and ventilation
fer is of limited capacity or nonexistent, operational variabil-
needed underground. Before the advent of the modern rock
ity around the crusher may adversely affect crusher uptime.
breaker, oversize material feeding the primary crusher was a
Because of the high capital costs of large underground stor-
greater problem, and primary crushers were designed largely
age facilities for uncrushed or crushed material, it may not
on the basis of gape (minimum dimension of feed opening)
be possible to install large buffer capacity at this step of the
rather than capacity.
materials-handling process. Therefore, crushing should not
be the operation bottleneck by design, and the crushing and
Additional and Optional Equipment
immediate upstream and downstream processes should have
Other equipment items in crushing circuits can include the
capacity in excess of the bottleneck process.
following:
• Overhead crane Technology
• Freight elevator For the most part, advances in crusher design have moved
• Service air compressor slowly. Jaw crushers have remained virtually unchanged since
• Sump pumps about 1950. More reliability and higher production have been
• Air vacuum cleanup systems added to basic cone crusher designs that have also remained
• Rock grapple largely unchanged. Increases in rotating speed have provided
• Conveyor belt magnets the largest variation. Production improvements have come
• Conveyor belt metal detectors from speed increases and better crushing chamber designs.
• Belt monitoring systems The largest advance in cone crusher reliability has been in
• Belt feeders the use of hydraulics to protect crushers from being damaged