PIT SLOPE ANGLE OPTIMISATION OF BHANEGAON OPENCAST COAL MINE, NAGPUR AREA, WESTERN COALFIELDS LIMITED - USING NUMERICAL METHODS.

Abstract

Coal is a major source of energy in India and other parts of the world. Since last decade, demand of coal gone up many fold. Coal is major raw material for thermal power station, 85% of India’s coal production in consumed by thermal power station. Major portion of the countries’ coal demand is met through open cast coal mines and very little from underground coal mines. Since the coal deposit closer to the surface are depleting fast therefore in future coal deposit have to be mined at greater depth. As the depth of mining the coal increases the stripping ratio also increases. Therefore the mining organization tries to mine the coal with the steepest possible overall slope angle vis-à-vis sufficient stability. This leads to the substantial reduction in quantity of overburden to be removed. This is realized through financial benefits. Since working at steeper slope angle with sufficient stability also reduces the surface land required for stacking the overburden. This exercise was conducted for the dip side working of Bhanegaon open cast coal mine WCL Nagpur area to optimize the benefits of reduction in overburden that is to be mine for exposing the coal and also reduction in the surface land requirement for storage of the overburden. It was found that the dip side pit is stable at steeper angle which is suggested based on numerical methods analysis. A 2D approach using Finite Element Method with the help of Rocscience RS2.0 has been used to analyze the above situation.