OZ Minerals is an Australian based modern mining company with a focus on copper. Their Carrapateena Project, located in South Australia is one of Australias largest undeveloped copper deposits. Construction of Carrapateena is underway and commissioning is scheduled for Q4 2019 after which the project will ramp up to steady state production. The project will be an underground sub-level caving (SLC) operation, with an estimated mine life of 20 years. The planned ore handling comprises of ore-passes feeding underground crushers and loaded onto a conveyer belt that transports the ore up the decline to the surface. The underground workings will extend to a depth of 1.4km with a steep virgin rock temperature (VRT) gradient and future mine cooling is also required. In addition, the orebody contains very low levels of uranium, which requires suitable ventilation strategies to manage possible natural occurring radon emanation from strata. In keeping with the philosophy of designing a modern mine, ventilation on demand (VoD) is a central part of the ventilation strategy. This paper explores the feasibility and on-going operational ventilation planning for the Carrapateena Project. Although natural occurring radon emanation from strata is common in many hard rock mines there are very few SLC examples and therefore this paper provides a unique perspective on ventilation planning. The paper also presents the feasibility and subsequent implementation planning from an owners and consultants perspective.
CITATION:Manns, K, Holtzhausen, J, Mooney, A and van den Berg, L, 2019. Ventilation planning considerations for the Carrapateena Sublevel Cave, in Proceedings Australian Mine Ventilation Conference 2019, pp 355362 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).