This years project will involve planning a small surface coal mine using "Pod" or "Block Area" mining techniques.  This type of mining is typical of the most of the surface mines in Illinois today.  In contrast to the giant area strip mines of the past in the Midwest, Pod or Block Area mining involves use of mobile equipment and takes advantage of small blocks of land rather than large contiguous tracts.

Pod mining usually uses scrapers and dozers for land clearing and topsoil recovery, and scrapers, dozers, trucks and shovels for removal of the more consolidated material below.  The mines may recover multiple or single seams of coal depending on economics and continuity of the coal seams.

We will focus on equipment selection and sequencing this year with special attention paid to the economic potential for a new technology to influence mining costs.  Dozers are frequently one of the least expensive means of moving material, however, their range is limited and there are limits as to the grades that they can construct or negotiate.  A new rear dozer blade that can be attached to a dozer instead of a ripper (the JIL blade) allows a dozer to clean and scrape directly against a blasted highwall, allowing it to pull material that would otherwise have to be handled by truck and shovel.  Our project will pay special attention to the economic potential associated with using this special dozer blade to expand the use of dozing as a materials moving technique.

Schedule

Week #1 - Sizing Up Reserves

Prepare simple maps of the available land tracts showing the areas underlain by each coal seam.  Use these areas and your best estimates of thickness to calculate initial estimates of the coal tonnages available on the available tracts.

Modify your coal maps to define the depth to each coal seam.  Use 10 foot depth contours.  Calculate the tonnage of coal available in each area and at each depth using the 10 foot intervals.

For each tract prepare a cross-section of the stratigraphy including top and subsoils running the cross-section in the down-dip direction.  In the Swisher Surprise area the dip changes on different sides of the branch of the Wendler Fault.  Prepare cross-sections on each side of the fault.

Coal located to close to the surface may often be oxidized, degraded and unmarketable.  For coal located under unconsolidated cover of less than about 15 feet assume the coal is degraded.  Adjust your available tonnages acordingly and draw a map showing areas that remain of potential coal mining interest.

Not all coal is recovered in mining or in coal preparation.  For coal seams of 3 feet or less assume that mining will recover 85% of the coal.  Now assume this coal tonnage will be increased by 20% due to out of seam dilution.  Then assume the coal preparation plant will yield 65%.  For coal seams over 3 feet assume mining will recover 93% of the coal.  Assume out of seam dilution will be 8%.  Assume that coal preparation will recover 78%.  With these assumptions estimate the recoverable coal on the available property.

There are limits as to the amount of overburden that can be removed to recover coal.  As an initial estimation, coal with a stripping ratio of more than 15 to 1 may not be economically recoverable.  Prepare maps showing the coal that is less than 15 to 1 stripping ratio and still deep enough to not be oxidized and degraded.  Adjust your estimates of the recoverable coal to reflect this last set of estimations.

Land tracts of the same color must be acquired together in each of the 3 areas.  Identify those tracts of land that you believe should be considered for acquisition.  Identify any areas where you feel high priority should be given to additional land acquisitions.  Estimate the life of the reserves that are known feasible to acquire and the number of years reserves you would have if you acquired your high priority land areas.  (In general pod mining operations would have about a 7 to 15 year life based on initial reserves).

Identify any geologic information that you consider key to your decision making that is not available at this point and explain why you feel you need this information to proceed.

Product Evaluation #1 - Prepare all the maps mentioned and compile the reserve calculations called for.  Have these products available for the instructors inspection

Week #2

Write up Sections #1 and #2 of your final project report

Look at your property maps having "minable reserves" on them.  Sketch in where you would suggest starting box cuts to begin mining and add arrows for direction of pit advance.  (It is a common practice for people to begin mining under shallow cover and advance mines into deeper cover with time).  Sometimes people actually pivot entire mining directions with Pod mines.  If you decide to do this sketch in intermediate pit positions to help clarify how you will move or turn your pits.

Following in class planning discussions prepare cross-section drawings across your pits at several points during their lives showing benches, bench widths and bench heights used on both the highwall and spoil sides.  Some of your benches will likely correspond to materials that must be handled separately (for example you will extract the topsoil and coal both as separate layers not mixed with other materials).  Some of your benches will likely correspond to materials that lend themselves to one type of equipment or another (for example scrapers may perform well on topsoil and subsoil but may not work well on rocky transition materials or blasted bedrock.  Similarly you may blast solid rock heavily and blast unconsolidated soils either lightly or not at all).

Develop a plan for equipment that you will use for each horizon or bench in your pit.  You need only pick equipment by type (for example choosing to handle top soil with scrapers but defer what size or type of scraper for later).  For each pit develop two alternatives for some of your benches - one that uses dozers with J.I.L. blades and one that does not.  In Pod mining dozers commonly perform the following types of functions -

1- Dozers may cut topsoil or subsoil in thin lifts and push it into piles (sometimes the piles may be picked up by shovels for FELs for loading into trucks).  The J.I.L. blade probably would do nothing useful here.

2- Dozers may push scrapers and assist them with loading.  Although the J.I.L. blade may have some unusual applications here it was never designed with this in mind.

3- Dozers may be equipped with rippers and used to break up lighter rock formations as an alternative to blasting.  Since a ripper is attached to the same points on the rear of a dozer as the J.I.L. blade the two applications are mutually exclusive without changing out attachments (neither rippers or J.I.L. blades were designed for fast easy change out).

4- Dozers may break out and push blasted rock down to FELs providing FELs with loosened piles of material to load rather than having to tear into tight heavy piles of blasted rock.  The J.I.L. blade may allow dozers to pull material from a blasted highwall that the front blade could not get (obviously a front blade is a full dozer length away from what ever the dozer backed against where as a J.I.L. blade is up against what ever the dozer backed against).

5- When conditions permit dozers perform functions similar to draglines.  Draglines pick up rock from the highwall side of the pit and pivot to dump it on the spoil side.  Dozers start on the highwall side and push down and across the pit and up onto the spoil side.  Because a conventional dozer can only cut about a 28 to 30 degree slope at most there will always be a lot of material against the highwall that the dozer cannot get.  This is the primary design application of the J.I.L. blade because a rear dozer blade can rake down and pull the material awy from the highwall.  Watch 5 minutes of video to see this application.  Material not moved by dozers in this way is most commonly handled by truck and shovel.  (Obviously one application of this assignment is to have dozers with J.I.L. blades move most of the material with little or no truck shovel vs. partial movement with conventional dozers in concert with truck and shovel operations).

Project Evaluation #2 - show your initial write-up of sections #1 and #2, Show your sketches of your pit beginning points and advance directions, show your pit cross-sections with labeling or listing of what type of equipment is performing what tasks to advance that pit cross-section

Week #3

Write-up Section #3 of your final report.

Select a production rate and then identify on your maps what areas will be mined each year to provide the coal to meet that production.  Remember to consider and work in terms of recoverable coal.

For one of the three areas develop an inventory of material that will have to be moved each year to meet production.  Group this material by the type of equipment that will move it - the benches it will come from etc.  This information is going to be used to help you size and select your production fleets.

Project Evaluation #3 - show your initial write-up of sections #1 through section #3 in a binder.  Show your map of the areas to be mined each year.  Show your inventory of material to be moved by each type of equipment for one of the three mining areas.

Week #4

Write-up the first half of Section #4 of your final report.  Write up one the the three materials inventory subsections at the end of Section #4 of your final report.

Develop the material to moved inventories for the other two mining areas.

For your three mining areas make pit cross sections and plan views for each of the first 3 years.  As you make the cross sections consider and list the support equipment and functions that you are going to have to have (example - trucks will need roads to drive on).

Project Evaluation #4 - show your initial write-up of sections #1 through part of section #4 in a binder.  Show your inventory of materials for the other two mining properties.  Show your mining cross-sections.  Be prepared to orally identify the support equipment you will need.

Week #5

Write-up the two remaining materials inventory subsections at the end of Section #4 of your final report.

Make cross section and plan view drawing for your pits in all three areas for the remaining years of the operation.  Produce written commentaries and lists if applicable of what you will have going on each year.  Make sure you know which material is being picked up where, where it is being moved to, and how it is being moved there.

Prepare Cross-Sections for the material to be moved using the J.I.L. Blade.  The cross-section should estimate the amount of material and dozing distances that will be involved if the J.I.L. Blade is used, and those if the J.I.L. Blade is not used.

Project Evaluation #5 - show your initial write-up of sections #1 through most of section #4 in a binder.  Show your cross-sections and lists of what is happening each year in your pits.  Show with sketches or cross-sections where the material being moved is going to.  Show your dozing distance and material moved estimates from your cross-sections with and without the J.I.L. Blade.

Weeks #6 and #7 (Note - SME will be going on during 7th week)

Finish writing section #4 of the final report.  Write up section #5 of the final report.  Organize and clean-up your drawings.

Use the Catarpillar programs and handbooks to pick out and size the equipment fleets for one of the areas each week through the life of the mine.  You will be trying to determine the amount of material that can be moved by each unit rather than how many units will be needed.  For ancillary and support operations try to actually get the amount of equipment that will be needed.

Project Evaluation #6 - show your initial write-up of sections #1 to #5 with the illustrations in place and in a binder (larger drawings folded and in proper sleeves).  Show your production output results for two of the three areas.

Week #8 (Note Spring Break begins at the end of this week so things will be checked before Spring Break rather than the following Monday)

Write-up the first half of section #6 of your final report.  Clean-up any work done so far in preparation for the pre-midterm evaluation.

Use the Catarpillar programs and handbooks to pick out and size the equipment fleets for the remaining one of the three mine properties.

Midterm Project Review - Your folder showing your work up through the first half of section #6 - your folder will be turned in prior to beginning spring break. (15% of grade)

Spring Break

Week #9

Do time studies on the videos and where you have found good uses for the J.I.L. blade equipped dozers.  Using cross-sections sketch out how much material can be moved with the J.I.L. blade dozers and how this alters the amount of material to handled by shovels.

For materials that might be moved with and without the J.I.L. Blade adjust your materials to be moved inventories to show how much material will be moved by dozer when the J.I.L. Blade is in use and when it is not in use.  Quantify the amount of material that will have to be moved by other equipment in each case.  Since the J.I.L. Blade dozers will not be able to move all benches of material, only those benches, intervals and sequences where the J.I.L. Blade has come into play will be affected by this task.

Project Evaluation #7 - Show your cross-sections of the material cuts with and without the J.I.L. Blade together with your tonnages of material to be moved in both cases.

Weeks #10

Write up the method and results of your time studies for Section #6 of your final report.

Calculate your production using the J.I.L. Blade with your analysis calibrated to your time study.  This work will probably only involve those materials moving operations where the J.I.L. Blade is applicable.  Other materials moving operations should probably already have been calculated.

Project Evaluation #8 - Show your calculations on the amount of material that can be moved by the J.I.L. Blade dozers each year.  If the presence or absense of the J.I.L. Blade dozers changes the tonnage that can be moved each year by your alternate equipment units show these figures and calculations also.

Week #11

Finish writing up Section #6 of your Final Report.

You now have the production available from each unit in potential fleets that both do and do not involve the J.I.L. Blade.  You also have complete inventories of tonnages to be moved by each type of equipment each year.  Using these figures produce exact equipment fleets to be used at each operation.  This may involve up to six scenarios since each property may have both a J.I.L. Blade and a non-J.I.L. Blade scenario.

Project Evaluation #9 - Show your binder with the drawings and first 6 completed sections in it.  Show the list of the exact equipment fleets needed in each scenario.

Week #12

Write section #7 of your Final Report.

This week we will be doing the final hours of operation calculations on our equipment fleets.  These calculations should include your final calibration and time studies from the videos.  I will be looking for specific items in support of your calculations and conclusions.

(1)- Although mining will take place and you have calculated overburden volumes to be moved in each year of the operation you will only need to do detailed cross-section drawings for 4 reasonably spaced years of operation.  For the material that is cast blasted and then at least partially dozed across the pit you must have scale drawings of the pit cross section.  These drawings must divide the material to be dozed across into 5 steps (again at reasonable intervals).  The five steps must show where the material was picked up and where it will be pushed to.  (The top material from the pile will be dozed to the lowest point on the spoil side and then successive cuts will be pushed higher and higher on the spoil side).  You will use your scale drawing to calculate dozing distance.  In general your dozing distance will be in three components - a downhill run on the cast blast rock - a short near level run where the dozer levels out and gets ready to push the spoil up on the spoil side - and an uphill run where the dozer will push the material up onto the spoil side.  These distances will be important when you run Dozsim because they will tell you how far you are pushing and also what the angle of the push will be.  (Note that the first cuts will tend to be mostly downhill while the later cuts will be mostly uphill).  For each of the 5 cuts you make in your cross-section drawing you will calculate each cut as a percentage of the total cross-sectional area.  Since you have already calculated overburden volumes each year those percentages will be used to estimate the amount of material that has to be pushed each year, how far and at what down or uphill angle.  Please note that this requirement means that for each of the three properties there will be a minimum of 40 drawings - 4 years * 5 cuts * 2 scenarios (JIL blade and no JIL blade).  It is of course possible that materials constraints may make it impossible to use a JIL blade which would lower the number of drawings.

(2)- I will be checking your drawings for material that must be truck shoveled or material that is to be JIL bladed.  When no JIL blade is used your drawings should show the dozer cuts starting one dozer length away from the highwall and then proceeding down at 29 degrees (assumed maximum stable angle for dozer working).  The truck shovel material so defined will have roughly triangular shape (your solid highwall standing about 70 to 80 degrees - not 90 - and the dozer slope at 29) with the top of the triangle missing.  The material to be JIL bladed is not equivalent to the truck shovel material just explained.  Because the JIL blade will pull material from up against the highwall the dozer will not be left with a steep slope to go down.  Instead he will be able to back up to the highwall all the time.  The resulting JIL blade material will be roughly a parallelogram with both sides sloping about 70 to 80 degrees.  There is one other possible scenario.  When large amounts of unconsolidated material must be handled it cannot simply be dozed across the pit.  It would be unstable on the spoil side and keep sliding into the pit.  The dirt and unconsolidated material when it is more than about 8 feet needs to be taken by truck to the spoil side.  The dozers will form flat rock benches on the spoil side.  The trucks will come in and dump the soil in tightly packed piles.  Dozers will level these piles producing about an 8 foot thick lift of dirt.  The next problem is that if trucks try to drive on that dirt they will sink in.  The solution is to bring in truck loads of rock and put down about a 2.5 to 4 foot lift of rock that is dozed out into place.  After the rock is placed a new lift of dirt can be laid.  The potential issue is that the rock volume needed for these soil lifts might exceed the volume of material that the dozers cannot get to without the JIL blade.  If this happens the amount of truck and shovel rock will be defined by the rock needed on the spoil side for lifts to handle the dirt - not by the what the dozers can get.  Your drawings will have to show the truck shovel material differently and in greater volume if this is the case.  Of course if that happens there would be little or no use for the JIL blade.

(3)-  From your dozer cuts on the drawings you will be able to determine dozing distance and grade.  Your drawings will be 2D, however, and therefore not capable of directly producing a volume.  You can get the percentage of the material that needs to be pushed each distance and grade.  You also have calculations showing the annual materials volumes.  You will apply these percentages to your previous annual materials volumes to determine what material must be dozed how far and at what angle.  You will only done your cross sections at 4 points in time, where most of you have material volumes for 10 years.  You will apply the percentges to the in-between years to get those years annual requirements.  You will then use dozesim to determine you dozer hours needed (one of dozsims options is to figure the number of dozers and/or dozer hours needed each year to move a given volume of material).  I will be looking to see tables of numbers entered into dozsim with the results produced (and yes I do plan on spot checking numbers).

(4)- Although dozsim will produce a great many numbers for you, it will not produce all of them, particulary with respect to the JIL blade.  The JIL blade will handle about 1/3rd the volume of material allowed for the front blade.  When the JIL blade is used, your operator will back to the highwall, lower and load the JIL blade over a distance of one dozer length.  He will then drop the front blade and begin to fill the front blade while letting up the rear blade and spreading the material.  In other words the JIL blade material is rehandled by the front blade.  Take the volume of material handled by the JIL blade and consider it to be appearing one dozer length away from the highwall to be handled by the front blade and dozsim.  You may either double the part of the material one dozer length from the highwall and run for one dozer length thickness and use this doubled material in your 5 cuts with dozsim, or you can treat it as a separate 6th mass of material to be moved with the dozer (figuring your slope and haul distance will probably be easier and more accurate if you use the first method).  I will be looking for explanations and evidence that you did rehandle the JIL blade material with the front blade.

(5)- The JIL blade still involves operator and dozer time.  We are dealing with this time by taking the volume of material to be JIL bladed, figuring the number of JIL blade passes needed to move it, extimating the time per pass from the video and using this to calculate the JIL blade time which will then be added to the total dozer time.  I will be looking for your calculation work on this and calculations that show you included the JIL blade time in the totals for those cases that used the JIL blade.

(6)- Any material to be handled by truck and loader should be clearly accounted for using FPC.  I will be looking for maps and explanations of where material was picked up, what roads it was hauled over, and where and how it was deposited on the spoil side.  I will be looking for tables showing what haul road profiles and other data you entered into FPC and tables showing the resulting hours and fleet size requirements.  Those of you using scrapers will have the same requirements for your scraper fleet.

(7)- Many of you will have dozer support requirements for some of your equipment.  You will have dozers potentially doing things like trapping for end loaders, push loading scrapers, and leveling soil or rock piles deposited on the spoil side.  We will be using simple assumptions to quantify the dozers needed.  Where trapping for end loaders is practiced you will default assume one dozer for each loader.  If you have several loaders working very close together, such as might be encountered in tandem loading or two very close load points, you may assume one dozer can support both load points.  For push loading scrapers you should assume one dozer per load point as an initial number.  Often you will have multiple scrapers going through the same load area.  The number of scrapers you need will be influenced by the amount of material you chose to handle in this way.  If you are running more than 3 scrapers at a load point you need to check the length of the load time versus the total cycle time requirements to make sure that one dozer can push load all of the dozers.  If you are only handling top soil and subsoil being laid down in piles by trucks and then being leveled off by dozers we are assuming 2 good sized dozers will do the job (no calculation needed).  If you are handling rock and soil lifts of trucked material use two dozers per lift bearing in mind that for the rock layers you will need to be using something like a D10 or D11.  (If you want you may do calculations for the leveling production of the dozers on the spoil side but I'm guessing you will all feel you have enough work). 

Project Evaluation #10 - On Monday I will be checking for the things listed above.

Week #13

Write section #8 of your final report.  Begin cleaning-up your work and putting boarders and title blocks on all your drawings.

Calculate the operating costs for all of your mobile equipment used in overburden removal and placement.  Your work to this point has generated machine hours needed so operating cost per hour should easily convert these numbers to operating costs.  Please note that we are not doing ownership costs this week.

You will make final decisions on fleet sizes this week.  You will determine how many of each type of equipment you will buy.  This will need to consider any spares you may need to keep your hours of available equipment time up to where you assumed.  You will finally consider your support equipment requirements for your roads etc.  If your roads are used only for hauling coal and topsoil assume you will need one road grader, one small backhoe, and a smaller dozer to handle roads and related trenching.  You will probably be loading coal and possibly overburden with a shovel.  If you are using shovels for loading material, assume you will need about one 990 front end loader for cleaning up spills.  If you have truck or scraper haulage for more than coal and top/subsoil assume your road maintenance support equipment requirements will go up linearly with road use.

Product Evaluation #11 - Show your binder and how you have improved your drawings together with written text through section 8. I will also check to make sure you have final fleet sizes and operating costs.  Your costs per hour should have supporting calculations in the appendix, either hand calculations or input output lists from FPC.

Week #14

Write section #9 and the Executive Summary of your final report.  Continue any clean-up and boarder and title block additions on your drawings.

Build your project cash flows.  Get the cost for all of your support equipment.  On a spreadsheet add in your approximate insurance and tax fees and your annual depreciation deductions.  Put the operating costs on the spreadsheet.  When the work is done discount all the costs back to time zero.  For the JIL and non-JIL blade cases subtract one NPV (actually it will be a net present value of a cost) from the other and get the NPV savings from the JIL blade.  Next take the NPVs and convert them into an annuity over the life of the mining.  Divide the annual value of the annuity by the annual tons produced.  This will give you a life cycle cost per ton for overburden removal.  Compare the life cycle cost per ton with and without the JIL blade.

Product Evaluation #12 - Show your binder with drawings and all text from the Executive Summary to Section 9.  Be prepared to discuss any organization or structure you have created to handle appendices.  Submit the work for a pre-final check.

Week #15

Write-up your table of contents, list of figures, and organizational tabs and explanations for any of your appendix material.

Make final oral reports in class.

Product to be Evaluated - Your Oral Report (10% of grade)

Final Written Pre-Review of Project (folder to be submitted Wednesday 5% of Grade)

Finals Week

Clean-up and make any last adjustments to have your final written report in order.  Submit the report on the day and by the time that the University Scheduled Final Exam would be given if we were having a formal final exam (which we are not).

Product to be Evaluated - Your Final Written Report (30% of grade)