Evaluation of Mine Productivity and Economics by Effective Blast Instrumentation—A Techno Economic Proposition

Coal is the mainstay of power generation in India. The manifold increase in demand for coal puts a huge pressure on augmenting production, primarily from opencast mines. The increase in production necessitates heavy blasting in overburden and coal benches of opencast mines which poses numerous challenges in carrying out blasting operation techno-economically. Presently, the consumption of industrial explosives and accessories in Coal India has touched a whopping figure of 350 million USD per annum. The present paper discusses some of key challenges faced in various mines of coal in India during blasting where blast instrumentation may contribute to the mine productivity and economics significantly. Blast Instrumentation at mine level will prove to a harbinger for practicing blasting engineers. The blast instrumentation at Sonepur Bazari project resulted in direct savings in explosives cost by 29.5%. The use of well characterized explosives obtained by using MASW (multi channel analysis of surface waves) technique at Umrer project of Coal India Limited resulted in improvement in fragment size by 12.76%. It may be concluded with high degree of confidence that blast instrumentation at mine level will influence the mine productivity and economics.