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GEOPHYSICAL AND MINING TECHNOLOGIES FOR INCREASING EFFICIENCY IN -HAN KRUM- OPEN PIT MINE, BULGARIA
Abstract
The scope of this research is to present and discuss information for ?Ada Tepe? open pit gold mine geological section within ?Khan Krum? gold mine deposit in South-Eastern Bulgaria. The mine is located near to Krumovgrad, approximately three kilometers south of the town, at Ada Tepe hill. The deposit is designed to extract 850,000 tons of gold ore per year over an eight-year period. Conventional open pit mining methods are planned to use for gold mining. The gold ore is currently processed in dressing plant, involving a crushing and milling followed by froth flotation to produce gold and silver concentrates. Mineral processing waste are thickened to paste and disposed in Integrated Mine Waste Facility, along with waste rocks. The preliminary research works are the key element in resources extraction. The incorporation of any prior geological and geophysical information available can significantly improve the result quality and to reduce the expenses. Prior information from boreholes, direct measurements or from structural imaging techniques as electrical resistivity tomography proved to be very efficient in the production process. The ?Ada Tepe? deposit is classified as a low sulphidation type epithermal gold-silver deposit. It was formed in the Early Oligocene and is hosted in a large metamorphic terrain. Gold and silver mineralization in the area of interest is mostly identified within the Shavarovo Formation. Base on the information from several drillings in the investigated area the following rocks are observed: clay, breccia conglomerate, breccia conglomerate with quartz inclusions and metamorphic clasts. The proposed research focused in detailed information collecting for spatial distribution of different lithological characteristics between horizon 465m and horizon 470 m. This information is highly important in the process of drilling blasting works and helps to be set up the blasting energy in the areas with hard rocks instead of clay. This knowledge is obtained using geophysical electrical tomography method - one of the most popular geophysical techniques used for imaging sub-surface structures from electrical resistivity measurements made at the ground surface.
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