A seismic system has recently been installed at Shizhuyuan mine in Hunan Province, the site of a world famous poly-metal deposit extremely rich in rare metals.

The Shizhuyuan mine is located under a mountain and lies in a relatively low-stress environment. The need for minerals in recent years led to a faster advancement of the excavations than previously anticipated, which pushed mining activities to deeper levels. A series of large remnant pillars are currently mined out at depth in transition from a room-and-pillar to block caving mining method.

As a result of the excavation rate increase, an increased potential for local high-stresses is expected, which could result in high rate of seismicity and rockbursting during extraction. The microseismic system was installed to monitor mine seismicity associated with this mining sequence within a volume of approximately 600 x 600 x 200 m. The system is comprised of 30 uniaxial accelerometers (30V/g) and provides continuous data acquisition and recording, blast identification and removal, automatic event location and source parameters.

The Shizhuyuan Mine, China

ESG's Paladin Data Acquisition System, deployed to detect and located microseismic events associated with pillar to block caving operations