The Juruti Mine operations are based on the use of conventional strip mining. Each plateau is divided into panels and regular strips of 20 m width x 200 m long within which anumber of sequential mining activities including land clearance, topsoil removal, overburden stripping and waste backfill, and bauxite mining take place.
The majority of the waste is backfilled by pushing the overburden back into the previously excavated cut with dozers. A suitable period of drying and consolidation of the fines isallowed before overburden is replaced. The returned overburden surface will be contoured with dozers to create an acceptable final topography. Shortly thereafter, topsoilstocks will be distributed over the overburden in preparation for landform rehabilitation.
The depth of excavation at Juruti is shallow (20 m or less) and the method of overburden removal by bulldozersresults in shallow slope angles. The geotechnical aspect of mine design is therefore not a major consideration for the deposit and a formal geotechnical investigation has not beencompleted for the open pits.
The mine is an open pit operation and uses on-road 8x4 40 t trucks, hydraulic excavators 66 t and 74 t operating weight and D6 to D11 size dozers.
The Capiranga plateau is currently being mined and will be shortly followed by Capiranga Central and Mauari plateaus.
The mining concept is based on conventional strip mining. Each plateau is divided into panels ........
