Mining Ulan and Moolarben seams with seam thickness of 0.5 to 12 metres at depths of 5 to 40 metres.

Open cut mining at WCPL during the MOP term is to be carried out primarily with dozers, loaders, hydraulic excavators and trucks.

Conventional open cut mining methods are used at the Mine, with a low strip ratio allowing for relatively rapid pit advance. The general sequence of open cut mining within the nominated Pits is as follows:
• Vegetation clearance and removal (including mulching & stockpiling of logs);
• Topsoil/subsoil stripping by scrapers and/or dozers. Stripped topsoil is used directly in progressive rehabilitation or is placed in stockpiles for later re-use;
• Drilling and blasting of overburden, with some waste rock ‘cast blast’ into the adjacent minedout strip;
• Dozer pushing of blasted overburden into the adjacent mined-out strip to expose the target seam, or removal with excavator and haul truck;
• Drilling and blasting plus ripping of coal/parting material;
• Mining of exposed coal seams by excavator and loading into haul trucks for transport directly to the ROM dump hopper or ROM pads;
• Interburden/parting material is then drilled and blasted, ripped, pushed or excavated and hauled to expose the underlying working coal sections
• Coarse rejects and tailings from the CHPP are selectively placed within mine voids, waste rock emplacements and approved tailing storage facilities
• Hauled overburden/interburden/parting material is strategically placed within mine voids and associated waste rock emplacements to develop the final landform
• Progressive (as as soon as reasonably practicable following disturbance) landform profiling and rehabilitation of mine voids and waste rock emplacements. In some areas, temporary rehabilitation is undertaken to stabilise landforms until further mining operations are carried out in the future.

ROM coal can be reclaimed at a rate of up to 1,600 tph from ROM Dump Hopper 1 and up to 1,400 tph from ROM Dump Hopper 2 to Sizing Station 1 and 2 respectively, via a feeder breaker. The broken coal is then screened, and if oversized, further crushed in separate sizers. Sized coal less than 50 millimetres (mm) is transferred to either a raw coal stockpile or a product coal stockpile (bypass coal). Raw coal is reclaimed from the raw coal stockpiles and is fed to the coal preparation plant at up to 1,400 tph.

The Mine produces both washed and unwashed coal products. The coal handling and processing infrastructure has been designed to accommodate the processing of raw coal and the handling of raw (bypass) and washed product coal.

Sized coal is washed in the raw coal and desliming screens, with fine coal/slimes (less than 0.7 mm) fed to the fine coal circuit, washed medium coal (greater than 0.7 mm and less than 2 mm) fed to the medium coal washing circuit and washed coal (greater than 2 mm) fed to the coarse coal circuit. The fine coal circuit separates coal fines from slimes and comprises cyclones, spirals, centrifuges, a screen and a tailings thickener. Tailings would be pumped from the tailings thickener to the tailings filter press, which would dewater the material to allow it to be conveyed to the reject bin.

The medium coal and coarse coal circuits comprise dense medium cyclones to separate the coarse rejects from the washed coal. The fine and coarse rejects from ........