At the Grande Côte Operations, the extraction operations take place in an artificial mobile basin of 12 hectares and about 6 metres deep and follow a route which is optimised to exploit the deposit. The mining process involves a dredge with a capacity of 7,000 tonnes per hour.
The world’s largest mining dredge (50 meters long and 17 meters wide) operates on a 600-meter long and 300-meter wide artificial pond, 24 hours a day. It moves about 30 meters per day— between 7 and 13 kilometers per year. The extracted sand is sent to the Wet Concentration Plant (WCP), which is connected to the dredge by a 320-meter long pipe.
The path design consists of mining three-dimensional designs defined by digitising. The shape and sequence of mining are controlled by the dredge and the floating plant constraints.
Dredges are well suited to large, free flowing sand deposits where a pond can be maintained. As the orebody consists of free-flowing sands holding an extensive shallow aquifer and high-grade located at the top, the choice of a dredge feeding the floating concentrator is appropriate for this deposit. However, dozer push is introduced to recover adjacent high-grade material to the mine path within 100m distance and slope angle of 15°.
No pre-strip is required. All material, within the design, is mined as ore.
Slopes are 35° above water and 14° below.
The optimum dredge pond level, to economically mine at and maintain the ........
