Grosvenor

Construction began on the Grosvenor coal project in the Bowen Basin Region of Central Queensland, near the town of Moranbah, in July 2012. It is to be an underground longwall mining operation that will produce five million tonnes of premium hard coking coal a year once it beging production in 2016.

The Grosvenor Coal Mining Project is Owned by Anglo American
The Grosvenor project is located south of the Moranbah North coal mine
and is wholly owned by Anglo American that also plans to develop the nearby Moranbah South coal mining project by 2020. The Grosvenor underground coal mine, when completed, will be a world class mining operation utilising the latest mining technology. The Grosvenor mine, in its first stage of development, will be a single new underground longwall mine that targets the Goonyella Middle coal seam. The same seam that is also mined by the Moranbah North coal mine. Coal produced by the Grosvenor mine will be processed at the existing Moranbah North CHPP (coal handling preparation plant) and its train loading facilities.

Redpath Mining Contractor is Using a Robbins Tunnel Boring Machine to Create two Drifts at the Grosvenor Project
Anglo American have already started using Redpath mining contractor's innovative tunnel boring machine at the Grosvenor mining project. It is the first time in Australia that such a machine has been used for drift excavation. Drift mining is a mining process that involves cutting into the side of a hillside. This creates a flat entry into the coal seam as opposed to slope mining. The drift method usually mines the coal seam by using gravity to have the coal drop into the drift for easy economical removal as the drift tunnels can be excavated slightly below the coal seam.

The Grosvenor Mine Drifts will Reach the Coal Seam in Early 2014
The Redpath tunnel boring machine will allow Anglo American to reach the Goonyella Middle coal seam in early 2014 and have longwall production commencing by late 2016. The tunnel boring machine used by Redpath was manufactured by Robbins Engineering in Atherton Queensland. It will have two drifts to excavate at the Grosvenor project taking the place of the more conventional road header tunnel excavator. One drift will be used for vehicle and personnel access to the coal seam and the other for transporting coal from the longwall to the stockpile on the surface. Anglo American chose the tunnel boring machine as it offered a safer faster and more stable method of excavation.

The tunnel boring machine used by Redpath is expected to excavate the drifts three times faster than that of a more conventional road header excavator. The tunnel boring machine will pass under a steel archway that has been constructed at the entrance and commence drilling into the ground creating the seven metre diametre tunnel. It will decend at an angle of one in eight until it reaches the coal seam 160 metres below the surface. As it develops the tunnel pre-cast concrete ring segments will be installed to line the inside of the drift. This type of support has a life of 50 years whereas other means of drift support usually require rehabilitation every 10 years.

Construction of the Grosvenor underground coal mining project has created 700 jobs and once the construction phase is complete the mine will require a permanent staff of about 350 personnel.
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