Mine Details
Ravensworth ug
http://www.xstrata.com/
coking-black-coal, Town, DiDo
Phone:
Address:
, singleton, NSW, 2330
State: , singleton, NSW, 2330
Email:
The Ravensworth underground coal mine in the Hunter Valley of NSW is located only 25 kilometres from Singleton. The company processes the black coal produced at the mine at its own coal handling and preparation facility, where it employs around 280 people who work a 24 hour shift over seven days a week.
The company, Ravensworth Underground Mine (RUM), is managed by Xstrata Coal NSW for the joint venture owners Resource Pacific Pty Ltd and Posco. Posco being a Korean steel manufacturer and Resource Pacific Pty Ltd, a company jointly owned by Marubeni and Xstrata Coal. Xstrata being the majority shareholder.
Ravensworth Utilises Longwall Mining Methods
The Ravensworth coal mine is developed to operate via longwall extraction methods in order to extract black coal from its semi-soft coking coal reserves. When Ravensworth coal is blended with hard coking coal it can be used in either electricity generation, or steel production.
The Ravensworth black coal underground mine commenced longwall mining in 2007 with access to its operations being made by a drift to the east of its coal handling preparation facility. Before the longwall method was introduced the coal was extracted via development headings that provided sufficient access to the panels. Headings are made by having a continuous line of miners working along each side of a longwall panel. The coal is then taken from the mine by a conveyor belt. At the far south west of the longwall all headings are connected. This is referred to as a longwall installation face. Its here where all the longwall mining equipment is installed. Longwall mining at Ravensworth consists of hydraulic roof supports, an armoured face conveyor and a shearer. It's the shearers job to extract the coal from the 250 metre wide and over two metres high coal face. This is carried out as a continuous operation 24 hours a day seven days a week.
Conveyors Take the Coal to the Surface
The conveyor system carrying the coal from underground to the surface carries it along the main drift. There are a series of conveyors operating at all times from the pit bottom to the top of the drift carrying an average of 1,200 tonnes of coal every hour. A dozer pushes stockpiled coal into reclaim feeders in a reclaim tunnel. These feeders are of a vibrating pan design capable of handling 2,000 tonnes an hour. Raw coal is either conveyed directly to a Run of Mill (ROM) surge bin to the Ravensworth Coal Handling Preparation Plant (RCHPP) for washing or to the RCT storage bins from where is taken to the rail load out bins for loading onto the coal train.
Production to Grow to Seven Million Tonnes Annually
The Ravensworth Underground Mine produced over 3.2 million tonnes of ROM coal in 2010. Total product coal production figures being a little over 2.3 million tonnes. Development will see ROM production reach seven million tonnes annually.
There are many other coal mines operating in the same area as the Ravensworth underground mine, the most noticeable being the Liddell and Cumnock No 1 Collieries to its west and the Narama coal mine to its south. There is also a stockpile facility servicing the Hunter Valley operations on the Newdell railway branch line north west of of the Ravensworth pit top. There are also mining operations taking place to the east of the Ravensworth pit, the major ones being the Mt Owen and Ashton coal mines.
Note- GlencoreXstrata was formed following a merger of Glencore International and Xstrata, the merger was completed in May 2013. But a decision was made by the Company's shareholders during the annual general meeting and the announcement was made in May 2014 that Glencore will drop Xstrata and be simply known as Glencore.rn
