Recovering a Legacy of Old Iron Ore Consolidated Fines Dump on a Mountain Side and Working Out a Method of Mining: Conservation of Minerals and Freeing Space

In many of the ore mines, the sub-grade minerals at various times are separately dumped at sites that over time grow into dumps on the downhill side of mountain top. Once regarded as sub-grade, in the times of demand and scarcity they are reclaimed to be sold with blending or directly feeding into furnaces as, most often they are in the form of fines. The slope stability study and safe working remain the key for reclamation and future stability of the fines dump. The work is related to the Study of slope stability of 33.00 Million tonnes of Iron ore dump fines at an iron ore mine in India. The geotechnical study of the present dump slopes as well as a detailed numerical modeling of the proposed pit layout at different stages of mining of the dump has been presented in this article. The study presents a case as to how such old legacy dumps can be mined without compromising safety.