Quarry Blasting

Within quarries, substantial quantities of explosive materials are used on a daily basis for the blasting of rock faces.  Traditionally explosives would have been manufactured elsewhere, transported to the quarry and held in storage within the quarry site and used as required.

This is no longer desirable due to increasing standards of health, safety & environmental control of such materials but primarily due to potential threat of terrorist activity.

The industry is moving to a new system whereby the constituent materials for the explosives are loaded onto and transported to the quarry site in a purpose designed vehicle and off-loaded by the vehicle driver into the blast hole where they mix and form the explosive charge.

Bulk ANFO is manufactured at each customers mine site, and auger or pneumatically delivered directly into the boreholes. Low density,  explosive grade from South Africa. the principal component in bulk ANFO and represents the single largest ingredient used in the manufacture of explosives today.

The length of the borehole controls the height of the working bench, the inclination of the borehole from the vertical controls the repose of the bench face, at most quarries this inclination can vary from vertical to 8o, the holes are charged with explosives and detonators and then packed or stemmed with inert material, to control the force of the blast.
In this manner the amount of explosives used in the blast is controlled, and varying the amount of explosives used in each blast cannot be carried out without affecting other factors.