# Kalgoorlie is the largest gold mine in Australia ...



## alshangiti (11 سبتمبر 2007)

Overview -

*Keywords*
*Australia*
*gold*
*open pit*
Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) consists primarily of the super pit open-pit mine. It is a quarter of a mile from the towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder, Western Australia, 550 kilometers east of Perth. 

Kalgoorlie is the largest gold mine in Australia. It has produced more than 10 million ounces of gold since it began operating. The area has been mined continuously since 1893. The super pit incorporates more than a dozen open pit and underground mines.



The property consist of 58 mining leases and 104 prospecting licenses covering 23,000 hectares. The super pit is currently 290 metres deep by 1.5 kilometres wide by 4 kilometres long. KCGM has proven reserves that should last beyond the year 2013. 

Processing facilities consist of the Fimiston mill and flotation plant beside the mine and the Gidji roaster 16 kilometres to the north. *Kalgoorlie is the largest gold mine in Australia ...*Fimiston processes over 14 million tons of ore per year. Doré is produced on site and shipped for refinement into gold bullion. 

*Ownership Summary*
*Name*: Barrick Gold Corporation 
*Interest*: 50%
*Note*: public
*Name*: Newmont Mining Corp
*Interest*: 50%
*Note*: public
_Reference: 31 Mar 2006_​

KCGM is a joint venture company owned by Barrick and Newmont and operated by Barrick. In 2005, the operation had 530 employees and 1,000 contractors on site. The mine operates 24 hours a day, year round. 
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Location -

Kalgoorlie is in Western Australia's outback. Gold was discovered in 1893 and Kalgoorlie has been a major mining town since then, with some impressive old buildings that reflect the town's early and on-going prosperity. The population has stayed fairly steady at just above 30,000 people for the last century. It is one of the larger country cities in Western Australia. 


Kalgoorlie is well served by an extensive network of bus, rail, and air services to Perth (the capital city of Western Australia) and and the rest of the country. There is daily train service between Perth and Kalgoorlie, and twice weekly trains on the Sydney-Adelaide-Perth route stop here. It is a day's drive or a comfortable six-hour train ride from Perth. Kalgoorlie has an airport and it is a one hour flight to Perth. 

The climate is dry with hot summers and cool winters. Temperatures vary from an average of 16°C in the winter (July) to an average of 33°C in the summer (January). The average annual rainfall is 260 mm, fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. *Location Summary*
*Nearest Landmark*: KALGOORLIE
*Distance from Landmark*: 0km
*Direction from Landmark*: NORTH
*Latitude*: 30 deg 45 min S
*Longitude*: 121 deg 30 min E
*Satellite Image*: <click to view>

The outback is a desert. The community's entire water supply comes from the Perth dams via a pipeline over a distance of 650kms. This pipeline runs alongside the Great Eastern Highway, which is the western part of a national highway running between Perth and the east coast of Australia. 

The super pit is the largest hole in the Southern Hemisphere and therefore dominates the landscape. The tourist train known as the "Rattler" departs daily from Boulder Station at 10am and does a one hour long loop around the Golden Mile and super pit. 
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Property -


The ore deposits mined in the Kalgoorlie goldfields occur within an intensely mineralized shear zone system in dolerite host rocks, within the Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt, which is part of the Yilgarn Block of Western Australia. The rocks are of Archean age. 

Mineralisation consists of over 1,000 gold-sulfide-telluride breccia lodes, some over 2 kilometers in length and 1.3 kilometers vertical extent. Lodes are steeply dipping. The main lodes strike NW, caunter and cross lodes striking WNW. The best ore is located where the lodes converge. 


The goldfield consists of a number of discrete deposits, of which the most significant are the Golden Mile, Mt Charlotte (3 km north of the Super Pit), Mt Percy and Hannan's North. The Golden Mile Deposit accounts for about 90% of gold production from the field. 

The gold deposits are largely hosted by ultramafic and mafic volcanic rocks and mafic sills, with the Golden Mile Dolerite, a mafic sill, the most important host to mineralisation. The stratigraphy has been intensely deformed by folding and faulting. The Golden Mile, an intensely mineralised, steeply dipping shear system, is divided into two parts. 


The eastern lode system comprises a 'swarm' of lodes; the western lode system is less complex, with fewer lodes, but the lodes are persistent and well defined. Gold occurs as native gold and as gold and gold-silver tellurides. Native gold often occurs within or marginal to pyrite grains. Ore is mineralogically complex and refractory. 

*Deposit Summary*
*Deposit Type*: Shear hosted lode
*Primary Commodity*: gold
Mining is almost exclusively from the super pit, which incorporates other pits named Judd, South, Paringa, Croesus/Eclipse, Central, Brownhill, Drysdale, Morrison, North and Horseshoe. Shafts located within the current super pit are the Main, Croesus, Chaffers, Lake View and Perseverance. Mt Charlotte, the underground mine, is down to 20 workers. *Reserves Summary*
*Name*: Kalgoorlie
*Commodity*: gold *Class*: Proven + Probable
*Tonnage*: 169.77 Mtons
*Grade*: 0.058 oz/ton
*Note*: Containing 9.788 Moz gold. _Reference: 31 Dec 05_​

More than 50 million ounces of gold have been recovered in the district since the first discovery in 1893, of which the Kalgoorlie mine has accounted for over 10 million ounces, at depths of up to 1,220 meters, from high-grade lodes and adjacent disseminated mineralization, and from the large stockwork zones that characterize the Mt. Charlotte and Reward (underground) orebodies. 
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Operation -


Up to 850,000 ounces of gold a year are produced from the super pit and Mt Charlotte. open pit mining is by hydraulic face shovels and dump trucks. Kalgoorlie uses 240-ton (218-tonne) haul trucks and 44-cubic yard (34-cubic meter) shovels to move nearly 100 million tons (90 million tonnes) of ore and waste a year. The strip ratio is approximately 6:1. All material is hard rock requiring drilling and blasting. 

Kalgoorlie has four Komatsu PC8000 hydraulic face shovels are loading Caterpillar 793 haul trucks. The shovels weigh about 650 tonnes and can pick up 55 tonnes in their buckets. Caterpiller 793 haul trucks are used to carry rock from the pit to the crusher or dumps. A shovel can fill a Caterpillar 793 in 4 or 5 buckets, taking about 2.5 minutes. 

All of the production machinery is fitted with Wenco dispatch and monitoring equipment. The display allows an equipment operator to see the current operational status of his machine and receive information from the dispatcher in the control hut. Some trucks are fitted with television cameras to help new drivers get the feel for backing under shovels and dumping. 

The dispatch hut is the hub of open pit operations. The dispatcher can see where all the equipment is and what it is doing. The computer on the dispatcher's right is the brains of the Wenco software, communicating with on-board computers by radio modem. The dispatch system records data on payload, cycle times, and machine health. 

*Mine Production Summary*
*Mine* - Kalgoorlie
*Capacity*: unknown 
*Rate*: 87.1 Mtons/y
*Note*: Ore plus waste
_Reference: 31 Dec 05_​At night over 30 mobile lighting towers light intersections and work areas. 

Four Caterpillar D10R dozers keep the floors of the pit and dumps level, using high-precision GPS data. Using the GPS satellites, the dozers can keep the floors to within 30 centimeters of design. Two Caterpillar 16H graders grade the ramps, looking for spillage from the trucks. 

Among the old underground workings, there are timbers, rails and other rubbish which can create hazards. A Caterpillar 992 loader and a team of 'stick pickers' are used to remove it. 

The Mt Charlotte underground mine was scaled back to 20 employees in 2004. 


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Process -

Kalgoorlie is Australia's largest gold plant, and ranks as the ninth largest gold producer in the world. The mill and plant process approximately 13.0 million tonnes per annum at a grade of 2.0 to 2.5 g/t Au. The plant recovers approximately 800,000oz per year of gold. 

Ore is treated at the Fimiston mill, with the resulting sulphide concentrates then roasted and leached at the Gidji roaster, located approximately 20 kilometers north of the main Kalgoorlie operations. Gold-laden carbon from the Gidji roaster is sent to the Fimiston mill for processing. Processing is supplemented by two ultra-fine grinding mills that treat concentrate which cannot be processed by the roaster. Doré is shipped to Perth for refinement into gold bullion.



Fresh water is supplied under allocation from the state water system and piped from Perth. Other process water comes from salt water taken from wells and the underground mine. Power is provided under a power supply agreement with Newmont Power. The SAG mill alone uses 12 megawatts of power. 

*Processing Summary*
*Facility* - Kalgoorlie
*Capacity*: 7 Mtons/y
*Rate*: 14.6 Mtons
*Note*: At the Gidji plant where final gold recovery occurs.
*Product*
*Commodity*: gold
*Quantity*: 834,000 oz
*Cost*: 248 US$/oz
_Reference: 31 Dec 05_​The mill has two grinding circuits: a 36 foot SAG mill and two ball mills ; and a 24 foot SAG mill and one ball-mill. Each of Fimiston's two Ball Milling Circuits has 2 300tph Knelson Concentrators, 1 5.5 m x 3.1 m vibrating screen, 1 10/8 Warman Gravity Feed Pump, and 1 3/2 Warman Concentrate Transfer Pump. The Mt. Charlotte gravity circuit has a 300tph KCXD48 Knelson Concentrator, a Schenck 4.3 m x 2.5 m vibrating screen, a 8/6 Warman Gravity Feed Pump, and a 3/2 Warman Concentrate Transfer Pump. In 2004 the mine commissioned a gravity circuit consisting of five (5) Knelson KC-XD48 Concentrators and a ConSep ACACIA CS6000 concentrate leach reactor. 
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Environment and Community - The mine's environmental achievements include planting 210,000 trees and rehabilitating 730 hectares as perimeter and waste dump areas were closed. Ground water levels have been lowered near tailings storage areas by record pumping rates. To create sound barriers near the pit rock bund walls are used to help control noise from drilling rigs and trucks.



Mount Gleddon is a registered aboriginal heritage site located on a Kalgoorlie mining lease. It occupies the northern corner between the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Bypass Road, Williamstown Road and Mt Charlotte-to-Fimiston conveyor belt. The area has been significantly degraded by historic mining, and used as dump and by off-road vehicles. A project is underway to ensure that the area be rehabilitated, cultural significance is maintained, and no further degradation occurs.


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## اسلاماسلام (17 نوفمبر 2008)

شكرا لك اظن ان الشريط الوثائق " الفحم الثمن الثقيل" على الجزيرة يخص هذه ىالشركة هل هذا صحيح


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## alshangiti (19 نوفمبر 2008)

لم اشاهد الفلم الوثائقى 

وشكرا


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