The Cassandra Mines in Greece: DSI’s Silicate Injection Foam Resins ensure safe Underground Mining
Recently, the Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold has significantly expanded its places of production and resources via acquisitions and development programs. In 2011, Eldorado Gold also acquired Hellas Gold, Greece’s largest gold producer.
Hellas Gold owns mining licenses for a 317km² large area with reserves of lead, zinc, silver, gold and copper. At the moment, extraction is also being carried out in the Cassandra Mines on the Chalkidiki Peninsula in northern Greece. This mine complex includes the Strationi and Skouries Mines as well as the Olympias Mine.
The Skouries Mine is the largest of the three mines and has gold, copper and porphyry reserves. Here, extraction will first be carried out in an open pit beginning in 2016. Subsequent underground extraction has also been planned for this mine. For this purpose, a main gallery is being advanced that will permit access to the underground reserves. Gallery advancement has been hindered by considerable water inflows of approx. 40m³ per hour.
To efficiently and permanently waterproof and seal the cavities around the gallery, DSI Austria supplied the silicate injection foam resins DSI MINERAL Bond and DSI MINERAL Fill together with the necessary pumps and accessories. As a result of their highly reactive foaming, the 2-component silicate injection foam resins ensure an immediate waterproofing against water ingress.
At the Stratoni Mine, silver, lead and zinc are extracted in underground mining. Here, water penetrated into the main gallery with a volume of approx. 200m³ per hour so that a comprehensive sealing program was necessary. DSI Austria also supplied the silicate injection foam resins DSI MINERAL Bond and DSI MINERAL Fill together with pumps and accessories for sealing the gallery against incoming water.
The Olympias Mine is an underground mine with gold, silver, lead and zinc reserves. The existing galleries in this mine are being rehabilitated and new galleries are being built. Within the scope of this work, the owner asked DSI to supply DSI Rebar Rock Bolts and resin cartridges. The 25 x 500mm resin cartridges with curing times of 30 and 90 seconds were used to permanently fasten the Ø 22mm, 2.7m long DSI Rebar Rock Bolts in the boreholes.