2018
West Papua, Indonesia
The Grasberg mine operated by Freeport McMoRan and jointly owned by Freeport and Rio Tinto is one of the largest mining clusters on the globe. The mine is located in the very remote highlands of the Sudirman mountain range in the province of Papua, Indonesia. The Grasberg ore bodies contain very high combined copper-gold grades, especially when considering the size of production.
Project Requirements
The ore bodies within and around the Grasberg main intrusion have been created due to the distinct structural and lithological contact of the intrusion with the surrounding limestone. The extensive development for the existing and planned underground operations will pass through areas of challenging geotechnical ground conditions especially at contact zones from the igneous complexes to the sediments. Challenging underground conditions demand high requirements for the underground support.
For the Grasberg block cave alone, 30,000 meters of development for ventilation and conveyor declines are constructed, which represents a challenge from both, a logistics and a planning point of view. Long transport distances require long open time of the concrete when leaving the batch plant to the point of use. As the mine is located in an area with large amounts of annual rainfall, the underground development faces areas which high pressure and high volume water inflows. Furthermore, the risk of elevated rock stresses and rock bursts is increasing when reaching deeper levels of the underground infrastructure and hence, good yielding properties of the shotcrete liner is necessary to take up the increased dynamic loads.
Sika Solutions
Freeport McMoRan and its main contractors such as Redpath are long standing partners of Sika. Sika supplies large quantities of supplies to the Grasberg operation including concrete admixtures for self- compacting shaft lining concrete and shotcrete, shotcrete accelerators, two component injection resins and refurbishment products. Especially for the rapid underground development, high performing Sika Sigunit® shotcrete accelerators are in use to reach high early strength of the shotcrete that allow short cycle times. The extensive development of the Main Grasberg block cave (GBC) is solely supported by Sika admixtures. Sika trains shotcrete applicators at the mine site and fulfills highest environmental, health and safety standards for the materials supplied.
Products Used
Sika® ViscoCrete®
Sika ViscoFlow®
Sigunit®
SikaTard®
Sikacrete®
Sikafloor®
Project Participants
Owners
Freeport, Rio Tinto, Freeport McMoRan
Sika Organization
Sika Indonesia