EMULSION BASED CAST BOOSTER-A PRIMING SYSTEM

摘要

The mineral industry is leading towards a technology driven optimisation process.Drilling and blasting are such unit operations in a mine,which can alter the balance sheet of the mine if not planned properly.The development,improvement and utilisation of innovative technologies in terms of blast monitoring instruments and explosives technology are important for cost effectiveness and safety of mineral industries.The ever-growing demand of mineral has compelled the industry to adopt mega opencast projects with big equipments.This has necessitated use of few hundred tonnes of explosives in each blast.The bulk delivered fourth generation explosives has solved the problem of explosive loading to a large extent.The priming of bulk delivered explosives in Indian mines uses the conventional PETN/TNT based cast boosters.As the conventional cast booster possess safety problems in terms of handling and use,so Indian Explosives Ltd.,has developed an emulsion based cast booster(Powergel Boost).This paper explores the potential of emulsion based cast booster to be used as primer to initiate bulk delivered emulsion explosives used in mines.An attempt has been made for comparative study between conventional cast booster and emulsion based cast booster in terms of the initiation process developed and their capability to develop and maintain the stable detonation process in the column explosives.The study has been conducted using continuous velocity of detonation(VOD)measuring instrument,VODMate two channel system manufactured by Instantel Inc.,Canada.During this study three blasts have been monitored.In each blast two holes have been selected for study,first hole initiated with conventional cast booster while the other one with emulsion based cast booster.The findings of the study advocates that emulsion based cast booster is capable of efficient priming of bulk delivered column explosive with stable detonation process in the column.Further,