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Ultra High Intensity
Blasting technique (UHIB) wins 2015 Mining Magazine Award for Excellence

Mining and Mineral, Exoplosive 27 Jan 2016

Orica has been announced as the winner of the ‘2015 Mining Magazine Award for Excellence’ in the category of ‘Drill & Blast’. This international award specifically recognises the Ultra High Intensity Blasting technique (UHIB) as an outstanding innovation.

UHIB can be considered an environmentally friendly blasting technique that simultaneously enables a reduction in the total cost of mining while lowering the amount of energy used in comminution to consequently cut CO2 emissions. It does this by safely utilising blast energies several times higher than normal in a completely novel design. The method is also used to reduce dust and vibration from blasting.

While working to UHIB designs, Orica technicians fire two separate layers of rock in a single blast event. The upper layer is blasted first using conventional powder factors. The broken rock is allowed to settle and effectively becomes a blanket that contains the lower layer of rock when it is fired at ultra-high powder factors.


This has proven to effectively manage significant challenges associated with mining hard rock.


Speaking of the technique, Orica’s Chief Mining Engineer Stephen Boyce said “In effect, the upper layer becomes a buffer to contain the energy in the lower layer, allowing for a more intense fragmentation in the ore. This improved fragmentation enables our mining customers to realise benefits during digging, hauling and most importantly milling”.


“We believe the adoption of the UHIB technique will increase as electricity costs rise and the cost of building new mineral processing plants increases. It is most applicable in regions where electricity supply is expensive; and for mines with hard rock or constrained milling capacity,” he added.


Orica has congratulated its research team led by Dr Geoff Brent and would like to acknowledge its industry partners including AMSRI (Australian Mineral Science Research Institute), the University of Queensland and customers who were early adopters of the technique.


UHIB was previously been awarded the 2014 CEEC Medal by the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution (CEEC).

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