The Grootegeluk Coal Mine is an open cast coal mine within the
Waterberg Coalfield of the
Limpopo
Limpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. It is named after the Limpopo River, which forms the province's western and northern borders. The capital and largest city in the province is Polokwane, while the provincial legislature is ...
province of South Africa.
It is operated by
Exxaro
Exxaro Resources Limited (Exxaro, the company or the group) is a South Africa-based diversified resources company with a robust coal business and acquisitive growth prospects in minerals and energy solutions.
Exxaro is among the top five coal ...
.
The mine is from
Lephalale
Lephalale (formerly Ellisras) is a coal mining town in the Limpopo province of South Africa immediately east of the Waterberg Coalfield. The town was established as Ellisras in 1960 and named after Patrick Ellis and Piet Erasmus who settled on a ...
, and employs 2,000 people.
Discovery
In 1920, coal was found in the
Ellisras Basin
The Ellisras Basin is a geological basin that spans the border between South Africa and Botswana, extending west from the town of Lephalale (formerly Ellisras) in Limpopo province. Basin fill consists of sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Supergroup ...
, but at first little was done to investigate the size of the resource.
Between 1941 and 1952, 143 diamond-drill holes and two prospecting shafts were sunk to obtain a geological map of the Waterberg coalfield.
In 1957
Iscor (later unbundled into
Kumba Resources
Kumba Iron Ore is an iron-ore mining company in South Africa. It is the fourth largest iron-ore producer in the world and the largest in Africa.
History
Kumba Iron Ore is a successor of Kumba Resources, which was listed on the Johannesburg Sec ...
and Mittal Steel South Africa) bought surface rights on six farms located in the coalfield.
In 1973 Iscor began detailed exploration of the deposits below the farms to determine the quality and quantity of coal.
In 1979 Iscor obtained the mining leases on the farms and in 1980 established the Grootegeluk Coal Mine.
The mine contains semi-soft
coking coal
Metallurgical coal or coking coal is a grade of coal that can be used to produce good-quality coke. Coke is an essential fuel and reactant in the blast furnace process for primary steelmaking. The demand for metallurgical coal is highly coupled ...
,
thermal coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when de ...
and
metallurgical coal
Metallurgical coal or coking coal is a grade of coal that can be used to produce good-quality coke. Coke is an essential fuel and reactant in the blast furnace process for primary steelmaking. The demand for metallurgical coal is highly coupled ...
.
There is estimated to be 2,800 Mt of accessible coal out of a total measured resource of 4,600 Mt of coal.
A overburden covers of usable coal, which is interspersed with three dirt bands that total in thickness.
The raw coal has less than 25% of burnable substance.
Operation
In 2005 the Grootegeluk open-pit colliery was the only coal operation in the Waterberg coalfield.
The mine employed almost 2,000 people to produce 14.5 million tons of coal annually. Of these employees, only a very small percentage were managers, in part because of a severe shortage of management skills in South Africa.
The miners blast the high benches, then excavate the broken coal and truck it to the concentration plant. The mine uses trolley-assist trucks to reduce fuel and maintenance costs and increase productivity. The major fleet of 20 x
Komatsu Haulpak
Haulpak was a very successful line of off-highway mining trucks. The name was used from 1953 until around 1999; the line continues under the Komatsu name. The name was adopted as Wabco Haulpak when R. G. LeTourneau's business was bought by Wab ...
730E's utilize the trolley assist feature as well as a subsidiary fleet of Hitachi EH4500 and EH3500 trucks. The trolley assist trucks are powered by DC electricity from overhead catenary lines at 1200V.
The Grootegeluk plant uses horizontal belt vacuum filtration to dewater fines. The mine has the world’s largest coal beneficiation facility, with six plants that upgrade 8,000 tonnes per hour of run-of-mine coal.
The new plant installed to extract and process coal for the new
Medupi Power Station
Medupi Power Station is a dry-cooled coal-fired power station built by Eskom near Lephalale in Limpopo province, South Africa. The name chosen for the station, Medupi, is a Sepedi word which means "gentle rain". With an installed capacity of 4,7 ...
will be the first in the world to use mobile tipping bins and crushers in the pit near the benches. This equipment will advance as the mine advances. To minimize production stoppages, there will be run-of-mine stockpiles between the pit and the plant. Stockpiles will also be used between the plant and the discard dump stackers. The plant will use dry screening to avoid having to pump
tailings
In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
to tailings dams.
The waste material from the Grootegeluk mine, particularly from the lower levels, is prone to spontaneous combustion.
Various experiments have been conducted to discover the best way to cover this material as the mine is back-filled so as to minimize the risk. A concern is that the covering will become less effective as it absorbs oxygen.
Output
The mine produces 18.8 Mt of final coal products annually.
As of 2008, Exxaro was supplying
Eskom
Eskom Hld SOC Ltd or Eskom is a South African electricity public utility. It was established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM) and was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie (EVKOM). Eskom repre ...
's coal-fired
Matimba Power Station
Matimba Power Station close to Ellisras, Limpopo Province, South Africa, is a dry-cooled coal-fired power plant operated by Eskom.
Power generation
The station consists of six 665 MW units with a total installed capacity of 3,990 MW. T ...
.
Exxaro delivered 14.8 Mt annually of power station coal to the Matimba power station via a conveyor belt.
Grootegeluk produces 1.5 Mt of metallurgical coal for sale to metals industries and other users in South Africa annually.
Exxaro exports or sells to domestic customers about 1Mt of thermal and semi-soft coking coal.
The mine produces 2.5 Mt of semi-soft coking coal annually, delivering most of it to Mittal SA by rail.
In the late 2000s the rail link to the Grootegeluk mine was being upgraded.
Exxaro expects to expand exports of high-quality coal through the
Port of Richards Bay
The Port of Richards Bay is located in Richards Bay harbour on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa, and contains the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) which is the largest coal export facility in Africa.
Although originally built to handle coa ...
.
In 2007 Exxaro announced a contract to supply Eskom's new
Medupi Power Station
Medupi Power Station is a dry-cooled coal-fired power station built by Eskom near Lephalale in Limpopo province, South Africa. The name chosen for the station, Medupi, is a Sepedi word which means "gentle rain". With an installed capacity of 4,7 ...
, which is also in the Waterberg and was due to open in 2012.
The contract was finalized in December 2008. Exxaro was to invest R9 billion to speed up extraction from the existing pit, with delivery of coal to the first generation unit at Medupi to start in the 3rd quarter of 2011. Two new dense media coal beneficiation plants were to be built at the mine, and would be operating at full capacity by 2014.
They would supply the Medupi generators with about 14.6 Mt of power station-grade coal annually for the next forty years. The expansion will create about 550 permanent jobs at Grootegeluk.
References
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{{Authority control
Coal mines in South Africa
Economy of Limpopo
Surface mines in South Africa