Detonation Cord, Detacord, Det
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DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING INTRODUCTION:- What are explosives? An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances. The potential energy stored in an explosive material may, for example, be chemical energy, such as nitro glycerine or grain dust DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING pressurized gas, such as a gas cylinder or aerosol can nuclear energy, such as in the fissile isotopes uranium-235 and plutonium-239 Explosive materials may be categorized by the speed at which they expand. Materials that detonate (the front of the chemical reaction moves faster through the material than the speed of sound) are said to be "high explosives" and materials that deflagrate are said to be "low explosives". Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a relatively small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives and materials that are relatively insensitive are secondary or tertiary explosives. A wide variety of chemicals can explode; a smaller number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING unstable, or prone to decomposition or degradation over short time spans. DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING HISTORY:- The use of explosives in mining goes back to the year 1627, when gunpowder was first used in place of mechanical tools in the Hungarian (now Slovak) town of Banská Štiavnica. The innovation spread quickly throughout Europe and the Americas. The standard method for blasting rocks was to drill a hole to a considerable depth and deposit a charge of gunpowder at the further end of the hole and then fill the remainder of the hole with clay or some other soft mineral substance, well rammed, to make it as tight as possible. A wire laid in the hole during this process was then removed and replaced with a train of gunpowder. This train was ignited by a slow match, often consisting simply of brown paper smeared with grease, intended to burn long enough to allow the person who fires it enough time to reach a place of safety. The uncertainty of this method led to many accidents and various measures were introduced to DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING improve safety for those involved. One was replacing the iron wire, by which the passage for the gunpowder is formed, with one of copper. Another was the use of a safety fuse. This consisted of small train of gunpowder inserted in a water- proof cord, which burns at a steady and uniform rate. This in turn was later replaced by a long piece of wire that was used to deliver an electric charge to ignite the explosive. The first to use this method for underwater blasting was Charles Pasley who employed it in 1839 to break up the wreck of the British warship HMS Royal George which had become a shipping hazard at Spithead. An early major use of blasting to remove rock occurred in 1843 when the British civil engineer William Cubitt used 18,000 lbs of gunpowder to remove a 400 foot high chalk cliff near Dover as part of the construction of the South Eastern Railway. About 400,000 cubic yards of chalk was displaced in an exercise that it was estimated DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING saved the company six month time and £7,000 in expense. While drilling and blasting saw limited use in pre- industrial times using gunpowder (such as with the Blue Ridge Tunnel in the United States, built in the 1850s), it was not until more powerful (and safer) explosives, such as dynamite (patented 1867), as well as powered drills were developed, that its potential was fully realised. Drilling and blasting was successfully used to construct tunnels throughout the world, notably the Fréjus Rail Tunnel, the Gotthard Rail Tunnel, the Simplon Tunnel, the Jungfraubahn and even the longest road tunnel in the world, Lærdalstunnelen, are constructed using this method. In 1990, 2.1 billion kg of commercial explosives were consumed in the United States (12 m3 per capita), representing an estimated expenditure of 3.5 to 4 billion 1993 dollars on blasting. In this year the Soviet Union was the leader in total volume with 2.7 billion kg of explosives consumed (13 DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING m3 per capita), and Australia had the highest per capita explosives consumption that year with 45 m3 per capita. DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING MODERN EXPLOSIVES USED IN MINING INDUSTRY 1. NONEL Nonel is a shock tube detonator designed to initiate explosions, generally for the purpose of demolition of buildings and for use in the blasting of rock in mines and quarries. Instead of electric wires, a hollow plastic tube delivers the firing impulse to the detonator, making it immune to most of the hazards associated with stray electric current. It consists of a small diameter, three-layer plastic tube coated on the innermost wall with a reactive explosive compound, which, when ignited, propagates a low energy signal, similar to a dust explosion. The reaction travels at approximately 6,500 feet/s (2,000 m/s) along the length of the tubing with minimal disturbance outside of the tube. The design of nonel detonators incorporates patented technology, including the Cushion Disk DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING (CD) and Delay Ignition Buffer (DIB) to provide reliability and accuracy in all blasting applications. Nonel was invented by the Swedish company Nitro Nobel in the 1960s and 1970s, under the leadership of Per-Anders Persson, and launched to the demolitions market in 1973. (Nitro Nobel became a part of Dyno Nobel after being sold to Norwegian Dyno Industries AS in 1986.) Nonel is a contraction of "non-electric". The hookup of the Nonel (also called the shock tube) system is similar in some respects to the detonating cord system. The cap used in the system is higher strength than most electric blasting caps. Instead of leg wires, a single hollow tube protrudes from the cap (fig. 43). The Nonel tube has a thin coating of reactive material on its inside surface, which detol'!ates at a speed of 6,000 fps. This is a very mild dust explosion that has insufficient energy to damage the tube. Several varia· tions of the Nonel system can be used, depending on the blasting situation. In addition to the Nonel tube-cap DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING assembly, system accessories include noiseless trunklines with built-in delays, noiseless lead-in lines, and millisecond delay connectors for detonating cord trunklines. One Nonel system for surface blasting uses a None I Primadet in each blasthole with 25- to 60-gr/ft detonating cord as a trunkline. The Nonel cap used in this system is factory crimped to a 24-in length of shock tube with a loop in the end (fig. 44). The caps are available in a variety of millisecond delay periods. A 7 .5-gr detonating cord down line is attached to the loop with a double-wrapped square knot. The 7.5-gr detonating cord extends out of the borehole. This downline will not disrupt a column charge of blasting agent but it may initiate dynamite and other cap-sensitive products. As a precaution, 7.5-gr to 7.5-gr con· nections should never be made, because propagation from one cord to the other is not dependable. Since the force of the shock tube detonation is not strong enough to disrupt the tube, it will not initiate high explosives. A 25· to 60-gr DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING trunkline is used in this system with a double clove hitch used for downline· to-trunkline connections. The delay systems used with this method of initiation are the same as those discussed in the "Detonating Cord Initiation" section. They include in-hole cap delays and surface delay connectors. In some cases this system creates an exCessive amount of airblast and noise. To prevent this, the detonating cord trunkline can be replaced by an electric blasting cap circuit with a cap connected to each downline, or a noiseless Nonel trunkline can be used. The noiseless Nonel trunkline is employed as follows. First, each hole is primed and loaded. The downline should be an 18-gr or larger detonating cord. A 7 .5-gr downline can be used if a 25-gr pigtail is used at the top end, tied into the connector block. The noiseless trunkline delay unit consists of a length of shock tube, 20 to 60ft in length, with a quick connecting sleeve on one end and a plastic block containing a millisecond delay blasting cap (delay assembly) on the other end, and DDEPATMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING a tag denoting the delay period (fig. 45). The delay may be from 5 to 200ms. The sleeve is attached to the initial hole to be fired and the shock tube is extended to the next hole in sequence. The downline from this next hole is connected to the plastic block containing the delay cap, using abo.uHTirKlf cord at the end of the down line. Another delay unit is selected and the sleeve is attached to the downline below the plastic block. The shock tube is extended to the next hole, where the delay assembly is connected to the downline. The process is repeated until all the holes are connected.