4、 Continuous innovation in monitoring technology, sound and thoughtful facilities, and guaranteed safety production
Italy’s stone mines implement large-scale mining while ensuring production safety. Every mine, regardless of its size, is highly valued in terms of safety production, placing safety first. Open pit mining has reasonable safety slopes, and the height of mining steps is determined based on the capabilities of mining equipment and lifting equipment. At the edge of each mining step, whether it is the final step or the advancing step, there are solid guardrails or barriers to prevent personnel from falling and causing casualties. A safety platform and a cleaning platform are designed for the slope to prevent damage to personnel and mechanical equipment below the mining face caused by rolling stones.
If there are weathered rocks distributed on loose slopes or at the top of slopes, measures should be taken to reinforce these areas, such as burying piles, building stone dams, driving anchor rods, and spraying mortar for slope protection. For the hazard existing in the production process, measures are taken to protect them. For example, if the diamond bead saw is easy to break the rope and injure people, protective fences will be set around the equipment operation area, and protective belts will be installed above the bead rope to prevent the broken rope from hurting people.
It is very important to maintain fresh air or sufficient oxygen in the cave of a marble mine during mining operations. Therefore, it is necessary to install good ventilation and exhaust pipes as well as sufficient lighting facilities. The cave space of a cave mining mine is large, with some particularly large caves reaching several tens of meters in height, and the span of the roof free face is more than ten meters or more, and even a mast crane can be installed inside the cave. This is also an important difference between stone and other mining methods and mining conditions. Although marble cave mining is tracking the best quality, most complete blocks, and the integrity of the ore body is better than that of open-pit mining blocks, safety pillars are still left as required to resist the pressure of the slate layer and prevent the collapse of the cave roof. For areas with well-developed joint fissures on the edges and roof of the tunnel, anchor bolts should be installed for reinforcement. The density of the anchor bolts should be determined based on the degree of rock fragmentation after calculation.
Italian stone mines not only need to establish safety production facilities to ensure production safety, but also analyze and monitor factors that affect safety, and establish an early warning mechanism. In particular, the crustal stress change of the open mining slope and the side wall and roof in the tunnel shall be tracked and monitored year round, so as to timely grasp the change of rock stress and the limit parameters of rock stress deformation. Once the change trend of the crustal stress monitoring value is close to the warning line, early warning shall be given, and the decision of shutdown, evacuation or remediation shall be made as soon as possible. A ground-based radar interferometry method will also be used to provide accurate and comprehensive monitoring of the entire mining area.
5、 Utilize advantages, recycle and fully protect natural and cultural resources
In almost all mining areas in Italy that mine marble waste materials, various specifications and shapes of waste materials that meet the requirements for processing stone are classified, and different specifications of waste materials are sold at different prices for different stone products.
The main index to measure the stone mine is the rate of waste materials. There are many factors affecting the rate of ore body waste materials, mainly geological factors, such as joint fissures, color spots and lines, weathering, karst and other mineralization, as well as mining technology, mining methods, mining technology, equipment, etc. In the Italian mining industry, the same geological conditions and various factors determine the higher yield of waste materials in the orebody.
In addition to waste materials, a large amount of crushed stones that do not meet the requirements for stone materials are generated during the mining process, and the comprehensive utilization of crushed stones is a major issue in mines. In Italian marble mining areas, crushed stone yards are generally not found, and equipment for crushing and screening crushed stones is found in every mine. All crushed stones are processed into various sizes of sand and stone in the mine and sold to corresponding industrial departments for utilization.
The beige marble in the Brescia area is composed of limestone, which is a high-quality raw material for manufacturing cement and lime. A large cement factory has been built near the mining area. The weathered rock stripped off from the surface of the stone mine and the crushed stone generated during mining are used by the cement factory to convert into cement with a wider range of uses. In the Carrara mining area, the processed crushed stones are sold to powder processing plants for use as chemical additive materials, and some of the crushed stones are sold to cement product factories for direct use as concrete aggregates.
Italians fully utilize the history of marble mining and advanced mining technology, mine landscapes and facilities, and carry out themed marble tourism. Every year, tourists from all over the world come to visit the mines, promoting Italy’s quarrying history and marble culture; On the other hand, it brings considerable tourism revenue to the local area. Those who have visited the Italian marble mining area will be impressed by the intelligence and rich history and culture of the Italians.
Why is Italian stone still a global stone brand to this day?
Faced with the current rise of the stone industry in developing countries around the world, the Italian stone industry is changing its strategy, accelerating transformation, vigorously improving technology and organizations, and constantly conducting basic research. Facing the market, the Italian stone industry will not only sell the products themselves, but also the technology and knowledge to manufacture them in the future.
1. For example, Italian Stone Machinery Association and foreign trade departments have set up technical centers in Brazil and Chinese Mainland;
2. Teach local peers how to use Italian stone machinery, hoping to establish a deeper market foundation;
3. Conduct research on the quality of various stone materials, especially the machinability of hard rocks and the durability of stone materials used for exterior wall decoration;
4. The geostatistics is used to study the in-situ rock formations that constitute the deposit, so as to analyze the degree of rock fracturing 9 and quantitatively determine the regularity between the joint fissures and the rate of waste materials;
5. Using operations research to develop production plans and stone product standards;
6. Determine the geological exploration and design work of the mine completely based on the specific situation of the mine, and do not carry out mass disposal work for the expansion of old mines with a long mining history;
7. The market price adopts large blocks, fine processing, high quality and good price, and the price of rare products is high.
In order to fully utilize resources, improve labor productivity, and save increasingly expensive labor, Italian stone companies generally use large-scale automated production lines with a high degree of automation. Many equipment has been CNC and programmable, resulting in a significant improvement in product accuracy. Especially in recent years, the Italian government has been actively promoting enterprises to develop overseas stone resources in order to save domestic stone resources and extend mining time. Italians have taken advantage of their natural and cultural resources, as well as their technological advantages in stone mining, processing, and application, to the extreme. Italian natural stone products have become a well-known mass product and truly become the world’s “marble kingdom”!
