1376 SMe Mining engineering handbook
pillar recovery operations and could provide competent muck-
ing floors, thereby eliminating the need for timber floors. In
1961, with financial support from the two aforementioned
mining companies, Canada Cement Lafarge Ltd. began a
comprehensive study to develop cemented fill technology that
was completed in 1970 with the publication of their findings
(Weaver and Luka 1970).
Pneumatic stowing was introduced in Polish coal mines
in the 1920s and soon afterward adopted in other coal min-
ing areas of Europe. In North America, the use of pneumatic
stowing was promoted by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in the
1960s and 1970s but has not generally been adopted. The
method was tested at the Sullivan mine in British Columbia
(Canada) in the late-1960s and later used in uranium mines
in Grants, New Mexico (United States), and in gold mines in
South Africa.
The concept of thickened tailings, developed by Professor
Robinsky of the University of Toronto and first applied at the
Kidd Creek mine in Timmins, Ontario (Canada), in the mid-
1970s, was extended by the late Dave Landriault and others at
INCO Metals in the 1980s and later at Golder Paste Technology
Ltd. to become paste fill when used for backfill underground.
In 1975, pump-pack was developed by the British using broken
coal and bentonite, which was a thixotropic material and pumped
like a toothpaste but set like a low-strength concrete (Schmidt et
al. 1976). Paste fill was developed independently in Germany at
the Bad Grund mine in the early 1980s (Jewell 2006).
“Flowable fill” has been used in recent years by, among
others, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and
Enforcement (OSMRE) of the U.S. Department of the Interior
to remotely backfill near-surface abandoned mines—especially
coal mines—that represent a subsidence hazard. Flowable fill
refers to a cementitious slurry consisting of a mixture of fine
aggregate or filler, water, and cementitious material(s) that is
used primarily as a backfill in lieu of compacted earth. This
mixture is capable of filling all voids in irregular excavations
and hard-to-reach places (such as under and around pipes), is
self-leveling, and hardens in a matter of a few hours without
the need for compaction in layers.
TyPeS of BACkfill
As indicated in the history section, the different materials
that have been used to backfill mine openings include the
following:
• Dry sand and rock fill
• Uncemented hydraulic backfill
• Cemented hydraulic backfill
• Cemented rock fill
• Paste fill
• Pneumatic fill
• Flowable fill
In subsequent sections of this chapter, each of these alterna-
tives will be discussed. For each, the method of placement,
drainage requirements, if any, equipment requirements, pipe
wear, and other relevant design and operating topics are
considered.
Dry Sand and Rock fill
Dry placement of stope fill materials is often the simplest
method of fill placement and has a long history. In metal
mines in North America and Australia that used cut-and-fill or
square-set stoping, this method dominated until the 1950s and
was still taught as a preferred method of backfilling in some
mining schools until the late 1960s.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Although it has generally been superseded by other meth-
ods, there are still situations where dry placement of fill has
advantages over other systems. For example, if a mine does
not have a processing plant on site to provide mill tailings,
other fill options must be considered. Such fills could include
(1) natural surface sands (glacial till in North America, natu-
ral dune sands in Australia); (2) open-cut overburden, specifi-
cally quarried surface rock, or even rock generated in local
civil works; and (3) underground development waste. Dry fill
is also the preferred option in evaporite and gypsum mines
where the ore or host rock is readily dissolved in water, or in
mines in arid locations where water is scarce.
Dry placement of fill has two main disadvantages. First,
it has a relatively low density as placed, which means it can
undergo significant compression before it reaches its optimum
density to provide stope wall support to prevent spalling of
stope walls and minimize stope wall convergence. Second,
depending on stope configuration, it may be difficult to place
dry fill close to the roof of the opening across the full span of
the stope roof.
Transport and Placement of Dry Fill
The first consideration, as with all types of backfill, is the
means of transport of the dry fill underground. The most effi-
cient means for transport of sand- or gravel-sized particles is
a borehole from the surface. Selection of the size of the bore-
hole depends on two considerations: the required through-
put in metric tons per hour, and the size distribution of the
particles. For coarse material such as gravel, the particle size
will govern, because the diameter of the borehole should, as
a general but not necessarily universally applicable rule, be
a minimum of three to six times the maximum particle size
of the gravel in order to avoid hang-ups. For finer material,
the governing concern is the required throughput. In general,
boreholes with diameters of 150 mm or 200 mm (6 or 8 in.)
will be sufficient for most purposes. However, using this size
of pipe, one must never let the pipe fill and possibly bridge,
as it may plug.
The most common method of transporting dry fill to the
workings is by haulage vehicles. In conventional, older mines,
this usually meant railcars, which would dump the fill into a
fill raise. More recently, haulage trucks have been used and
belt conveyors are also being used for sand, gravel, or rock.
All of these placement methods require good access to the
workings that need to be filled.
Another important consideration with dry placement of
granular fill is the method used to place and compact the fill
within the stope. Historically, placement was done by hand,
which is slow and costly. If the area to be filled is accessible
to mobile equipment, spreading and compaction could be
accomplished by means of a hydraulic ram and blade mounted
on a haulage truck or load-haul-dump (LHD) vehicle. (The
blade is pushed laterally against the fill pile by the hydrau-
lic ram to compact it.) Another placement and compaction
method that has been tried is a high-speed throwing belt, the
main disadvantage of which is the limited distance that the fill
travels beyond the discharge point.
In the case of rock fill, placement is not generally a prob-
lem if dumping is from the top of the working. Because of