Blast Design Analysis for Reduction of Boulders Production

This paper analyzes the blast design for lime stone quarries of two major cement plants in Pakistan. The production blast of these quarries was resulting in excessive boulders production. At some instances, the rate of boulders production was approximately 10%-15% of the main production blast i.e. if a round of main blast gave around 4000 tons of material; almost 400 to 500 tons of that material was in the shape of massive boulders. This gave rise to increased operating costs requiring boulders collection, drilling and secondary blast.