PT DAHANA (Persero) is aggressively marketing its new DAWAGEL explosive product. Following the success of its quarry sector, DAWAGEL’s explosive products have now penetrated into the general mining sector, to be exact the coal mining. DAWAGEL’s products have been tested for reliability in DAHANA’s consumer coal mining sites in East Kalimantan.
The presence of DAWAGEL is inseparable from the current situation in the mining sector. The escalated sale value of the mineral coal commodity has been highly volatile and several times at a very low level. Owing to this this condition, mining business players must be able to implement efficient mining applications in order to reduce costs while considering good and prudent mining practices.
According to DAHANA’s Director of Operations, Bambang Agung, one of the cost elements in mining operation is the material disbursement aspect, which can take the form of drilling and blasting activities, where the cost composition of such elements remains at around 20% of all coal mining costs. Meanwhile, one of the largest cost composition in drilling and blasting is the main explosive cost factor, namely Ammonium Nitrate which is around 80%.
“With regards to this consideration, DAHANA took the initiative to develop an explosive product that could reduce the AN content in its composition while still maintaining an explosive power equivalent to ANFO, or even greater. And now we have successfully developed a liquid explosive called Dawagel which offers various advantages over ANFO products, “said Bambang Agung at the Energetic Material Center area of Dahana, Subang (23/02).
The advantages of DAWAGEL include a VOD of greater than 20%. This is recorded in the 6 3/4 inch blast holes = 4,844 m/sec. (while ANFO = 3,795 m/sec). Apart from that, , the expansion factor can reach 40% in the hole, and therefore reducing the amount of explosives used with a lower density than ANFO, which is around 0.7 – 0.75 gr/cc. We can say that energy is more effective at reducing blasting vibrations and weight per meter of column contents with lower explosive content.
By paying attention to the quality of the final product that is the key to successful blasting, this product is capable of providing fragmentation of blast material on a coal mining scale (P60) between 93-98%, and an average recovery of more than 98%.
“It is our hope that this product will continue to be widely used in the mining market, especially in coal mining, so that mining operational costs can be more balanced with fluctuations in terms of uncertain commodity prices,” said Bambang Agung.
DAHANA is a state-owned company engaged in the field of explosives industry serving the general mining, quarry and construction, oil and gas and defense explosives sectors. Through the Energetic Material Center in Subang, West Java, DAHANA continues to innovate explosive products and services in response to the consumer demands.