Mining Institute, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Perm, Russia:

E. A. Nesterov, Senior Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, mine_egor@mail.ru
D. A. Bobrov, Junior Researcher

Belaruskali JSC, Soligorsk, Belarus:

D. V. Barbikov, Deputy Chief Engineer of Strategic Development
Yu. B. Petrovsky, Director of Petrikov Mine Management

The placing of new deposits of potash salts in operation is important for the development of the region and for strengthening its position in the world market of potash fertilizers. However, along with the positive effects, there are some features that require close attention of practitioners. One of these features is the risk of gas-dynamic phenomena in potash salts. The study of these phenomena, gas distribution features in productive formations and host rocks, as well as components of natural gases allows developing methods to prevent gasdynamic phenomena, which increases safety of mining operations. This article considers the geological structure of the Petrikov deposit of potash salts. The internal structure of potassium strata represents an alteration of sylvinite, sylvinite with carnallite impurities, carnallite–sylvine–halite and clayey rocks. The characteristic features of Petrikov potash, along with the visible attributes which are the lighter shade and purity of salts, and the medium- and coarse-grained texture, are often the presence of blue halite crystals and the substantial impurity with carnallite. The whole interval of the clayey–halite substructure in rock salt contains scattered shots of potassium salt. Another typical feature is clustering of the major potassium strata in the third out of five delineated zones within a comparatively narrow interval. Special attention is paid to the sylvinite layer at the bottom of potassium stratum IV-P as it has a commercial value. The article describes the in-mine experimental studies of free gas content of rocks composing the sylvinite layer. The studied gas-dynamic characteristics such as the initial velocity of gas release and the gas pressure in rock mass are presented. The components of free gases are determined, and the areas of the increased values of gas content, initial gas release velocity and gas pressure in salt rock mass are identified and are associated with the presence of halopelite interlayers.

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