Mining

 

 

SEISMOTECH is participating in SMART EXPLORATION, a European funded research project in the context of action Horizon 2020.The Smart Exploration project, consisting of a research and application team and supported by a group of technologically advanced SMEs and mining companies, takes part in the Research & Innovation Action. The focus is on developing cost-effective, environmentally-friendly tools and methods for geophysical exploration, as well as other aspects such as geological and geochemical target vectoring and generations. The project includes 27 partners from 11 countries and six exploration sites within Europe.The project officially commenced on December 2017 and will be completed on December 2020.

The objectives, for SEISMOTECH in SMART EXPLORATION,are the improvement and the successful application of Passive Seismic Methodologies, in mineral exploration. For this purpose, a passive seismic network consisting of 120 stations has been installed in the wider area of a Bauxite mining field, in Gerolekas area, in Western Greece. The bauxite field is operated by the company Delfi-Distomo S.A.

The passive seismic network installed during the first 2 weeks of May 2018 and was operating for 4 months, until September 2018. The data processing is currently in progress and significant information regarding the seismicity of the area has been already obtained. It is interesting to mention that during the 4 months monitoring period, more than 7000 events were detected and located, while more than 3000 are located within the network area.

The following processing step is the 3D tomographic imaging of the area of interest and will be generated by adopting a combination of the Local Earthquake, the Ambient Noise and Surface waves tomography techniques.In the context of R&D, novel Seismic Interferometry methods are applied and 3 publications have been already submitted relevant to this topic.

The resulted velocity models according to this procedure will be interpreted aiming to provide significant structural and lithological information regarding the potential of deep bauxite deposits.