Dredging of thick productive placer deposits that exceed the dredger excavation capacity

Nikolay V. Murzin, Boris L. Talgamer, Ivan A. Meshkov
Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russian Federation
Mining Industry Journal (Gornaya Promyshlennost) №5/ 2026 p. 223-228

Summary: In conditions of a decreasing share of the placer gold in the total volume of gold production in the Russian Federation, the importance of placers remains high in the eastern regions, including the Irkutsk Region. At the same time, there is a deterioration in the mining and geological conditions of the placer deposits, i.e. the share of hard-to-recover reserves and the number of sections that are not maintained in terms of their capacity and width is increasing, while construction of new large-capacity dredges in Russia is virtually nonexistent. Bearing in mind the fact that development of reserves with variable parameters along the placer and areas with high productive sediment layer thickness will be carried out using the existing dredges, the authors have justified the scope of application for two technological options for preparing such deposits for dredging using Type 250D dredges. The first option provides for transloading of the upper part of the producing layer into a trench along the dredge cut using an ASH 10.70 dragline excavator. The second option is based on excavator-automobile transportation of the same volumes of sand to the thin or barren placer sites using an EKG-5A excavator, BelAZ 7540 dump trucks and a Shantui SD-16 bulldozer. Tabular-analytical modeling was performed for comparative analysis, i.e. more than 200 technological schemes were designed with the overburden thickness from 2 to 20 m and the share of sands above the scooping level from 0% to 100% in increments of 5%. Dependences of the total cost of sand preparation on the proportion of sands located above the dredging capabilities were obtained based on the calculated volumes of work and the unit costs. It has been established that the efficiency of the first option significantly depends on the overburden thickness and the rehandling coefficient. With the overburden thickness of less than 10 m and the share of sand above the scooping level of up to 80%, transloading into the trench is economically justified. The economically feasible area of application of the first option is limited by the overburden thickness of 18–20 m and the share of sands located above the dredging depth of no more than 5%. With the peat thickness of up to 8–10 m, sand preparation with a dragline remains efficient even if the producing layer thickness exceeds the dredging depth by up to 2.5 times. The results obtained make it possible to reasonably select a technology for mining deep placers in difficult mining and geological conditions.

Keywords: placer deposits, dredging, deep placers, sand preparation, stripping operations

For citation: Murzin Nikolay V., Talgamer Boris L., Meshkov Ivan A. Dredging of thick productive placer deposits that exceed the dredger excavation capacity. Mining Industry Journal (Gornaya Promyshlennost). 2026;(5):223–228. https://doi.org/10.30686/1609-9192-2026-5-223-228

Article info

Received: 23.05.2026

Revised: 22.06.2026

Accepted: 08.07.2026

Authors info

Murzin Nikolay V. – Cand. Sci. (Eng.), Associate Professor, Department of Mineral Deposits Development, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russian Federation; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6833-7860; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Talgamer Boris L. – Dr. Sci. (Eng.), Professor, Department of Mineral Deposits Development, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russian Federation; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1201-2693

Meshkov Ivan A. – Postgraduate Student, Department of Mineral Deposits Development, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russian Federation; https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5298-7929

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