BRINGING INNOVATION TO THE SALT MINING INDUSTRY

By: Scott Bahr

Salt. It’s an essential element integral to our everyday lives that far too many people take for granted and rarely think much about. But along with being a fundamental staple in the human diet, salt is the most effective and prevalently used natural food preservative in existence. While this invaluable natural resource is provided naturally and available in abundance, the fact remains that salt still requires extraction to be utilized for any purpose.

That’s why we wanted to talk a bit of salt mining, and mainly how we see innovation ahead on the horizon and are actively participating ourselves at Bit Service to similarly bring innovation to salt mining right now.

Within the last five years or so, there seems to have been a new revolution of sorts in the salt mining industry, where we see companies transition away from the traditional style of underground salt mining. What has been the standard for many operations has been a drill and blast excavation method using face drills, explosives and scoops for extraction.

Much like how it is done in underground potash, the salt mining method is transitioning to mechanical cutting, with carbide bit equipped continuous miners. Utilizing this method, there is greater uptime and productivity, allowing continuous extraction with less safety concerns for underground workers. The potential for increased stability of the working areas due to fracture reduction can allow for improved longevity and budget savings from revised roof support requirements.

With this new technology and equipment paving the way to a new chapter in salt mining innovation, at Bit Service, we are perfectly poised to help lead the charge forward. We have the advantage of having over five decades of experience in this style of mechanical excavation, which means that we are now able to transfer our knowledge and expertise from what we’ve learned to help other entities make improvements in how they’re mining— specifically in smoothing transitioning as they make the shift to this much more efficient and sustainable method of salt mining.

And as the underground salt mining industry is transitioning to mechanical cutting as a more prominent mining method, we also see overlap into the expertise Bit Service has developed through decades of innovation in the underground potash mining industry. Being a lead developer and manufacturer of continuous miner cutting heads, block systems, and carbide bits, in addition to industry-leading conveyor and crawler chains, we are ideally positioned to add immense value to the underground salt industry.

In the spirit of sharing our expertise to help you along in your own journey, we wanted to highlight that it is vital to use the services of the OEM manufacturer when it comes to commissioning and optimizing the continuous miner after initial installation. From this point, a specialist (like our team members at Bit Service) can apply their expertise and lessons learned to the cutting efficiency, thus improving the reliability and operating uptime.

Bit Service can also help when it comes to another crucial step in salt mining: We can use our extensive knowledge and abundant on-hand supply of tungsten carbide tools for the cutting drum, which will allow the mine to focus on producing salt while we focus on selecting and stocking the best performing bits for the conditions.

To learn more about salt mining and to hear how Bit Service can help you along your journey in this niche or others, contact us today.