2015 April YPG Saskatoon PotashCorp Mine Tour
Touring PotashCorp's Allan Potash Mine
Felicia Brewster, P.Eng.
On April 23, 2015, twenty ACEC-SK Young Professionals from Saskatoon toured both the underground and surface operations at PotashCorp's Allan Mine.
In the underground portion of the tour, Zoe Brewster (Mine Geologist) and Andree Morissette (Mechanical Engineer) took us down the service shaft to reach the mining level at 1000m below surface. They drove us through the underground drifts where they explained the general geology of the area and the stress relief mining approach that PotashCorp Allan has followed for over 40 years.
They took us out to one of the panel faces they are currently mining. This is where we were able to get out of the “buses” and tour around by foot to collect samples and see the boring machine up close (which we have the group picture in front of). We were also able to see the main shaft and skip before going back up to the surface.
The surface portion of the tour was run by Brian Gotts (Chief Metallurgist & Process Engineer) and Kyle Peterson (Process Engineer). They walked us through the mill from top to bottom where they explained how the ore is processed into the various potash products. We saw the ore go through crushing, flotation, drying, sizing, compaction and crystallization. We toured their storage warehouses and their lab to see the different grades of potash Allan produces and how they monitor and maintain a high quality product.
We finished the surface tour by walking through their Loadout facility where the product is weighed and then loaded onto the railcars for delivery.
Overall, I think the tour far exceeded our expectations. We all took a lot away from it and were very impressed with the amount of detail the tour guides provided about the mining and milling processes.
