The 13th International Symposium on Mining with Backfill, was held in Gliwice, Poland on May 25-27, 2021. The Symposium was organized in the Silesia Coal Region in Poland, where hydraulic fill has been used for the first time in the world. Polish underground mines of salt, base metals, and coal have used sand, gravel, underground waste rock, tailing, smelter slag, and coal combustion by-products since the end of the 19th century to fill underground voids. Fills used in coal mines have evolved from early loosely dumped rock, ash, and slag through hydraulically placed sand fill (in the early 1880s), pneumatic (the year 1920), and throwing (the year 1947) stowing up to today’s hydraulically trans ported, densified fills with fly ash, tailing and flue-gas desulphurization by-products. The use of fly ash, slimes, and water mixture as compaction grout of roof fall materials in gob area ix has had a very great impact on mining practice in Polish coal mines (the year 1975). Addition ally, in various locations, fly ash slurry has been injected into underground abandoned coal mine workings to provide structural support for surface damages reduction.
Originally, the Symposium was planned for 2020, but due to the extraordinary epidemic situation related to COVID-19 (SARS-Cov-2 virus), the symposium was moved to 2021, with the name of the Symposium Minefill 2020-2021, http://minefill2020.com/. The organization of the Symposium was adopted in a remote form on a specially dedicated platform. On 24. 05. 2021, the day before the symposium was held Mine Backfill Workshop, organized by MineFill Services, Washington, USA .
The Symposium was organized by the Foundation for the Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering and Industrial Automation of the Silesian University of Technology. Rector of the Silesian University of Technology, took the honorary patronage of the symposium.
The Symposium was attended by about 100 participants. More than 40 papers were submitted. Topics included the following: Legal, safety, environmental and financial drivers for backfill, Mine fill geomechanics, numerical modeling, the interaction between backfill and rock mass , Bulkhead capacity and fill strategies, Binders, admixtures, and other chemicals to improve fill performance, Backfill reticulation: pumping, piping, hydraulic analyses, Field fill mass blast and stress monitoring before and after exposure and data analysis, Laboratory testing on static and dynamic behaviors of backfill, Hazard and risk control practices in backfill application, Application of new technology and new equipment in mining with backfill, Influence of mining with backfill on the mitigation of subsidence related hazards, Case studies.
The conference proceedings were published by CRC Press/Balkema.