Basics of an open pit mine - Mine Engineer.Com
2013-1-6 · Open pit mines can be used in coal mining, and they are used extensively in "hard rock" mining for ores such as metal ores, copper, gold, iron, aluminum, and many minerals. In a open pit coal mine, the pit bottom would be the bottom mined coal seam elevation, since it is usually feasible to extract multiple seams when surface mining coal.