| Summary: | The explosive cost is among the biggest contributors of day to day expenses of any mine. Many researchers have worked on explosive consumption reduction techniques. Attempts are being made to utilise waste bottles for providing air gaps in the explosive column, but no detailed study of the resulted blast performance were made. This paper presents performance analysis of use of discarded water bottles in rock blasting. Five experimental blasts were conducted in a limestone mine by inserting plastic bottles in the explosive columns for creating air gaps. The aspects that were used for assessing the blast performance were powder factor, fragmentation, ground vibration, air blast etc. Moreover for assessing the explosive performance the rock confined in-hole velocity of detonation was also measured. It was found that after replacement of 20% of explosive by volume with plastic bottles there was significant improvement in actual powder factor. Though there was minor fall in velocity of detonation of the explosive but it was sufficient to generate decent fragmentation. The ground vibration levels were also reduced significantly when compared with the general practice of the mine. The findings of this study may help the mine operators to improve powder factor.
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