Abstract:Potash deposit in the Luobei depression is a large-sized underground liquid potash deposit, and contains seven aquifers of potassium-rich brines, with the first (W1) being K-rich brine aquifer and others (W2, W3, W4, W5, W6 and W7) being confined brine aquifers. At present, the main mining target concentrates on phreatic brine aquifer which is shallow buried and easily mined, and elastic yield in part of confined aquifer. With expanding production scale and increasing annual yield for brine in the mining area, some area will face difficulty in mining the deep confined aquifers with poor water. But confined brine layers often occur in relatively tight salt crystallization layers or pore or solution cracks of detrital layers. Their hydrological parameters are lower than that of phreatic brine aquifer (W1), which causes much difficulty in mining the deep potassium-rich brine. In this study, a large-scale pumping test was carried out in the deep confined aquifer in different hydrogeological areas of the Luobei depression by using blasting method and atmospheric connection method. The reasonable and economic mining method was determined for deep confined brine in different hydrogeological areas, and the deep confined brine(W2,W3,W4)resources have been effectively mined. This method turned unrecoverable deep confined potassium-rich brines into available resources, improving utilization rate of deep confined potassium-rich brine.