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By L. Frost

Physical Conditions Great Britain The physical conditions in the mines investigated in Great Britain are similar to those found in the mines of the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, with the important difference that many of the coal seams visited were interspersed by a large number of heavy faults, making the development of a continuous face operation difficult, and in many cases the life of a unit development was exceptionally short, adding to unit cost; but in spite of these difficulties, a great deal has been accomplished in the application of mechanical loading units in a number of the mines in the areas visited. The coal-bearing measures, as in Nova Scotia, consist of shales and sandstones, and in some sections mussel bands overlie the coal seams making roof conditions difficult'. In several mines, the main roof consisted of weak shale bind, being held by a coal roof of varying thickness. This shale bind had a tendency to flow when the coal roof was broken. The floor, in some cases where cutter loaders were operated successfully, consisted of weak, flaky shales with very little resistance and a tendency to disintegrate into powder when broken. The depth of cover under which these mines were operating varied from 250 feet to 2,340 feet, with an average of 1,700 feet. The coal seams varied in height from 3 feet to 8 feet 6 inches, and the gradients from level to 33 per cent. The seams vary in hardness, but all-with the exception of one seam, the 'Morrison Busty'- presented a cutting problem similar to that found in Nova Scotia. The structure and cleavage of the coal was well defined and uniform. Some of the seams visited were gassy, ?but the temperature of the workings generally was not in excess of 70°F.

Jan 1, 1948

By Z. Jun, L. Kerning

Jinlong copper smelter and refinery, originally designed for 100,000tpa primary copper and started up in 1997, has been expanding its capacity on the basis of operational optimization and by modifying its facilities. Currently it is producing 210,000tpa primary copper, and the new phase of expansion project with a target capacity of 350,000tpa primary copper is ongoing. This paper reviews problems and improvements made with operation and equipment in the past years. Recent plant operation is briefly described. The expansion projects completed are summarized and the ongoing expansion project is present.

Jan 1, 2007

By P. Fossi

This report describes a pilot-scale study of a hydrometallurgical process to treat high-grade nickel matte or a nickel-cobalt sulphide precipitate to produce high-purity electrolytic nickel. The first step of the process is the oxidative leaching of the nickel-bearing material by nitric acid; the nitrous gases generated during leaching are reconverted to nitric acid. The crude nickel sulphate nitrate solution is purified and is then subjected to a denitrification step. Nitrate separation is effected either by the crystallization of nickel sulphate or by precipitation of basic nickel carbonate. The electrolyte is prepared from the nitrate-free material and nickel is then recovered by electrolysis of the sulphate solution using insoluble anodes. Some technical and economic problems encountered with this processing route are discussed and the method is compared to the "all-chloride" process developed by Société Le Nickel.

Jan 1, 1977

By E. Sharifi, B. Komishke, R. Heffel, D. Schwartz

"The oil sands resources in Canada are one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon deposits. Processing of oil sands uses hot water to extract bitumen. The process generates tailings slurry that must be settled for final deposition. The tailings contain fine material, with poor water release characteristics which makes water recovery challenging. Polymer flocculants are added to assist in settling and dewatering the fine tailings. The amount of polymer addition is dependent on tailings characteristics, including the particle size distribution (PSD). If the PSD of the tailings is unknown, an excess amount of polymer needs to be added in the dewatering stage to flocculate the particles. Over flocculation also has a detrimental effect on the water release characteristics. Measuring the particle size distribution using an on-line analyzer could have major benefits over common laboratory methods as it provides online and fast insight into the process enabling the operators to implement required changes to minimize the reagent consumption, while achieving optimal flocculation. Online measurement of PSD using laser diffraction has long been used in base metals beneficiation processes. A series of test work using Outotec PSI500® particle size analyzer on oil sands samples from different operations have been conducted. Tests were performed by recirculating the slurry in closed circuit to simulate real plant conditions. This paper presents a summary of the results.INTRODUCTION Canada’s oil sands are the third largest reserves of crude oil in the world, with an estimated 165.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil (Government of Alberta 2016). Oil sands are a mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen. Bitumen is a form of oil that is too heavy or thick to flow or be pumped without being diluted or heated. About 20% of bitumen reserves are close enough to surface to be mined. In mining methods, oil sand is transported from an open pit mine to the processing plant and bitumen is separated from solids and water. The separation process involves ore preparation, such as addition of hot water, steam and caustic (NaOH), followed by gravity separation and froth treatment (Masliyah et al. 2004). A general scheme of the extraction process is presented in Figure 1."

Jan 1, 2018

By Ali Montaser

This paper presents an experimental study conducted to facilitate the use of RFID on construction job sites. The study focuses on deployment settings to provide data acquisition with higher accuracy for indoor location sensing. It provides extension to the state-of-the-art in this field as it addresses the impact of metal media proximity to RFID tags, the reasonable duration for data capturing, number of RFID tags employed and the distance between them. Low cost passive RFID tags were used in the experiments where each tag is used as a reference point with a known location. Five hundred and forty (514) experiments were conducted in lab environment using a 3m by 3m test bed that is dynamically rearranged to generate 15 test beds and a total of 67713 data sets were collected and analyzed. The collected data were captured from nine locations for each test bed at four time intervals. Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) was used as the main attribute for signal measurement to process the captured data. Results of the data analysis performed are studied under four main categories: duration, number of tags, locations of tags and metal interference. The best duration was found to be the 15 second in the test bed with the least number of tags; as the short amount of time to capture data did not allow creation of a lot of interference among the emitted signals. Within each test bed, errors occurred most at points where the received signals were not well distributed in a 360 degree vicinity of the data capturing point. It means that the center point of each test bed resulted in lowest errors and the points located on the extremities led to the highest errors. Finally, metal objects were found to have major impact on the accuracy of the captured data; to the level where reliable values for errors could not be calculated in the test beds attached to metal objects. In summary, the results of the experimental study and related findings are expected to provide guidelines to the users of RFID technology for localization in building construction.

Aug 1, 2013

By W. G. Deeks

CANADIANS are world leaders in marketing metal and mineral products. Noranda Sales Corporation Ltd. is an international metal and mineral product marketing company operating from Toronto and London, England, where it operates a wholly owned sales subsidiary and is a 50% partner in Rudolf Wolff and Company Ltd., a charter member and the largest metal broker on the London Metal Exchange. Noranda Sales employs 97 people, of whom 52 are university trained and professionally competent in international resource product marketing. We market for 19 companies or divisions in the Noranda Group and 39 companies for whom we act as agent, consultant and purchaser of resource production. Our business in 1976 was 1.5 billion dollars carried out in 45 countries and covering 24 products and materials. Today, ownership of most of the mining industry in Canada has transferred back to Canadians, and this is said with the knowledge that a significant part of the Canadian industry has been Canadian owned and managed from its very early days. Noranda Mines Limited is such an example. It was born in 1922 as the result of a copper-gold showing at Noranda, Quebec, discovered by Ed Horne, a prospector, financed with a grubstake by a syndicate mainly composed of New York businessmen. Shortly after the discovery, when the shares of the company had risen, the syndicate was sold to Canadian interests and, since that time, Noranda has been dominantly Canadian owned and certainly Canadian managed. Today, over 90% of Noranda's shareholders are Canadian, who hold an equivalent percentage of the stock.

Jan 1, 1977

By J. H. Canterford

The nickel industry in Australia has followed the general pattern apparent in many other regions - lots of ups and downs, successes and failures, but always plenty of challenges. Some of these can be attributed to local geographical and infrastructure factors, others to a healthy mix of corporate good luck and management countered by decisions that, in retrospect, were less than optimum. The roles of several entrepreneurs have certainly added plenty of spice! In terms of processing technologies, there was an initial heavy reliance on the use of "off the shelf' commercially proven processes such as ammonia leaching of concentrates and mattes, and flash smelting. Over the past decade there has been an increasing dominance of plant modifications and process technologies that have been developed "in house" in order to enhance project economics and exploit lower grade and more complex resources. This presentation provides an overview of the past 40 years of the major developments in the Australian nickel industry and concludes with some guesses as to where we will be in another decade or so.

Jan 1, 2005

By G. A. Pinsky, Pickard M. K

"IntroductionTWO METHODS of mucking have been used in sinking C shaft, the five-compartment production shaft of the Yellowknife property of Giant Yellowknife Gold Mines, Limited:(a) Band mucking during the original sinking in 1949 and 1950 (l); and(b) Mechanical mucking with the Cryderman shaft mucker during the recent deepening in 1954.This paper briefly describes the recent deepening and compares the performance figures of the two sinking operations.PlanningProduction planning in 1952 showed that it would be advisable to deepen C shaft in 1954 to provide for three new production levels and the installation of an underground crusher. To complete the required shaft work it would be necessary for a shaft crew to deepen the shaft about 500 feet, to partly excavate three level stations and a crusher station, and to cut a station for the loading pocket. Figure 1, a vertical section of the lower part of the shaft, shows the details of the deepening programme.During the planning period, Giant had a rather small supervisory staff and at the same time was experiencing a heavy labour turnover. As it was obvious that production would suffer if the sinking crew were recruited at the mine, it was decided that the merits of contracting-the shaft sinking to an independent contractor should be investigated."

Jan 1, 1955

By A. R. Miller, G. Desrivières, T. MacKinnon, H. Bursey, M. C. Bétournay, B. Replogle, D. L. Barnes, P. Laliberté

"A mine production locomotive, the world’s first applied industrial fuel cell vehicle, has been designed and tested in the context of a number of proof-of-concept projects supported by the Fuelcell Propulsion Institute, an international consortium of stakeholders dedicated to facilitate the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles.The locomotive’s simple electric-powered motor and controller system was ideal to study a number of requirements related to fuel cell power application: hydrogen power plant operation, underground hydrogen use, risk and regulatory requirements, production performance versus the conventional battery- powered locomotive version under measured duty cycles and production requirements, power plant design improvements for other fuel cell vehicles, and cost benefit aspects.This article will focus on the design and testing aspects of this project which has led to successful performance demonstrations of the vehicle under surface and underground conditions at two mines. It will also present information on the creation of a safe, reliable, and efficient power plant that fulfilled its design objectives, including longer productivity time for a given vehicle fill-up."

Jan 1, 2004

By L. H. Cole

FOR many years Industrial Minerals, or as they were formerly called, 'the Non-Metallic Minerals', compared with the metallics, were considered of only minor importance and as such were given scant attention in the technical press as well as in the public press. Those days are, however, happily passing, and thanks, to an appreciable extent, to the constant endeavour of the Industrial Minerals Section of this Institute, established in the fall of 1932 industrial minerals are now assuming the importance to which they are entitled. The term 'Industrial Minerals', when first adopted in this sense by the Institute, was thought to be original in its application, but it is interesting to note that it had been used many years previously by the Queensland Geological Survey in the following publication: SALT Article 1 in Industrial Minerals by B. DUNSTAN, Chief Government Geologist (Publication No. 268, in Part) Queensland Geological Survey, Department of Mines, Brisbane 1920 In Queensland, however, the term embraced some of the metals as well as the non-metallic minerals proper. The lead furnished by Canada in this matter bore rapid fruit, and already the term 'Industrial Minerals' is widely used, not only throughout Canada but in the United States as well.

Jan 1, 1939

By R. Bashir, J. F. Hatley

ABSTRACT Northern Saskatchewan boasts some of the world’s largest known high-grade uranium deposits. The successful mining of these deposits cannot be accomplished without overcoming technical challenges, however, which include high grade of the uranium ore, specialized mining methods to deal with groundwater at high pressures, and poor ground conditions. This paper discusses the various mechanisms of inflows at three of Cameco Corporation’s sites in northern Saskatchewan. The risk of inflows is quantified in terms of unique challenges due to hydrogeological conditions, rock mass integrity, and uncertainty in geological conditions. Strategies in the case of an inflow are also briefly described.

Jan 1, 2013

By E. D. Fox

Introduction The financial statement of the hypothetical Gold Mining Company, which forms the background of this survey, was designed for the Institute with the express abject of having it assessed in respect to Profits by the several taxing bodies representing the Federal and Provincial Governments, which comprise the Dominion of Canada. On the completion of the figures, copies were sent to the several Ministers of Mines, accompanied by a request that they be submitted to their taxing authorities and assessed accordingly. The response, while it was not general, was very favourable, and at all times we were treated with the utmost courtesy and patience, and what has been set forth in the compilation bears the authentication of the various government officials who are immediately concerned with taxation. The data itself constitutes a fairly comprehensive digest of taxation as it directly applies to gold mining profits in Canada. The Hypothetical Balance-Sheet (See Exhibit A) In the balance-sheet schedules 1 and 2 (Exhibit A), income is divided between taxable and non-taxable classifications, and here it should be noted that the division contemplates only the assessment for Dominion income tax. The same applies to the factors of exchange and depletion. Therefore, in making comparisons, it is to be borne in mind that the set-up for assessment to the Provinces, that is, Manitoba and Alberta, will stand as if the gross non-operating income is taxable, with the reservations as shown in the notes below the schedules.

Jan 1, 1934

By Thomas G. Madgwick

Introduction Development of oil and gas is still centred in the Province of Alberta, much as it was when C. C. Ross read a paper on this subject three years ago at the Annual General Meeting in Montreal; but so far as gas is concerned, its early production in Saskatchewan seems now assured. The three years that have elapsed since Mr. Ross' paper have witnessed a growth in the world's production of oil that has created a potential supply out of all proportion to the demand for petroleum products, and one that has resisted the most energetic efforts of the industry entirely to control. The natural result has been very much to retard the active prospecting of new structures in the Prairie Provinces with any immediate view to oil production, although the same factor has not hindered the search for gas to the same extent. One consequence has been to divert the attention of organized oil operators from wildcat drilling to more detailed geological investigation than had hitherto been customary, sometimes accompanied by test drilling with a view to the elucidation of geological structure rather than to the immediate development of production which at the present is not needed. Nevertheless, in spite of the growth of this phase of oil prospecting - which the writer would be the last not to welcome as a very real blessing and of far greater value than indiscriminate wildcat drilling in either the complex structures of the foothills or the simpler but largely concealed formations of the plains- it is most satisfactory to have to record that in these three years the growth of production both of naphtha and the heavier crude-oil has kept pace with the by no means inconsiderable growth in the production and utilization of natural gas.

Jan 1, 1929

By C. J. Preston, R. E. Ström, G. R. Baiden

"On January 1st 1996 Inco Limited, Tamrock OY, Dyno Explosives Group and CANMET formed a consortium for the development of robotic mining equipment. This project is a five year research and development agreement that combines the talents of the above organizations to facilitate the creation of mining equipment and systems for robotic mining.The projects are based on the communication system developed by Inco Mines Research and currently sold and marketed by Automated Mining Systems Limited. Main projects include the development and implementation of a positioning and navigation module (including a software mapping system that will be inherent to each piece of equipment), robotic systems for development and mining, and software systems to support the use of this equipment. Included in the program is the establishment of a test mine, at Inco’s 175 ore- body at Copper Cliff. This facility will allow collaboration of companies and research organizations for the design and testing of techniques and equipment for Robotic mining.This paper discusses the creation of this new research alliance, the Mining Automation Program or MAP."

Jan 1, 1997

By Imane Benhamed, Jaouher Diouani, Laurent Cassayre, Florent Bourgeois, Carine Julcour-Lebigue, Université de Carthage

The attrition-leaching process aims at improving leaching performance when formation of passivation layers at the surface of leached particles is a severe limiting factor, as discussed recently by Julcour and coworkers (Julcour et al., 2015). This paper proposes a geochemistry-based modelling scheme for deriving the window of possible operating conditions for the attrition-leaching process to match the properties of the processed ore. The rationale is that the attrition-leaching process maintains the surface of reacting particles in an unpassivated state by continuous mechanical removal of surface leach layers, so that the process reactions can be modelled from thermodynamic equilibria throughout the duration of the process. The strength of the proposed modelling approach is that it bridges the gap between the properties of the ore and the process operating conditions. The present paper exemplifies the proposed process modelling route for derivation of the attrition-leaching process operating conditions in the context of the leaching of silicate ores, matching model predictions against controlled laboratory experiments. It is shown how thermodynamic modelling, when used in conjunction with a solid knowledge of the phases present in the system, can assist with deciding upon suitable process operating conditions. As an example, this firstprinciple modelling approach predicted that steel grinding medium would be converted into siderite (FeCO3) under a wide range of operating conditions, which led to questioning this initial choice of grinding medium for the attrition-leaching process under mineral carbonation conditions. It is emphasised that the same approach could be applied to ores of greater economic significance.

Jan 1, 2016

By Marc C. Bétournay

A mine production locomotive, the world?s first applied industrial fuelcell vehicle, has been designed and tested in the context of a number of proof-of-concept projects supported by the Fuelcell Propulsion Institute, an international consortium of stakeholders dedicated to facilitate the commercialization of fuelcell vehicles. The locomotive?s simple electric-powered motor and controller system was ideal to study a number of requirements related to fuelcell power application: hydrogen power plant operation, underground hydrogen use, risk and regulatory requirements, production performance versus the conventional battery-powered locomotive version under measured duty cycles and production requirements, power plant design improvements for other fuelcell vehicles, and cost-benefit aspects. This article will focus on the design and testing aspects of this project which has led to successful performance demonstrations of the vehicle under surface and underground conditions at two mines. It will also present information on the creation of a safe, reliable and efficient power plant which fulfilled its design objectives, including longer productivity time for a given vehicle fill-up.

May 1, 2003

By G. A. Bezuidenhout, J. Davis, S. M. Bradshaw, J. P. T. Kapusta, D. K. Chibwe

"This research work forms part of an assessment to complement the feasibility of implementing high pressure sonic injection into relatively small (2.25 m I.D by 3.66 m I.L) Peirce-Smith converters (PSC) used at Lonmin Plc. Work has been carried out to characterize the fluid dynamics of three-phase (air, matte and slag) fluid flow in these converters using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The investigation has been done to study the flow pattern of the three phase system at high air pressure injection achieving sonic velocity at the tuyere exit into the converter. The 2-D and 3-D simulations of the three phase system were carried out using the volume of fluid (VOF) and realizable k -e turbulence models to account for the multiphase and turbulence nature of the flow, respectively. These models were implemented using the commercial CFD numerical code FLUENT. A detailed study of the flow pattern has been presented in the form of contour plots and the results obtained are useful for understanding plume extension and velocity distribution, shear wall stress distribution, and phase distribution characteristics in the system. The results provide a basis for further development of sonic injection technology into relatively small industrial Peirce-Smith converters with the ultimate objective of achieving lower energy consumption, improved process efficiency and increased throughput of the converting process. INTRODUCTIONPeirce-Smith converters (PSC) have been used in copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) making smelters for more than a century for the purpose of removing iron (Fe) and sulphur (S) chemically associated with copper-nickel mattes through exothermic oxidation reactions. This process is commonly referred to as conversion. In principle, conversion is a submerged injection process, where typically air (or oxygen enriched air), at subsonic velocity (typically < 150 m/s), is laterally blown into liquid matte (Cu-Ni-Fe-S system). Oxygen preferentially reacts with Fe and S to produce iron oxide (FeO), which is slagged off, and sulphur dioxide (SO2), which reports to the process off gas."

Jan 1, 2012

By H. Assadi, S. Reutzel, D. M. Herlach

Intermetallics exhibit unique solidification behaviour due to their chemical longrange order. This includes, for instance, generally slow solidification kinetics, and in some cases, an anomalous partitioning behaviour. In the present work the electromagnetic levitation technique - complemented by theoretical modelling - is used to explore various aspects of this behaviour, as observed in solidification of B2 phase in undercooled melts of the Ni-Al system. Moreover, a phase-field model is developed and used to illustrate the effect of chemical order on the solidification kinetics of a B2 phase in a model system. The phase-field model provides an additional basis for the simulation of solidification microstructures in intermetallic forming systems. Both experimental studies and theoretical work signify the role of chemical order in solidification of intermetallics.

Jan 1, 2006

By J. D. Jones

The geographic occurrence of economic mineral deposits presents a variety of problems in modern tailings disposal operations. This paper presents case histories in several sectors of the mineral industry as well as the several stages of operations planning required for new designs, system expansion, reactivation of abandoned systems and upgrading to present environmental standards.

Jan 1, 1978

By Mihaita Matei

An adaptive approach to control the deformation in tube hydroforming process is presented. This requires: the use of an existing non-linear FE software (ABAQUS) that incorporates a user material model (VUMAT), the development and implementation of an adaptive control strategy to coordinate the internal pressure and the axial load so as to prevent fracture and wrinkling failures (knowledge-base controller) and the application of the developed adaptive simulation approach for finding the optimal loading path required to hydroform a defect-free part with as uniform thickness distribution as possible (user&apos;s load subroutine (VDLOAD). In order to validate the approach, the case of conical hydroforming and the case of bending followed by hydroforming component is discussed.

Jan 1, 2011