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By A. Lee Barrett

"THE COAL INDUSTRY of the United States• and Canada has made great progress in recent years. Coal mining in •the old days represented one of the most arduous tasks for labour and industry, but over the years great progress has been made in reducing the effort required from labour. Also, the tonnage produced per man, the cost of the coal per ton, and the overall safety of the operation, have been greatly improved.Looking back over the past fifty years:, the era can be divided into four principal parts: (a) hand-loading, (b) track mining methods, (c) off-track mining methods, and (d) continuous mining. For many years, all of the coal was won by hand-mining methods. The first forms of mechanization •resembled the move from the horse •and buggy to the automobile. Early track mechanical mining methods were usually adaptations of the direct methods involved in hand-mining, with each improvement directed toward some specific process. A revolutionary development came about with off-track mining methods. The first efforts in this direction were provided by off-track mechanical loading machines, which loaded the cars •on track and differed from conventional track mining methods only in that the loading machines themselves operated on the mine floor. With the advent -of the shuttle car about ten years ago, true off-track mining came into being, and real progress in this direction began to be made.At the present time we •are at the beginning of a new era -.the era of continuous mining. There will be a period of development with some time needed before the system is generally applied throughout the industry, but -already enough •has been done to indicate rather dearly what the future holds in this direction."

Jan 1, 1953

By W. G. Miller, J. D. Scott, D. C. Sego

ABSTRACT: As part of an overall study of properties and processes influencing consolidation of oil sands fine tailings resulting from different extraction processes, self-weight consolidation tests were per-formed. Fourteen 2 m and 1 m high standpipe tests were instrumented to monitor the rate and magnitude of consolidation of seven fine tailings materials. Tests provided valuable information about the variation of consolidation related to differences in fine tailings material properties that result from a change in bitu-men extraction process (caustic versus non-caustic). In addition, the effect of adding a coagulant to caustic fine tailings was measured. Test results are presented and discussed in terms of consolidation rate long-term volume decrease, compressibility, and downward drainage. Non-caustic fine tailings had fasterinitial consolidation, which is important in tailings ponds for reducing storage capacity and returning decant water at a faster rate to the extraction plant. Similar results were obtained for caustic fine tailings with a coagulant addition. However, long-term settlement of the different fine tailings appears to con-verge to a similar value over time because it is then governed by effective stress.

Jan 1, 2011

By Cardm Jeffrey W.

The decay of 222 Rn yields a series of short-lived decay products which become attached to the surface of a plate or wire exposed in a 222Rn-bearing atmosphere. The alpha-activity of two of the decay products, 218Po and 214Po, can be measured by simple counting techniques. This phenomenon may have direct application to uranium exploration. Laboratory studies have shown that: (a) radon decay products can be collected on a wide variety of materials (including various kinds of metals and plastics); (b) activity increases as a function of the surface area of the 'collector; and (c) the collection of the decay products is enhanced by applying a negative charge. The new technique was used in situ to delineate the anomaly above the South March uranium-copper occurrence. A related technique was developed to measure radium in soil samples. The results of both studies compared favourably with those obtained from conventional methods.

Jan 1, 1979

By A. Gillis, J. Keyes

"This is a prelirr1inary report on automatic control at East Malartic Gold Mines.After installation of the cyclones in the East Malartic grinding circuit, the interest was aroused in the automatic control system for the circuit. Investigations were made as to the possibilities of such an installation. This resulted in a preliminary survey of the circuit by Milltronics Ltd and an analysis of the circuit by Mines Branch personnel. A study of the investigation and analysis indicated that a cost reduction and improved efficiency could be expected by the installation of an automatic control system in the grinding circuit. It was also indicated tl1at such installation should pay for itself within a year. This was the point that sold management on such installation. The need of three operators was expected to be eliminated .The installation was to consist of a central control panel, microphoncs on each mill, regulation of feed rate, pneumatic valves for addition of solt1tions, density control of the cyclone overflow, which is a grinding circuit product, rod mill feed box plugging detector and a conveyer weightometer for tonnage indication and control.As well as the elimination of one man per sl1ift, other benefits which were to be received but unable to estimate were: 1) More tonnage per clay by operation of the mills at the proper capacities. 2) Lower grinding costs. Less under-loading should result in less steel wear and lower pumping cost. In the condition of overloading, a coarser grind is obtained resulting in greater impeller and liner wear. The overloading and underloading showed up on the n1icropl1oncs. 3) An improvement in the recovery as a result of less over-load. The tailings loss from a coarser grind are not as frequent."

Jan 1, 1965

By D. G. Cerigo

"INTRODUCTIONAn interim report covering an uncompleted project on revenue mill optimization was presented at the invitation of Mr. C.S. Stevens, the Secretary of the Canadian Gold Metallurgists. The work described summarizes the preliminary work carried out at the Noranda Research Centre on computer mill optimization and is an attempt to arrive at a model of a circuit using the ""black box"" approach and hence by using economic factors related to concentrate dollar value to maximize revenue. The help and cooperation of Mr. J.D. Wild, Mr. M.J.S. Bennett of Noranda and Dr. A. Bobkowicz of McGill University is gratefully acknowledged.DERIVATION OF MODELHistorical data from the Normetal mill were used for the study. Normetal ore contains chalcopyrite, sphalerite, gold, silver, pyrite and pyrrhotite. For simplicity, data were chosen for days when only two concentrates had been derived, a copper concentrate which also contains the gold and silver, and a zinc concentrate. In these periods when pyrite concentrate was not produced, its circuit was used as an extra zinc scavenger unit. Figure I is a schematic drawing of the circuit and Table I explains the nomenclature.The mill had been operated to obtain a fixed grade of copper and zinc in the copper and zinc concentrates respectively, at the same time insuring acceptable recovery levels. The target grade for the copper and zinc concentrates had been derived by manual calculations based on past experience. The data used were 170 sets of daily mill reports, a sample of which is shown in Table II. The data consist of daily tonnages of feed, concentrates and tailings and their average compositions obtained by taking samples every twenty minutes from each stream and analyzing the daily composite samples."

Jan 1, 1967

By Philippe Ribagnac, Bruno Courtaud, Jean-Marie Lambert, Valérie Weigel

Mabounié is a polymetallic deposit in Gabon containing niobium (1.2 wt.%), tantalum (0.03 wt.%), rare earth elements (REE) (1.4 wt.%) and uranium (0.03 wt.%) that are mostly carried by pyrochlore minerals. The classical route for niobium recovery is a pyrometallurgical process that consists of pyrochlore flotation, dephosphorization of the niobium concentrate and aluminothermy to obtain ferro-niobium. Pyrochlore concentrates can also be treated by a hydrometallurgical process with a mixture of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid leaching followed by solvent extraction to separate niobium and tantalum. However, the first process does not allow recovering REE and the second one is not environmentally friendly because of the use of HF. ERAMET is looking for new opportunities on strategic metals market and has recently developed a hydrometallurgical process for the recovery of all these metals based on a sulfuric acid treatment of the ore (Donati, Courtaud, & Weigel, 2014). As for most of the oxidized ore processes, the major impurity is iron (~30 wt.%). Thus, in this hydrometallurgical process, the question arises of the elimination and stabilization of the iron as residue. The iron in solution is ferrous; goethite precipitation seems the most adapted crystalline form. Lab and pilot tests have shown kinetics of precipitation of 6 g.L-1.h-1 at pH 4.5. To reduce the salt discharge, sodium-jarosite form is more adapted, but at pH 2, 95°C only 30% of iron is precipitated in 5 hours, compared to 100% in goethite form at the same time and pH 2, 80°C. Different ways of oxidation were tested, air, pure O2, activated carbon, without drastic effect. The more efficient was ozone use, at room temperature; the kinetics of oxidation is five time faster than the other ways with 30% of sodium removed from the solution.

Jan 1, 2016

By G. K. Rutherford, G. W. Van Loon

"Tailings in the mining and smelting industry are reject products of the refining process which are deemed too deficient in native are to warrant smelting. They are essentially finely ground rock materials which have been moved by alluvial suspension from the site of crushing to a deposit site. It is realized that components of flotation chemicals used in specific gravity separation may become part of the tailings and also that sewage sludge or other materials may be added at some stage to the tailing deposits.It would seem, then, that as tailings have a similar parent material to soils, namely rocks, and that they have also been comminuted to similar size fractions, they would react in similar ways to soils. There is an increasing body of evidence and experience which both supports and negates this supposition. It is the object of this paper to point out similarities and contrasts between these two materials which may influence the vegetation and rehabilitation of tailings.Soil-Formlnq FactorsThere are considered to be six soil-forming factors which impart the particular and unique properties harboured by a soil at any site. It is .relevant to consider each of these in turn, as each provides an historically based parameter with which to judge tailing properties.Parent MaterialsAlthough all mineral soils have originally come from rocks, for most soils the route has been rather circuitous. Soils may be formed directly from underlying rocks, as in some parts of tropical and semitropical regions today; these are sedentary soils. However, most soils of the world have been formed by materials which were transported to their present site by ice, water or wind, or as volcanic ash. Virtually all soils in Canada have been transported by ice or water and deposited on an extraneous rock surface during the last glacial retreat. Ice-deposited materials are extraordinarily heterogeneous in their size components and may range from very bouldery and gravelly to predominantly clay-sized materials. Water deposited sediments are usually homogeneous, but nevertheless these also show considerable level variations. In many parts of Canada, clay-sized materials deposited in ephemeral post-glacial lakes form the parent material for soils."

Jan 1, 1982

? CONSTRUCTION AND MINING COSTS ARE HIGH IN THE ARCTIC ? VERTICAL KIMBERLITE PIPES WITH HIGH STRIP RATIOS ? SITE SPECIFIC GEOMETRIC CONSTRAINTS ? OPEN PIT FOLLOWED BY UNDERGROUND MINING ? HIGH KIMBERLITE UNIT COSTS TRACK INSTALLED ON PIT WALL ? INTENDED TO REPLACE MAIN HAUL RAMP ? 5 MIN HOIST CYCLE TIME ? KEY ADVANTAGES - REDUCED CYCLE AND STRIPPING RATIO ? TECHNOLOGY EXISTS IN OTHER APPLICATIONS

May 1, 2003

By A. Sheikh, S. Hardcastle

"Various methods of leaching are being used by Denison Mines Ltd. Uranium Operations. This study was designed to investigate the flood leaching operation of two parallel inter-connected stopes contained by pressure bulkheads. The teaching muck piles, created from large scale uppers production blasts, are aerated by compressed air lines laid beneath the pile prior to blasting.A SFr, tracer gas, injection technique has been employed to determine the post-blast integrity of the single-ended air distribution system. SF6 was injected into the compressed air line feed to the stopes and collected at borehole exhausts from the stopes in grab-sampling bags. Analyses of the air samples were performed with a gas chromatograph.The system was designed to give a sufficiency of oxygen to sustain bacterial activities used to enhance the leaching recovery in the muck piles. The results obtained indicated that there is a minor anomaly in the distribution system that may not be critical to the operation. Compared to an idealized case, the over-all efficiency of aeration throughout the muck is estimated at over 85%."

Jan 1, 1988

By B. Yu, N. Verbaan, A. Mezei

The recent 20 years witnessed a boom and bust in the nickel laterite industry. Most notoriously is the story of the first three Western Australian nickel laterite projects which all suffered major ramp-up issues. Many hard lessons were learned by the industry and it has been widely reported that the major contributing factors included insufficient testing as well as a limited understanding of the materials handling characteristics at the front-end stage of the flowsheet. This paper compares the current "race to production" in the REE industry to the laterite industry 20 years ago and addresses the fundamental question: ‘Have mining and exploration companies with rare earth projects learned from past lessons and are they doing sufficient and appropriate testwork to prevent failure’? The authors will provide the perspective of a commercial metallurgical laboratory that has gone through the laterite cycle and is active in the present REE cycle.

Jan 1, 2014

By David Whittle

When does a project with questionable viability, warrant further investment? There are cases in which projects, which evaluate to a negative mean probable value, are worth investing in. There are also cases in which projects that evaluate to a positive mean probable value, should not be invested in. The author will present a model for ?project-control?which includes an adaptation of a well know grade-control concept. Comments on Resources and Reserves ?Resource and Reserve estimates are based on positive information (43-101). ?Reserve and Resource confidence qualitatively assessed. ?U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recognizes Undiscovered Resources (U.S. Geological Survey 2003).

May 1, 2006

By Evelynn Stirling

Agenda ? Emissions legislation ? Cummins Tier 4 Technology ? Cummins Experience with Technology ? Operation and Maintenance Impact The Emissions Challenge ? The 2014/5 emissions regulations present the most significant challenge to our customer?s diesel powered equipment design and operation in recent history? ? ?and Cummins has the solution.

Aug 1, 2013

By R. A. Ozerkevich, R. J. Voisey

"SherrGold's MacLellan V ne is located about five miles south east of Lynn Lake immediately to the east of the Keewatin River. (Figure # 1)The property is accessible by an all weather road, leading north from the provincial highway 391, which links Lynn Lake with the Town of. Leaf Rapids and the city of Thompson to the south.The MacLellan Mine (formerly the Agassiz property) was discovered in the early 1950's and optioned from Comiesa Corporation in 1979 by Sherritt. SherrGold Inc. was formed in September 1985. Sherritt then transferred the MacLellan Mine, 15 other gold prospects in the Lynn Lake area and the old Lynn Lake nickel-copper mill to SherrGold. At the same time Sherrgold entered into a management agreement with Sherritt whereby Sherritt would develop and operate the MacLellan Mine and conduct SherrGold's exploration activities.The ore body as outlined in the original feasibility study is expected to produce in excess of 300,000 ounces of gold and 450,000 ounces of silver over the next 5 years. However the deposit is open to depth and exploration is continuing on and around the main zone and the many satellite deposits.The start of construction of the MacLellan mine and mill was scheduled to phase in with the closure of the Fox copper-zinc mine located 30 miles west of Lynn Lake. The majority of the employees from the Fox Operation were either employed at the MacLellan mine or relocated to Sherritt's Ruttan Operation."

Jan 1, 1987

By L. Lariviere, M. Grenier, R. Khalili, D. Shook

A mineral processing facility near Montreal, CEZinc, Noranda Inc., has recently implemented a leading-edge intranet solution for monitoring the performance of plant operations, and providing condition-based maintenance. This innovative multi-faceted software implementation incorporates: web-delivered plant information systems; area-wide control loop performance assessment (using sophisticated algorithms to evaluate poorly performing controllers); and integrated alarm management functions.The system has enabled a project to improve plant operations through better process control. Maintenance technicians, engineers, supervisors and managers all can see the performance of the controllers, and the performance of the plant itself, through webdelivered graphics and reports. Information is combined from many sources, real-time, historical, relational and analytical, to provide a complete picture of plant operation.The web-based solution centralizes the administration of user access, and simplifies the deployment of several different kinds of information to many desktops. It is an extensible system that allows users to create and share their own web pages and data views.The paper will discuss the solution architecture and the improvements the IT, operations, maintenance, and engineering groups have experienced, and overall benefits to the facility.

Jan 1, 2003

By Emilie S. Williams

The Doyon Mine?s Zone 1 (Altered Zone), found along the southern boundary of the mine, encompasses approximately 20% of the mining reserves. The mineralisation is found in a series of steeply dipping narrow veinlets, which are contained in an extremely weak host rock: a sericitic schist with RQD values ranging from 0 to 20. Longhole mining methods are used, with either longitudinal or transverse approaches, depending on the width of the ore zone. Dilution is of critical importance in the mining of this zone, particularly in longitudinal stopes, where dilution levels have averaged 55% since 2000. Major factors influencing dilution in this zone include the stope geometry and standup time. A two-phase approach has been developed to mine and backfill longitudinal stopes: the top of the stope is pastefilled after approximately half of the broken ore has been extracted; the remainder of the ore is extracted once the plug has cured; and the remaining void is filled. This method has been used in six stopes to date, resulting in an average dilution of 17%. This paper details the application of this technique and its effect on dilution.

Oct 1, 2004

By S. Shairp

Copper is an impurity as well as a necessary reagent in the processing of zinc sulfide concentrate at Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co., Limited's (HBMS) zinc pressure leach plant. Copper is present in the zinc concentrate as chalcopyrite, which consumes reagents necessary for zinc leaching. A small percentage of copper precipitates in the autoclaves, discharge lines, and flash tanks, requiring maintenance of the equipment and disposal of the solids. Copper also precipitates in the neutralization stages and is removed to low levels in a specific copper removal stage of purification. Yet some copper, as copper sulfate, is required, along with potassium antimony tartrate, in the final purification stage to improve cobalt removal from the zinc sulfate solution prior to electrowinning. The behaviour of copper experienced at HBMS's zinc pressure leach plant is discussed.

Jan 1, 2008

By Frank S. Palkovits

Over the past 30 years, underground paste backfill systems have been implemented across the globe in many configurations, each with a primary focus of providing high quality backfill to enhance mine operations. However, a number of key design drivers are not always well understood within design engineering firms that occasionally undertake this work, leaving opportunities on the table. Perhaps not always obvious to those newly embracing paste technology, identifying key drivers and opportunities attainable through a paste backfill system is generally not straightforward, requiring innovative approaches to securing higher productivity, availability, performance, maintainability, and operator health and safety. This paper describes a number of applications and audits of paste backfill systems for several challenging mine operations. Key challenges include iterative design aspects of availability of good backfill materials, plant location and configuration, general arrangement, and binder receiving/storage systems.

Oct 1, 2010

By I. Orford, V. Rozon

"The Sä Dena Hes Joint Venture Mill was designed to process 450,000 tonnes per year of ore grading 11.3% lead and 13.2% zinc.Run of mine ore is crushed in a jaw crusher and then ground in a closed circuit SAG mill and ball mill. A standard differential float in conventional flotation cells produces quality lead and zinc concentrates. Dewatering of concentrates is achieved using high rate thickeners, lamella clarifiers and pressure filters. Process water is 100% recycle.Plant design was based on metallurgical test work performed on drill core samples. The plant is operating at better than design specifications.INTRODUCTIONSä Dena Hes Joint Venture was formed in 1989 to develop the Sa Dena Hes lead/zinc sulphide mine, located approximately 45 km north of the Town of Watson Lake, Yukon. The mine is owned by a Joint Venture partnership between the operator, Curragh Inc. (87.5%) and Hillsborough Resources Limited (12.5%).The project was completed in a record ten months, working throughout the severe Yukon winter and through an abnormally wet spring and summer. The first truckloads of concentrate were shipped from the mine on August 1, 1991.The mill currently processes 550,000 tonnes of ore per year grading 6.9% lead and 11.5% zinc. Ore is crushed in a jaw crusher and ground to 60% passing 75 microns in a closed circuit operation of one SAG mill and ball mill. Using conventional flotation cells a 150,000 tonnes of concentrate is produced in a year with lead concentrate grading 78% lead and a zinc concentrate grading 60% zinc at overall recoveries of 89% and 90% respectively.Concentrates dewatering is accomplished using high rate thickeners, clarifiers and pressure filters. The lead concentrate and zinc concentrate contain 5.4% water and 7.8% water respectively. Concentrates are trucked to Skagway, Alaska for subsequent shipping to overseas smelters."

Jan 1, 1993

By Q. Li, X. -L. Lei

Accompanying global energy shortage and high energy prices, shale gas has been the focus of exploration and it has attracted great attention from both academia and industry. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing enables the extraction of huge quantities of shale gas from impermeable shale formations. During the process of hydraulic fracturing, great amounts of water, sand and chemicals must be injected into the shale formation at a high pressure, which may trigger seismicity. Such events could occur due to the presence of faults or the reactivation of these potential faults. Shale is the main component of source rock in the Sichuan Basin, China, and has the greatest contribution to the natural gas of the basin. In order to investigate the fracturing mechanism of shale in the Sichuan Basin, China, a series of rock fracture tests under triaxial compression were carried out in the laboratory in order to investigate the hydraulic fracturing behavior in relation to the seismicity. Based on the high multichannel waveform recording system, the detailed spatio-temporal distribution of acoustic emission due to micro-cracking was used to examine the deformation and fracture behavior of shale. In addition, the effects of confining pressure on the deformation and fracture in shale under triaxial compression by acoustic emission monitoring and X-ray computed tomography were discussed in the paper. The experimental results indicate that the shale samples demonstrate brittle fracture behavior. The confining pressure has a great effect on the complexity of the fracture planes and the spatial distribution of acoustic emissions, but few contributions to the location of the major hydraulic fracturing plane. The foliation of shale plays a dominant role in the rupture process and the geometry of the major hydraulic fracturing plane. The high confining pressure increases the strength and restrains the deformation of shale during compression process. These results shed some light on the understanding of onset of hydraulic fracture initiation not only for shale gas exploration and production, but also for CO2 geological storage and underground energy storage.

Jan 1, 2015

By G. F. Raymond, W. P. Armstrong

"At the time of this study, the Valley mine was producing 23 000 tonnes of ore per day from a large, low-grade porphyry copper orebody. Sulphide mineralization, principally bornite and chalcopyrite, occurs in a stock work of quartz veins in one phase of the Guichon Creek batholith. The property was explored from 1967 to 1982, and was placed in production in 1983.Using a three-parameter lognormal approximation developed by G.F. Raymond at Similkam een and Mount Isa Mines, a geo- statistical conditional probability ore reserve was estimated prior to mining. Comparisons with blasthole kriging and milled ore for the first 17 months of production showed close agreements at all cut-offs between conditional probability estimates and mineable ore. This was not true of either kriging or polygon estimates. An important part of this work was identifying and correcting for bias in both exploration and blasthole samples.IntroductionCominco's Valley lake deposit is a large, low-grade, porphyry copper orebody in the Highland Valley of British Columbia. Total indicated plus inferred ore reserves are 700 M tonnes at ore grade of 0.47070 Cu. At the time of writing, ore milling is at a rate of 23 000 tI d through the old Bethlehem mill. Mining is in 10m horizontal benches using 9.8 m3 shovels and 90 tonne trucks. Since this paper was written, Valley and nearby Lomex have been combined into Highland Valley Copper with a combined oreproduction of about 120 000 tI d.Copper mineralization, principally bornite and chalcopyrite, is regularly distributed throughout the deposit as disseminated low-grade within a granodiorite host rock, and as higher grade veinlets within a stock work of near-vertical quartz veins generally 10 cm or less in width. It is likely that problems with sample variability and sample bias are mainly related to mineralization within quartz veining. Valley geology has been described in detail by Allen and Richardson and by Osatenko and Jones (2). The exploration sampling program and identification of diamond-drill sample bias have been discussed by Armstrong and Newman'»."

Jan 1, 1988