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By T. C. Rao

This presentation identifies how mineral (coal included) processing profession should look at the challenges (threats) being faced by mineral industry. Presently, the focus is more on supply and demand on minerals. In addition, the R&D activities in the chain of mine-to-metal are paying more attention (if not only on) the processes being adopted, development of new equipments and modeling and simulation. But the profession is grossly ignoring aspects such as impact of the processes on other resources, of the ways we extract, use and dispose them socio-economically and efficiently. A business model which may encompass all these dimensions are essential for the sustainable development of mineral industry and a possible approach in this direction is presented. To start with, for the sustainable growth and existence, the profession must be aware of the prospective impacts of their activities on critical factors such as ? political (changing government policies), geographical (environment, land, water and habitat), which have major bearing on the survival and growth of the industry. Mineral Processing professionals have to join hands with mining engineers to answer some relevant questions related to the impact of mineral industry on society. Mining can become economically viable only if mineral processing engineers come out with innovative solutions to reduce capital and operating costs. The solutions have to be adoptable and practically feasible so that industry looks at us for directions. In fact, we have to move towards beneficiation of nano particles striving towards zero waste. Some of the gaps in the knowledge of procedures being followed in the design and operation of processing plants are highlighted. Enhancing the knowledge base for solving unexplored possibilities, solutions to evolve sustainable development measures which demands innovation both at academic and practicing levels is the need of the future. Well-structured academic programmes are to be formulated so that the graduates of these programmes can make an effort to look at processes/concepts with a new insight and approach; the profession should excite the young brains with challenges. R&D funding agencies have to have a long-term perspective on mineral processing so that closer interactions between academic institutes, industry and R&D organizations are sustainable and that innovations are at least a few years ahead of needs of future challenges. Keywords: sustainable growth

Sep 1, 2012

By Y. M. Zhu

Lead in environment often causes a serious health hazard. The removal of Pb2+ from aqueous phase is a beneficial project. In this paper, deposited Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S.c.) was chosen as adsorbent, Pb2+ ions as adsorbate, and the process of biosorption was studied. The dynamics of the adsorption was investigated. The adsorption mechanism of Pb2+ by S.c. cells was also investigated by detecting microstructure, zeta potential under different pH value, FT-IR spectra of the S.c. particles before and after biosorption. It was shown that the biosorption of Pb2+ by deposited S. c. is a rapid process, and the adsorbing equilibrium is reached within 10 minutes. The Zero point of zeta potential of S.c. cells is pH=3.3. When 2.0<pH<3.3, there exists biosorption (biosorption rate 76%~88%), which means static bio-sorption been not the only kind of biosorption. FT-IR spectrum analysis showed that groups on bacteria surface were mainly characteristic groups of protein and amylase; oxo-groups and nitric-groups on S.c. cell surface could chelate with heavy metal ions. Chemical adsorption might exist in the process.

Jan 1, 2014

By Sepideh Javanshir

The process of liquid?liquid extraction of gold from chloride solution is complicated by the presence of many variables acting simultaneously in an unknown non-linear fashion for the determination of the final extraction efficiency. In practice, it is quite difficult to develop a model for predicting various properties of such process. Therefore, an alternative approach based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is considered to assist in the simulation process. Artificial neural networks (ANN) are powerful tools that can be used to model and investigate various highly complex and non-linear phenomena. This paper presents application of Multi-Layer Perceptions (MLP) to construct relationship that will be employed to develop a quantitative method for the estimation of the extraction efficiency as a function of hydrodynamical parameters such as stirrer speed, [AuCl4]- and DBC concentration, organic and aqueous flow rate. The model is shown to be in excellent agreement with the experimental data (R2 value for training and testing data was 0.9992 and 0.9915 respectively). Therefore, it can be used to optimize the parameters of liquid?liquid gold extraction with dibutyl carbitol (DBC).

Sep 1, 2012

By Dave Deglon

The Western Cape Mineral Processing Facility (WCMPF) is a collaborative educational initiative between the Departments of Chemical Engineering of the University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch and the Cape Technikon. The WCMPF was established in 1989 with the aim of improving mineral processing education in the Western Cape. Since its inception the WCMPF has had a number of successes in this area, especially in improving the quality of mineral processing practical training. In addition, the WCMPF has played an important role in promoting liaison and interaction between tertiary educational institutions teaching mineral processing in the Western Cape. Over the past decade the WCMPF has played a key role in the education of over five hundred mineral processing graduates and diplomates. This paper presents an overview of the activities of the WCMPF and attempts to encapsulate the ‘lessons learned’ from over a decade of successful functioning as a collaborative educational initiative in mineral processing.

Jan 1, 2003

By D. Moradkhani

The objective of this research was, to evaluate the hazard of heavy metals in the soil around the National Iranian Lead & Zinc (NILZ) Company. In this study, 38 samples of soil around the NILZ factory were collected using standard sampling method, so that, the heavy metals Pb, Zn, Cd and Cr have been evaluated. The concentration of heavy metals were measured and compared with standard limits. The results show that the hazard of heavy metals in soil is not so serious and the content of Pb in just 5 percent of samples, and the content of Zn in just 3 percent of samples were above standard limits and the concentration of Cd and Cr were under the standard limits. Average, variance and standard deviation of the elements are calculated and with due attention to the standard deviation, Pb and Zn are seen to be more distributed than Cd and Cr. Also the isograde curve of heavy metals was drawn using software called Surfer. These curves showed that the heavy metals are concentrated at particular distances from the factory. Keywords: heavy metals, remote sensing, sampling method, isograde curve, Surfer software

Sep 1, 2012

By S. M. H. Haddad, M. Saghaeian, R. Hejazi

"Due to limited water resources in mineral processing plants, increasing the efficiency of iron tailing dewatering system in order to obtain more usable water is very important. In this research, flocculation process, as one of the best method for water recovery, was investigated by using one organic cationic and three anionic types of flocculants with different dosages (10, 20, 30 g/ton) and iron ore tailing slurry (8 % w/w solidity) in series of graduated cylinders and obtained results were compared. it is observed that for tailing sample, the anionic flocculants have a significant effect on the settling rate of solid particles compared to the cationic types. Furthermore, effects of temperature (10, 23 and 43 ºC) and pH (2, 7 and 12) on the rate of settlement and turbidity was studied by utilizing the best flocculant. Findings showed that by increasing the amount of flocculant dosage, sedimentation rate went up and turbidity decreased. Comparison the out-put data of tests indicated that at temperature 23 °C and pH=7, the best results for both of faster settling rate and producing more clear water were reached. It should be considered that lower temperature has a more negative effect on the sedimentation rate and overflow water quality. So it will be predicted that for cold seasons, the consumption of the flocculant powder would be higher than the moderate or warm seasons. Also, coagulation/flocculation was evaluated by applying organic cationic coagulant added to anionic flocculant in three different times. Different ratios of coagulant to flocculant was examined (70%:30%, 50%:50%, 30%:70%) as well. Overall, utilizing coagulant had desirable influence on sedimentation experiments and obtaining high quality water. 1- INTRODUCTION In mineral Factories, among the important processes, solid-liquid separation process due to limited resources of water is very important and operates on iron ore tailing in settling tank as thickener in order to gain clear water for preventing water loss and applying again in plant units (Ciftci and Serhat Isik, 2017). Iron ore tailing include inharmonious compounds of iron oxides, silicates and aluminum-silicates. The percentage of solid in the tailing usually changes between 5 and 10 percent (Dash et al., 2011). One of the major problem about dewatering of tailing in thickener is solid-liquid separation of slurries with high stability because of fine particles. It means that rate of sedimentation is very slow and recovered water quality is inappropriate. This issue can be solved to a large extent by factors such as pH control, ionic strength and flocculation/coagulation process which results in aggregation of particles so that settlement by gravity is happened (Dash et al., 2011)."

Jan 1, 2018

By Gerke Gilian, Pretz Thomas, Pehlken Alexandra

"The evaluation of health hazards within the treatment of mineral and waste materials is gaining more and more importance in industrial countries. The need to control occupational health and safety has been recognised, and regulations which describe general protective measurements for personnel provide a tool to protect their health. It is the aim of the paper to give an outlook for practical approaches to risk assessment and to present measures for exposure reduction in accordance with the state of the art in Germany.Both the treatment of minerals and of waste materials are described in relation to the risk assessment. The method of evaluating health hazards in the two industries is similar and therefore both examples are presented next to each other.The example presented in the paper is the German “Biostoffverordnung” (the regulation for biological materials) which is important for the waste treatment industry. All kinds of waste treatment facilities (like composting facilities, waste dumps, sorting facilities for packaging materials) are obliged to carry out an assessment of health hazards for a variety of working areas and working places. The possible safety requirements deriving from this regulation are presented and discussed under the aspect of biological hazards."

Jan 1, 2003

By Jacek Kolacz

A new sensor based sorting system has been developed, based on complex image analysis, where an image texture and a shape pattern is considered for identifying particles for separation. The sorting system employs different images generated by visual light and X-ray to provide maximal information about processed particles. Application of X-ray makes it possible to analyse the internal structure of the particles, which provides a 2D image with complicated texture, however, which contains valuable information. The advanced system for the texture and the pattern recognition is applied to analyse these images simultaneously, to provide the required identification of the particles for efficient separation. The mathematical models applied during identification and separation, are assisted by high speed calculations being specially optimised for this kind of process. This allows sorting with high capacity and high accuracy, which is critical for practical applications in mineral processing. The paper describes a number of tests during sorting of iron ore and coal with high separation efficiency.

Jan 1, 2014

By A. Chattopadhyay

Porphyry copper deposits are the most important source of copper and also gold within the orogenic belts. These deposits are characterized by low grade copper ore (0.2% to 1% copper) and host precious metals like gold, silver and platinum. A characterization tool has been developed for complex porphyry type copper-gold deposits with an aim to quantify copper and precious metal deportment. This quantification is a challenging task due to low grades and also due to the presence of both visible and invisible precious metal content in different sulphide and non-sulphide phases. Studies were initiated on various complex, ore deposits and also on samples representing various processing streams such as flotation and leach products. This paper presents the development of a systematic approach to diagnostic metallurgy using state-of-the-art optical and automated mineralogy, micro-probe, dynamic SIMS and TOF-SIMS analysis for quantification of invisible and visible precious metals content in various species. The relevance of this characterization to metallurgy will also be briefly discussed in this paper.

Sep 1, 2012

By Barun Gorain, Aparup Chattopadhyay

"Many double refractory gold deposits are characterized by the dominance of ""invisible gold"" (sub-microscopic gold) as solid solution or as colloidal-sized particles in different sulfides and other phases. These deposits are mainly composed of silicates and carbonates with moderate clay and mica content and with minor amount of sulfides and organic carbonaceous matters. The presence of highly preg-robbing and finely disseminated carbonaceous matter adversely affects gold recovery in leach circuits. Characterization of carbonaceous matters, commonly known as TCM and quantification of gold associated within these carbonaceous matters along with different sulfide and oxide phases is highly complex and challenging. Studies were initiated on various complex ore deposits and also on samples representing various process streams. This paper presents the development of a systematic approach to gold deportment studies using state-of-the-art mineralogy characterization techniques for quantification of invisible and visible metal contents in various species. The relevance of this mineralogy characterization to metallurgy will also be discussed in this paper."

Jan 1, 2014