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By Wolfgang Güter, Paolo Romualdi

Current extensions of the European railway network require long TBM drives in the diameter range of 10 m under critical and varying rock conditions. In view of that and in particular for a 7 km long high-speed railway tunnel in Spain to be started in mid-2003 a new design for a hard rock Double Shield TBM has been developed by SELI (Italy) and Jäger (Austria) in collaboration with Mitsubishi (Japan)and Robbins (USA). Due to the new design and operational features that new type of TBM has been named Universal Double Shield TBM with a further extended area of application. Special attention has been given to outstanding torque and thrust capacities combined with the shortest possible length of an innovative shield arrangement, different advance modes in various ground conditions and further developed exploration and treatment facilities.

Jan 1, 2003

By C. F. Barter, H. G. Kreis, D. S. Weber

Before and during in situ mining at the Santa Cruz In Situ Copper Mining Research Project test site, hydraulic testing was conducted at injection and recovery test wells to characterize patterns of fluid movement in the 5-spot well field. Testing included borehole spinner flow meter surveys, single-well and multiple-well injection and recovery tests, straddle packer injection tests, and bromide pulse tracer tests. Results of hydraulic testing for determination of fluid flow regimes were used to modify well and mining zone hydraulics for the purpose of increasing fluid migration in flow pathways of the mining zone with higher copper grade.

Jan 1, 2000

By S. A. Allison, N. P. Finkelstein

After a brief consideration of the properties of zinc sulfide minerals, their flotation characteristics, and their reactions with thiol collectors, the literature on the activation of the minerals by cupric ion, their deactivation by cyanide, and their depression is reviewed in detail. The distinction between deactivation and depression is stressed. The contradictions in the published results and theories are discussed and attempts are made to resolve them. It is concluded that, whereas all aspects of the subject require further investigation, the study of depression is most likely to yield benefits in practice.

Jan 1, 1976

By Charles A. III Cravotta

Streamflow and water-quality data for the northern part of Swatara Creek, which drains a 112-km2 area in the Southern Anthracite Field of east-central Pennsylvania, indicate iron, copper, and lead, and to a lesser extent manganese and zinc, are transported with suspended particles during stormflow conditions. During stormflow conditions, concentrations of these constituents typically peak prior to peak stream stage as a result of scour and transport of streambed deposits. In contrast, sulfate is transported mostly as a dissolved ion. Concentrations of sulfate, specific conductance, and pH are inversely related to streamflow, indicating dilution and acidification during stormflow. This effect is attributed to the mixing of poorly buffered stream water having pH 6.0-6.5 with weakly acidic storm runoff having pH 4.0-4.5 and low dissolved solids.

Jan 1, 2000

By Morteza Gharouni Nik

Flexible Dilatometer Test (FDT) is one of the in-situ test methods for determining the deformational characteristics of rock masses. In this study, several dilatometer tests have been conducted in different geotechnical phases of site investigations by means of two types of FDTs. The purpose of this paper is comparison of the performance of these two types of dilatometers and analysis of the differences in the results of the tests.

Jan 1, 2008

By Kathleen S. Smith, Katherine Walton-Day, James F. Ranville

Four different scales of observation were used to evaluate the potential effects of a fluvial tailings deposit on water quality along the flood plain of the upper Arkansas River south of Leadville, Colorado. First, we collected surficial material and subjected it to batch water-leaching test. Second, we excavated and leached an intact eight-inch diameter core. Third, we examined the water quality of the shallow ground water beneath the fluvial tailings deposit, and fourth, we monitored water quality along a 5-km reach of the adjacent Arkansas River. Leaching of surficial samples indicates that there is a reservoir of readily water-soluble material yielding elevated metal concentrations and high acidity. However, there are minimal measurable water quality effects of the fluvial tailings deposit on the adjacent reach of the Arkansas River.

Jan 1, 2000

By Richard L. Ranich, Frank F. Aplan, J. B. Hiskey, Robert S. Thompson, B. J. Scheiner

Acidic waters typified by acid mine drainage, copper dump leach solutions and steel pickle liquors will typically contain SO4-2 and cations such as Fe+3, AI+3 and for the pickle liquors, sometimes Cr+3. These acidic waters will often react with limestone, present naturally or introduced for purposes of solution neutralization, to form reaction - inhibiting coatings of gypsum and gelatinous, metal hydroxide precipi¬tates. The coating thickness, as a function of pH, was quantified for both reactive (calcite, limestone) and non-reactive (quartz, barite, fluorite) minerals, and the data were related to the hydroxy species diagrams and to solution turbidity measurements. Coatings were found on the reactive minerals at a lower bulk solution pH than on the non-reactive minerals.

Jan 1, 1993

By S. Kmet, A. Nguyen-Van, H. J. Schulze

The P/B collision and attachment interactions in fine particle flotation have been quantitatively analyzed. New models for attachment probability and kinetics of ‘true flotation’ have been developed. The results are given for both a single bubble and a bubble swarm. The mechanism of the attachment event is also examined. It is shown that (i) impact collision mechanism and rolling mechanism can be ignored in actual fine particle flotation and sliding mechanism is of importance for attachment of particle onto the bubble surface (ii) the attachment probability of fine particles is independent of bubble size and determined by the kinetic measure induction time of hydrophobicity. The theoretical predictions are also compared with the experimental data.

Jan 1, 1995

By B. Suresh, Kalyan K. Das, Pradip

A series of salicylaldoxime derivatives with alkyl group substitution in the main chain and the side chain were synthesized and evaluated for the flotation of malachite, cerussite and smithsonite. The effect of chain length and the position of the substituent group on the selectivity of separation amongst oxidized copper, lead and zinc minerals are discussed in this paper.

Jan 1, 1995

By Andreas G. Mueller

Gold-silver and copper-gold deposits with high-temperature wallrock alteration of Ca-Mg-Fe-Al silicates occur in ca. 3.0 Ga old greenstone belts of the Yilgarn Block, Western Australia. The deposits are hosted by amphibolite-facies komatiites, basalts and BIF, controlled by ductile shear zones and located within the contact-metamorphic aureoles of composite granodiorite-granite batholiths. Disseminated sulfides and free gold form foliation-parallel ore zones in a gangue of anhydrous silicates (garnet, clinopyroxene, olivine), hydrous silicates (amphibole, biotite) and calcite. The deposits may be classified on the basis of their dominant economic metals as: 1(1) Gold skarns with substantial silver as by-product, represented by the Marvel Loch mine (production: 2,200,000 t at 3.5 g/t Au), and characterized by the mineral association pyrrhotite, loellingite, arsenopyrite, galena, gold and magnetite. (2) Gold skarns with low silver contents, represented by the Nevoria mine (production:1,850,000 t at 3.4 g/t Au), and characterized by the mineral association pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, gold, Bi-tellurides and magnetite. (3) Copper-gold skarns, represented by the Elverdton mine (production: 850,000 t at .7 5 Cu, 0.81 g/t Au), and characterized by the mineral association magnetite, chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, pyrite, gold and Ag-Bi tellurides.

Jan 1, 1990

By Gastón Díiaz, Enzo Carranza Meza

El Teniente Mine of Codelco-Chile, located at Los Andes Range of Mountains, 90 kilometers South far from Santiago, the capital city, has been exploited for more than 90 years, with over 1000 million tonnes of copper ore extraction. No doubt, this particular record, has been possible to achieve due to an efficient combination of human and technological efforts in the exploitation of one of the biggest ore deposits of the world. Throughout times, the exploitation has evolved from a mainly manual one to a highly mechanized exploitation. Notwithstanding, different and several geomechanical problems that occurred in one of its areas, increased the risks to personnel that should normally operate large equipments in its working face. This last condition, forced El Teniente mine to design and develop systems and technologies that would allow the use of tele-operated LHD, picking hammers and drilling equipment (jumbos) from a safe zone. Currently, El Teniente Mine is using in its extractive works equipment such as LHD, picking hammers, and drilling Jumbos, that can be manually or teleoperated commanded from a Central Control Room located one kilometer away from the production area. In general, a new technological era has been opened in the mining exploitation at El Teniente: the exploitation era with telecommanded robots.

Jan 1, 1998

By Gareth Mainwaring

The Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project is currently in the Environmental Impact Statement phase. The scheme is addressing alternative solutions to transport freight across the Upper Bay of New York Harbor, from New Jersey through to Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. Amongst the alternatives being assessed are two tunnel options; from the north shore of Staten Island through to Brooklyn, and from Jersey City to Brooklyn. These tunnels are approximately 30,000 feet in length, and with up to17,000 feet under the Harbor, would make it one of the longest undersea crossings in the world.. The paper addresses the development of the project, from the Major Investment Study through to the current EIS, and describes the tunnel schemes that are being taken forward. The geological conditions that will be encountered, proposed construction methods, and the ventilation issues associated with such major undersea tunnels will all be described.

Jan 1, 2003

By C. G. Snavely

Martin County Coal Corporation produces coal from seven continuous miner sections in two coal seams which are often interlaced with rock partings. Because of high clay content and coal oxidation, all minus 100 mesh material is discarded in the preparation process. We began experimenting with various drum lacings on continuous miners in 1983 to improve product size consist and increase machine cutting rates. To date, + 6.35 mm material has increased from 61 to 73% of mined product, minus 0.15 mm material has decreased from 6% to 4% of product, and machine cutting rates have increased by 50 percent.

Jan 1, 1985

In its April 1991 issue, MINING ENGINEERING published a salary survey form asking for information relating to engineering and management jobs in the minerals industry. 1038 of these forms were filled out and returned, most of them being received in the magazine's offices at SME headquarters before the end of June 1991. An SME volunteer took on the task of tabulating and analyzing data from the forms, but the press of other business interfered with this work, and publication has been delayed until this issue of MINING ENGINEERING. Appreciation is extended to SME members who took the time to fill out and return the salary survey forms, and our apologies go to MINING ENGINEERING'S readers for the delay in publication. Of the total number of forms received, more than 97% were from SME members. The geographic distribution of the respondents closely mirrored that of SME membership as a whole, about 50% being from the Society's Western Region, 19% from the Central Region, and 23% from the Eastern Region. About 8% were from outside the US. Average salaries for each of the four geographic areas ranged between $55,000 and $60,000, with the highest average in Eastern Region (Fig. 1). Respondents were asked to answer a number of questions formulated to determine if there are significant differences in salaries based on the type of organization for which they work. As indicated by Table 1, salary averages at mining companies do not vary markedly with the size of the company: • Large companies, defined as those having more than $1 billion in annual sales, accounted for just over 16% of the returns. Their average salary was $61,840 per year.

Jan 1, 1992

By D. D. Rabb

Originally, the term solution mining applied to a dissolution, washing, or "brining" of soluble salts such as halite (common table salt), potash or trona. After the mid-sixties, however, the definition has been expanded to include heap and dump leaching, in-place (in situ) leaching, removal of oil from tar sands, extraction of sulfur from deep wells by the Frasch process and the recovery of metalliferous solutions from geothermal sources. Solution mining is also known as borehole, non-shaft, or chemical mining; the extraction of soluble mineral values from a variety of ores using appropriate solvents and chemicals. Solution mining frequently involves chemical changes; for example, copper usually goes into solution as copper sulfate, gold and silver as a cyanide compound, and uranium as a sulfate or uranyl tricarbonate. The valuable constituent is removed from the solid body of the ore by mass transfer to a aqueous solution.

Jan 1, 1986

By Richard C. Smith, Steven H. Brown

Commercial scale in-situ leach uranium facilities (i.e., solution mining) have operated since late 1975, and have begun to appear in increasing numbers in the last few years. Solution mining involves the pumping of ground water, fortified with oxidizing and complexing agents, into an ore body, leaching and solubilizing the uranium in-situ, and then pumping the solutions to the surface where they are fed to a mill. Milling is by conventional means, involving ion exchange, precipitation, calcining and packaging processes. This paper presents an overview of the solution mining process, and discusses an empirical method that has been used to determine the radon gas release rate in Bq (curies) per year for the overall operation of the facility including wellfields, milling processes and waste storage reservoirs. In addition to radon generation on the surface from radium decay, it has been determined that the major component of radon release is associated with the dynamic generation of radon from solutions returning from underground. Process parameters impacting this evaluation and the mathematical expressions developed are discussed. The preliminary data accrued is presented.

Jan 1, 1981

By W. H. Pailes, V. Castranova, K. Van Dyke, J. H. Kang

Recruitment and activation of phagocytic cells after inhalation of occupational dusts has been implicated in the development of pulmonary inflammation, fibrosis, or emphysema. Plateletactivating factor has been described recently as a potent inflammatory agent. The objective of the present study was to investigate if platelet-activating factor might play a role in the inflammatory response of the lung to occupational dusts. In vitro exposure of alveolar macrophages to cotton dust (4 mg/ml), silica (10 mg/ml), or coal dust (10 mg/ml) results in the release of picomole levels of platelet-activating factor with a potency of cotton dust > silica > coal dust. Time course studies indicate that platelet-activating factor release from alveolar macrophages is maximal approximately 10 minutes after in vitro exposure to silica. In vitro, platelet-activating factor is a direct stimulant of polymorphonuclear leukocytes increasing chemiluminescence 2.3 ± 0.3 fold above control. The maximal response occurs in the dose range of 10-10 to 10-7M platelet activating factor. In addition, plateletactivating factor potentiates the response of polymorphonuclear leukocytes to a second stimulant; i.e., chemiluminescence generated from polymorphonuclear leukocytes exposed to plateletactivating factor (10-9M) plus chemotactic peptide (FMLP, 10-9M) is 88 ± 22% greater than the sum of the separate effects of these stimulants. In contrast, platelet-activating factor is not a direct stimulant of alveolar macrophages in vitro, having no stimulatory effect on chemiluminescence or superoxide anion release even at levels of 10-6 to 10-5M platelet-activating factor. However, platelet-activating factor (10-5M) does potentiate zymosan-stimulated activation of chemiluminescence and superoxide release from alveolar macrophages by 117 ± 56% and 30 ± 4%, respectively. In conclusion, these data indicate that exposure of the lung to occupational dusts results in the release of platelet-activating factor which may activate polymorphonuclear leukocytes and potentiate the responsiveness of alveolar macrophages to dust. The net result would be pulmonary inflammation and hypersecretion of reactive species by pulmonary phagocytes which could lead to tissue damage and pulmonary disease.

Jan 1, 1991

By F. L. Pirkle, D. L. Pirkle, E. C. Pirkle, W. A. Pirkle

Heavy minerals have been mined from the sands of the United States’ Atlantic Coastal Plain since the early part of the twentieth century. Production of ilmenite from beach sands near Mineral City (Ponte Vedra), Florida, began in 1916. The first reported large-scale recovery of zircon in Florida was reported from this deposit in 1922 and of rutile in 1925. These operations ceased in 1929. Today the Ponte Vedra Country Club and Golf Course is situated in the center of the former mining site. In 1942 heavy-mineral operations were established on 202 hectares of land situated in Duval County, Florida. The location is about 16 kilometers east of the center of Jacksonville, Florida, in an area known as Arlington. This operation demonstrated that low-grade sand containing only 2 to 3 percent titanium minerals could be concentrated economically with the Humphreys spiral and that the oxides could be separated from the heavy silicates by electrostatic methods. Much of this area is now covered by a large mall and is a major retail- commercial center. Between 1958 and 1964 the Skinner tract, a deposit about 4 kilometers south of the above deposit, was mined. Today the area of this deposit is known as Deerwood, a gated country club community on the southside of Jacksonville. Further inland, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. has been mining heavy minerals from a physiographic feature known as Trail Ridge since 1948, and a deposit near Green Cove Springs, Florida has been in production since 1972. Since the start of heavy-mineral mining in the southeastern United States, nine heavy-mineral ore bodies either have been or are being exploited in Florida and Georgia. Other deposits either have been lost to mining or are yet to be mined. These deposits have different origins. Some formed along shorelines at the heights of marine transgressions while others formed on regressional beach ridge plains during periods of temporary stillstands or slight transgressions. These different origins are reflected in the chemical and physical characteristics of the deposits. Ilmenite in older, more western deposits has a higher TiO2 content than ilmenite in younger, more eastern deposits. TiO2 content does not very with north-south direction. Garnet and epidote are absent or rare in the older Trail Ridge deposits, but progressively become common in the younger Duval Upland, Crestal Pamlico, and Holocene deposits. Grain size is coarsest for Trail Ridge sediments and finest for sediments in Duval Upland and Crestal Pamlico deposits. The average grain size for Holocene deposits is intermediate between Trail Ridge and Duval Upland deposits. The two models for the origin of the heavy-mineral deposits – deposits formed at the height of major marine transgression; and deposits formed during periods of temporary stillstands or slight transgressions that occur during a general marine regression; - are consistent with known sedimentological data and depositional trends.

Jan 1, 2005

By P. L. M. Wong, N. W. Johnson

Surface analysis by X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) of samples taken from the galena flotation section of the Hilton Concentrator of Mount Isa Mines Limited are presented. Flotation rate and pulp chemical data taken during the sampling period are also presented and discussed. Surface analysis suggested that, under normal operating conditions, an overlayer of precipitated calcium sulfate existed at the surface of the sulfide minerals. In particular, there was a decrease in the surface concentration of calcium sulfate for the concentrate samples relative to that occurring on the tailing samples. This suggests that the flotation process was selective against minerals which have calcium sulfate predominating at the surface. Heterocoagulation of hydrophilic calcium sulfate on to the galena surface considerably reduced galena flotation rate. Methods to control calcium sulfate precipitation, which include sodium carbonate treatment of the pulp, are also discussed. Sur- face analysis results of samples taken from the Hilton Concentrator during sodium carbonate addition to the grinding circuit are also presented. This shows clear evidence for the removal of calcium sulfate from the mineral surfaces without concomitant surface precipitation of calcium carbonate. Reasons for the apparent dispersion of precipitated calcium carbonate are discussed. Galena flotation rate was increased by the addition of sodium carbonate apparently due to the removal of interfering calcium sulfate.

Jan 1, 1995

By Sean Dessureault

The ubiquity of big data, internet of things (IoT), and smart devices is radically changing society; our personal lives are being tracked, digitally motivated through gamification, where information has become an addiction at all income levels, genders, and generations. These forces should not be held at bay in mining; rather, we should embrace and take advantage of this phenomenon to improve safety and productivity. It is time to rethink long-held conventions behind Fleet Management Systems, such as permanently mounted hardware, connecting through cables and Bblack boxes^, equipment centric rather than operator-centric, wireless requirements, minimal to no feedback to the operator, and high costs. We should also reconsider how we are collecting much of our safety, training, and preoperational forms on paper that then, must be entered into computer systems for compliance, and rarely if ever used in analytics, rather than entering the data directly into a digital device. Collecting safety and location data directly digitally also unlocks the information contained in safety forms and audits enabling new data mining and analytical approaches. Managing then gaining value from this new, greatly expanded mountain of largely unstructured data, requires the use of modern tools and approaches, such as gamification and big data, as well as skill sets, not traditionally available in mines. Furthermore, tablets can now provide a better user experience as well as new sensors when compared with traditional fleet management systems (Mining Magazine 2019, 2016, 2015), at a fraction of the cost, employing the extremely esthetic and engaging visuals derived from the video game industry. Real case studies of these applications of both technology and approach, such as gamification, show that these tracking technologies can bring high visibility and large amounts of data to even the smallest operations and the challenge of making use of the data can be facilitated through the application of gamification. As with our personal smart devices, these technologies are poised to deliver huge improvements in operator feedback, tracking, and performance management, at a much lower cost per unit.