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By M. M. Cole

An assessment of the combined application of remotely sensed satellite imagery, geobotany and biogeochemistry reveals the complementary value of these techniques in the Thalanga area. The SPOT imagery yields useful information on features of the terrain and discriminates the gossan over the ore zone. Geobotany differentiates geological units and the anomalous vegetation provides visual expression of the surface presence of the ore zone, while biogeochemistry effectively locates its concealed extension below Tertiary sediments and ferricrete

Jan 1, 1991

By Cottrell EC

Remote sensing has been used for many years but until recently its application has been limited by the resolution of the data available. High resolution airborne multi-spectral scanner data (MSS) has proven suitable for a number of applications including environmental management and monitoring. A shallow water mapping research. project completed on the Gold Coast has shown that- remote sensing can be used as a cost effective tool for environmental management and Monitoring.

Jan 1, 1987

By Ted H. Eyde

Both private industry and the Interior Department have become alarmed about the enormous amount of Federal land that has been withdrawn from appropriation either under the Mineral Leasing Laws or the Mining Law of 1872. According to a recent article by Gary Benethum and L. Courtland Lee, governmental actions have withdrawn nearly 400 million acres from the operation of the Mining Law of 1872 and over 500 million acres from the Leasing Laws. An addition al 100 million acres for the Mining Law of 1872 and 70 million acres for the Leasing Laws are either encumbered or being managed in such a way as to constitute a defacto withdrawal from mineral development. This means simply that mineral exploration end development under the Mining Law of 1872 is either prevented or discouraged in an area the size of the states of California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and one half of Colorado combined. Under the Mineral Leasing Laws, exploration and development is either prevented or discouraged in an area equal in size to all the states east the Mississippi River, except Maine.

Jan 1, 1976

By Jamal Rostami, Mark Board, Clayr Alexander, Muthu Vinayak Thyagarajan

In the past several decades, many major equipment manufacturers have ventured into developing new technology for underground hard rock excavation. This includes variety of configurations for full and partial face mobile excavation units. Mining industry prefers machines that can excavate noncircular, flat invert profiles and be able to make tight turns in hard rock. The need to use disc cutters for cutting hard rock has impeded the development of such machines due to the need for gripper system or large mass of a machine to support the force requirements of the disc cutters. Most of the prior attempts have been partially successful and the operations have faced some practical limits and challenges. Among the units that have been successfully used, one can name mobile miner, which was used for rock excavation in some projects. A redesigned mobile miner, called the “Remote Vein Miner,” or RVM, has been developed by Epiroc for underground hard rock mining in Hecla’s Lucky Friday Mine. This equipment potentially opens numerous opportunities for innovation in civil tunneling projects, where the operational flexibility and accessibility of a TBM’s limited tunnel path, design of the profile, and cost are limiting factors. This paper explores the application of the RVM in tunneling projects, its advantages and possible areas of innovation in tunnel planning and design.

Jun 13, 2021

By Tom Donnelly, Roger C. Ilsley

Remote telecommunications seismographs were used to monitor blast vibrations at two historic structures in Cedarburg, Wisconsin during adjacent sewer line construction. The purpose of the vibration monitoring program at the historic structures was to maintain blast vibrations below limiting tolerances established by the Wisconsin State Historic Society.

Jan 1, 1991

By William H. Schiffbauer, Timothy Lutz, Michael R. Yenchek

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL) participated in an experiment to facilitate the remote control of dozers used on coal stockpiles. The experiment consisted of supplementing the normal sensory cues an operator requires to manipulate the dozer from a remote location. NIOSH provided and tested a vision systems intended to give the operator the ability to operate the dozer safely and efficiently from a remote position. This paper highlights the genesis of the experiment, identifies the contributions of Consol Energy and Caterpillar, and details the NIOSH efforts and successful test results. Keywords-remote-control; vision system; stockpiles; safety

By M. S. Millman

Close monitoring of performance at each process stage, from raw material through to finished product, is vital for operational consistency and the production of high quality steel. However, many of the integrated iron and steelmaking process route stages operate under such severe conditions of temperature, dust, water, thermal radiation, vibration, pressure, vacuum, extreme dynamic events, high material flows, corrosion, erosion, electrical-noise, electromagnetic-noise, or audio-noise that, in general, it is a very difficult challenge to obtain useful information for control. Thus, state-of-the-art non-contact and remote sensors are applied to help monitor and control specific process operations. Often, these sensor systems have been developed especially for the steel industry and they are based on four principal technologies: Laser, Microwave, Electro-Magnetics and Thermal Imaging with supporting technologies such as: X-ray Fluorescence, Audiometry, Digital Image Processing, Radio Telemetry, GPS and many others. These advanced sensor technologies are reviewed with respect to their application at various stages along the integrated process route.

Jan 1, 2004

By Michael W. Lewis

The latest downturn in the world’s metal prices has forced many mining companies to focus on cost reduction and productivity improvements to remain competitive. Maintenance represents a significant part of the overall operating costs in the mining industry. A structured, proactive maintenance approach, such as reliability-centered maintenance, can achieve cost reductions and productivity improvements. Remote condition-monitoring systems are becoming commonplace because they have the potential to identify problems before failure. Detection of equipment degradation before failure will enable repairs to be scheduled, thereby reducing costs and interruptions to production. The mining industry is in the midst of uncertain times. Decreasing commodity prices, demand, head grade and capital availability along with increasing environmental requirements have put pressure on mining companies to significantly reduce costs to maintain short- and long-term viability. Corporations are looking at expansion, merger/consolidation and financial/hedging programs to achieve these cost reductions. Mines are reducing costs by eliminating all but essential expenditures, increasing production levels, reducing overtime and investing in new technologies.

Jan 1, 2000

By Dipak D. Shah, Sajjan K. Jain

An interceptor sewer, 2103 linear meters (6900 Ft), 1.52 meter (5 ft) in nominal diameter, is installed by a direct pipe jacking system utilizing a remotely controlled fully automatic slurry shield machine called "Unclemole". The system involves placement of custom designed fiberglass pipe with Unclemole. The sewer alignment is along a heavily travelled thoroughfare in Staten Island, New York with invert varying from 20 meters (65 ft) to 28 meters (92 ft) beneath the road surface, and passes through soils of Glacial and Cretaceous origin. Dewatering was carried out at the jacking and receiving pits. Details of ground conditions, the pipe jacking system and method, and tunneling experiences are herein described.

Jan 1, 1991

By S. Kapusniak

Specialist Machine Developments (SMD) is a design and manufacturing company involved in the design of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV?s), ploughs, trenchers and mining machines for use in submerged environments. Established in 1971, the company has made over 500 vehicles for subsea use. These range in size from small remotely operated swimming vehicles with a weight of less than a tonne to heavy duty seabed crawling machines with a weight of up to 310 tonnes (in air). Primarily, these machines have been designed for offshore vessel-based applications, but the machines are equally suited to other submerged mining applications onshore. Many onshore deposits can technically and theoretically be mined using currently available submerged mining ROV technology. Similar equipment to that in use subsea could easily be fast-tracked into use to extend the life of opencast mines facing severe hydrological problems. It could also easily be used to mine vertical ore-bodies where the stripping ratio has become uneconomical due to increasing depth. In some cases mining ROVs could even be suitable for use as the primary extraction method for a new mine. Exploration and extraction techniques used in oil and gas gradually developed and moved from land to offshore in the middle of the last century. Are we about to witness a similar shift with other minerals? This paper describes the design concepts of submerged mining equipment, targetted subsea mineral deposits, the suitability of submerged mining ROVs for onshore deposits, limits to their application and parallel research and development activities which will help to accelerate the use of such equipment in the emerging submerged mining sector.

Aug 1, 2013

By Alex C. Smith, Thomas A. Gray, Lynn M. Crayne, Michael A. Trevits, Phil Glogowski

Mine fires constitute one of the greatest threats to the health and safety of those working in the underground environment and each event has the potential for disastrous consequences. Of the major mine fires and thermal events that have occurred in the United States in the last 6 years, it is estimated that remotely installed seals could have been used in 63% of the events to control fire growth or to aid in fire suppression work. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is conducting full-scale tests at the NIOSH Lake Lynn Experimental Mine to evaluate and improve remote mine seal construction technology. The main focus of this work is to develop reliable technology that will completely close the mine opening from floor-to-roof and rib-to-rib. This paper presents the results of remote seal installations using grout-based materials.

By Jose Luis Pineda Villarreal

New technologies emerge every day with practical applications for open pit mining. For every operation, managers need to understand the best way to increase efficiency in drilling, blasting, fragmentation and hauling routes.

Jan 1, 2018

By John E. Anderson, Charles A. III Cravotta, Eleanora I. Robbins, E. Terrance Slonecker, Gordon L. Nord

Remote sensing is being tested for its ability to identify the severity of impact on streams that are subjected to contaminated mine drainage (CMD) in the Southern Anthracite Coalfield of Pennsylvania. Airborne digital multispectral video images of acidic and near-neutral CMD are being compared with field spectra, water chemistry, mineralogy, and microbiology. Spectral differences in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum are caused by the presence of schwertmannite in the acidic precipitates and ferrihydrite in the near- neutral precipitates. The acidic CMD averages 1,500 mg/L sulfate and has bacteria coated with schwertmannite; the near-neutral CMD averages 87 mg/L sulfate and has bacteria coated with ferrihydrite.

Jan 1, 2000

By P. A. Riveros, W. D. Gould, R. Molnar, D. W. Koren, P. Bédard

This paper reports the results of the field demonstration campaign of a new process for removing and destroying ammonia from mining/ metallurgical effluent solutions. The 50-day campaign was carried out at a uranium plant in Saskatchewan, Canada. The process was developed by adapting and integrating two well established technologies: zeolite adsorption/ elution to extract the ammonia from the effluent stream and to produce a concentrated ammonia eluate; and conversion of the ammonia in the eluate to innocuous nitrogen by applying bacterial nitrification-denitrification (NH3 = > NO3 - => N2). The data show that reasonable target criteria were met, under very challenging operating conditions. Problem areas and possible causes for poor performance are identified. Preliminary and generic cost estimates of the process are also presented.

Jan 1, 2003

By Thomas M. Harris

Cation exchange is not sufficiently selective to be used for the removal of heavy metal ions from a general industrial wastewater. However, if the metals can be converted to polyvalent anions through complexation, they may be removed both selectively and efficiently by anion exchange. This approach, referred to as chelation-assisted anion exchange (CAAE), has been examined using industrial wastewater samples contaminated with Ni2+ and Cr3+. For this particular application, the Ni2+ is complexed with 8-hydroxyquinoline-5-sulfonic acid, and the Cr3+ with sulfosalicylic acid. Removal efficiencies and adsorption isotherms for both the complexants and the complexes were determined in batch-mode tests.

Jan 1, 1994

By J. Brendan Mclaughlin, Casimir J. Koshinski, Michael V. Rose, Wolfgang Baum

Mercury contamination is a worldwide problem in the mining, smelting, and refining of gold, silver, and copper. In these areas, mercury may be found as a naturally-occurring material in ores and concentrates, and/or in secondary feedstocks such as leach residues, pyrometallurgical treatment residues, refinery by­products, electrowinning electrodes, autoclave discharge solids, and waste water and acid plant sludges. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated mercury one of the most harmful heavy metal contaminant in the environment and has implemented regulations that prohibit land disposal of characteristically hazardous wastes containing greater than 0.20 mg/1 TCLP mercury without prior treatment, thus increasing the cost of managing these materials. The presence of mercury in mine, smelter, and refinery by­products and wastes severely decreases, and in some cases eliminates, the ability to recover residual metal values from the contaminated material. The lost revenue associated with this disposal, combined with the increased direct cost of waste treatment, and/or disposal and protecting workers and the environment, can adversely affect overall profitability. The safe, efficient, and economical removal of mercury from gold, silver, and copper mining by-products requires a treatment process that is capable of liberating the mercury from the wide variety of compounds and matrices in which it may be contained, reducing the mercury content in the matrix to desired levels, and recovering the mercury in pure saleable form, without producing any secondary solid, liquid, or gaseous wastes. This paper reviews results from commercial operations and pilot scale tests using a thermal process owned and operated by Mercury Recovery Services, Inc. (MRS) to remove and recover mercury from copper acid plant blowdown sludge, Merrill­Crowe precipitate from gold/silver mining operations, and Cottrell and salt slag dusts from a precious metals refinery.

Jan 1, 1997

By Gordon D. Jarvinen

Polymer Filtration (PF) Is an innovative, selecthle metal removal technology. Chelating, water-soluble polymers are used to selectively bind the desired metal ions and ultrafiltration is used to concentrate the polymer-metal complex producing a permeate with low levels of the targeted metal ion. When applied to the treatment of, Industrial metal-bearing aqueous process streams, the permeate water can often be reused within the process and the metal ions reclaimed. This technology is applicable to many types of industrial aqueous streams with widely varying chemistries. Application of PF to 'aqueous streams from nuclear materials processing and electroplating operations will be described.

Jan 1, 1999

By Shijie Wang

In pressure oxidation leaching of copper anode slimes, than 65% of the tellurium is m' cxtraoted during decopperizing. About l0- 15% of the selenium is also dissolved simultane¬ously by severe leach conditions. Current operation for the treatment of the leachate is to constantly recirculate the leach solution through a bed of copper turnings. The tellurium and sele¬nium are precipitated from the leach liquor as copper telluride and copper selenide and sepa¬rated from the solution by filtration. In order to improve the reaction efficiency and reduce the process cost, viz, minimize the copper addition, cut retention time, and reduce the energy consumption; a chemical reducing agent is studied and the cementation process tested in the laboratory. In this paper, the test results are presented and the process chemistry is discussed.

Jan 1, 2003

By Milner E. F

Thallium is largely volatilized during sintering in the conventional sinter/blast furnace production of lead. The new direct oxygen smelting processes will force the thallium into the bullion, necessitating a means of removal to avoid contamination of the refined lead. Pilot plant testwork demonstrated that thallium was efficiently removed from lead bullion by treatment with molten zinc chloride. The spent zinc chloride salt was treated in the laboratory to recover lead sulphate, a zinc chloride solution, and a thallous chloride salt containing over 80% thallium. Cominco is installing this thallium process as part of its Trail Lead Smelter Modernization Program which will commission a QSL bath smelter in late 1989.

Jan 1, 1989

By M. Misra, J. Nanor

The removal and stability of arsenic over a wide pH range (3.0-10.0) from synthetic solutions and industrial waste effluents (including mining waste tailing slurry) can be accomplished with addition of impure lanthanum chloride alone or in conjunction with ferric sulfate. The long term stability of these correspond­ing precipitated compounds is critical from the disposal stand­point. In this paper test results of this new process for arsenic removal and stabilization from the above mentioned systems are presented. Also, precipitated arsenic compounds (lanthanum arsenate, lanthanum-ferric arsenate, ferric-lanthanum arsenate and ferric arsenate) from synthetic solutions have been charac­terized. The characterization technique used was XRD. XRD patterns which shows that the lanthanum arsenate and lan­thanum-ferric arsenate formed in acidic and alkaline pH at room temperature are crystalline. On the contrary, ferric arsenate and ferric-lanthanum arsenate compounds formed under the same conditions as lanthanum arsenate were amorphous.

Jan 1, 1998