Search Documents

By A. Siegmund, Gerhard Martin

The recycling of metal containing scrap is a common practice in the industry and has a long tradition. . In rec~nt years, this philosophy has been transferred to organic materials, in particular to thermoplastic polymers. BSB . Recycling GmbH, a company with a long experience in the treatment and recovery of lead from battery scrap,· had recognized this exploitation at an early stage and challenged it by a consequent continuation of the idea to recycle materials other than metals without degradation and maintaining the quality. These efforts resulted in an economic and environmentally acceptable solution producing high quality polypropylene compounds at BSB beside lead and lead alloys from battery scrap. The raw material fair the production of polypropylene compounds is shredded plastics from the separated casings of spent lead-acid batteries. The production of polypropylene with specific physical and mechanical properties is carried out by the accurate dosing of organic as well as inorganic additives. The result of the procedure is a novel product group "Seculene PP", a registered trademark of BSB Recycling GrnbH.

Jan 1, 2000

By Greg Baiden

Telerobotics focused on mining is currently being introduced into production systems around the world. Mining companies in Canada, Sweden, South Africa and Australia have tended to lead the international charge to this form of technology for mining. While this introduction is taking place a few basic questions have yet to be answered. How many machines can a single operator run? How many types of machines can a single operator run? A new Canadian Research Chair in Robotics and Mine Automation has been established at Laurentian University. This chair will investigate these questions and many more through a series of experiments in a newly established telerobotics laboratory that connects Laurentian teleoperation workstations to model mining machines at Cambrian college?s eDome. The laboratory will support many experiments allowing researchers to physically run multiple robot scenarios differing the numbers and types of machines at one/quarter scale. Further experiments are being designed to investigate the potential for managing time delays in telerobotics. This paper describes the laboratory, experiments and some preliminary results.

May 1, 2003

By A. J. MacEachen

"LIKE ALL OTHER NOVA SCOTIANS, I have been thrilled during the past few years with the growing evidence that substantial reserves of oil and gas are being discovered off the Atlantic coast of Canada. There are those in this province who believe that large-scale commercial production is just around the corner, and that when it starts Nova Scotia will begin to float on a sea of royalties. These overly optimistic people, of whom I am not one, are convinced that with the first barrel of oil shipped to market, Nova Scotia can forget its financial problems while its people take on the luxurious lifestyle of the shieks of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. You and I know, however, that even though offshore oil and gas may turn out to be the greatest gift nature has ever bestowed on Eastern Canada, it may take some considerable time before the reserves can be accurately assessed, before the industry can become fully operational, and before the benefits of production can be translated into royalties and tax revenue, improved public services, new industrial facilities and more jobs. While it is premature for the ordinary Nova Scotian to take on the habit of buying expensive cigars and lighting them with ten-dollar bills, it is not too early for him to insist that governments and industry plan intensively and well for the beneficial exploitation of undersea resources."

Jan 1, 1973

By George H. Tousley

As a member of the vast fraternity of those that supply and service the mining industry, I can assure you that we are amused, amazed, and horrified at the poor drilling and blasting practices of a great number of operations. Yes, ?horrified?. After all, that is our product you are using and abusing. We all know that drilling and blasting is expensive. In some operations D & B costs may exceed excavating or hauling costs, or both. At any rate, it is the only portion of the whole operation that could be said to directly affect other costs. There is no argument that it affects excavating costs. If the overburden and/or product is drilled and hauled, it affects haulage costs. It can easily affect milling costs, if more or less fines is important. And poor fragmentation affects crushing costs. If scalping is done ahead of the primary crusher it can affect production. As has been pointed out, the D & B operation itself is costly, and therefore should lend itself to close scrutiny. Anyone that could immediately decrease haulage costs by 10% would be a hero with any mining company.

Jan 1, 1976

By F. D. Ball, D. E. Gemmell

"Coal mining in New Brunswick dates from the year 1639, when, as today, coal was produced from the area surrounding Grand Lake near the geographic centre of the province. Current production by N.B. Coal Ltd. is approximately 453,000 tonnes per year and comes from a single, thin Pennsylvanian age seam. The history of development and understanding of the geological setting of New Brunswick coals is discussed, beginning with the work of A. Gesner in 1839. The lithostratigraphic sub-divisions of the Pennsylvanian strata proposed by various workers are summarized and the present hypothesis that only biostratigraphic subdivision is possible is detailed. The Pictou Group, which includes the New Brunswick coals, consists of repetitive sequences of sediments consistent with flu vial and upper delta plain sedimentation. The development of coal mining in the province has progressed from horse-powered stream-bank stripping operations prior to the late 1800s through to the present use of open stripmining techniques utilizing eight walking draglines of various sizes. During the intervening years the introduction and eventual phasing out of underground mining occurred with the near termination of the coal mining industry in the province prior to 1973. The coal seam worked by N.B. Coal Ltd. averages 46 cm in thickness, has never been found to be more than 76 cm thick and has both high ash (12.4 -31.1%) and sulphur (4.9-7.8%) content. The wide variety of coal beneficiation studies and tests completed on New Brunswick coals have lead to the conclusion that a washed New Brunswick coal product could be expected with 10 to 12% ash, 5 to 6% sulphur, and 30,225 to 31,388 1/gm. Recoverable coal reserves, including those in the area licenced to N.B. Coal Ltd. and those licenced, although not yet in production, to both the St. Lawrence Cement Co. Ltd. and Provincial Holdings Ltd. at Lake Stream and Beersvil/e, total 60 million tonnes. At present, coal in New Brunswick is removed from prospecting and staking and all existing and future coal exploration and development will be administered by agreement under the Mining Act. Based on the results of a recently completed drilling project undertaken by the Department of Natural Resources, seventeen coal exploration blocks which carry minimum work commitments will be offered to the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission on a sixty-day first right ofrefusal basis. Those blocks not taken up by the Power Commission will be offered under the same commitments to the private sector."

Jan 1, 1985

By J. B. Zadra

Much has been published by various investigators on the use of activated carbon for adsorbing precious metals from cyanide solution and pulp. For the benefit of the reader, a list of these earlier publications appears at the end of this report. The present paper deals only with a process for extracting gold from gold-laden carbon and re-use of the de-adsorbed carbon. At the Getchell mine, Redhouse, Nev., experiments have been in progress for several years concerning the use of activated carbon to adsorb gold from their slime circuit pulp. The experimental work has been successful. Their practice has been to ship the gold-laden carbon to a smelter for treatment, which meant the total loss of the carbon in addition to smelter and freight, charges, all of which proved costly and wasteful.

Jan 1, 1950

By Dmitriy Kim, Natalya Ibragimova, Galina Sedelnikova

Gold and copper are lost in flotation tailings in mineral processing of copper-zinc-pyrite ores. Large resources of precious and base metals have accumulated in tailing ponds of Russian plants. Object of the study is the sample obtained from Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company in Russia. The main constituents in flotation tailings are Au, Ag, Cu and Zn with content 1.4 g/t, 12 g/t, 0.66 and 0.5% respectively. The flotation tailings are a refractory material. Gold, as main metal, is fine encapsulated in sulfides, mainly in pyrite. Gold extraction from tailings is 34.0 and 42.7% at P42 and P90 of 0.074mm particle size respectively. In this work heap bioleaching of tailings was studied for oxidation sulfides (pyrite and chalcopyrite) with using mesofilic and moderately termofilic bacteria in acidic solutions. The tailings had low filtration property (< 0.3 m/day) and pelletization was used before bioleaching. Copper containing converter slags flotation tailings and calcium oxide were used as binding material for increasing filtration property of tailings. Copper was extracted in sulfate solution and was precipitated by cementation after cleaning of bacterial solution from iron. Copper recovery was 56.8% at content 61.4% in precipitate. The biooxidation of pyrite was 80%. Cyanidation, leaching with thiourea and heap leaching by cyanide were tested too. Gold extraction from solid bioresidues was 82, 75.3 and 77% respectively. The results of this investigation were recommended for pilot test.

Jan 1, 2014

By M J. Thomson, P T. Burgin

The economic growth of Hong Kong and adjacent territories in Southern China is, to a considerable extent, dependant on air transportation, but the present Kai Tak Airport is incapable of expansion to meet future needs. After years of study, agreement was reached to build a new airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok, some 34 km remote from Hong Kong, with an ultimate capacity of 87M passengers and 8.9 Ml of cargo per annum. Apart from the building of the airport and its associated infrastructure (including a new town), other similar massive construction works have been necessary in the form of land reclamation from the sea and existing outer lying islands. The construction of bridges, tunnels, railways and highways are also an integral part of the project. The paper provides a broad overview of the concepts of the scheme (called The Airport Core Programme) and highlights some of the major operations and equipment being used in the projects, whose cost at 1992 prices was reckoned to he Hong Kong (HR)$l63hn.

Jan 7, 1997

By Dr. Bronwynne Victor, Quentin Steyl, D. Scott Scovira

Bulk emulsions and emulsion blends may be formulated with a single salt, dual salts, or multiple salts. Blasting professionals familiar with single salt ammonium nitrate emulsion products may be less acquainted with dual and multiple salt emulsion products that may include calcium nitrate, sodium nitrate, and urea in their formulations.

Feb 1, 2020

Jan 1, 1883

By Erle I. Shobert

In the comparison and consideration of synthetic and natural materials, graphites represent a situation in which natural graphites amount to less than 10% of the total carbon and graphite production by weight, and less than 5% in dollar volume, There are few applications where it could not be re- placed by synthetic graphite. On the contrary, synthetic graphite materials can be engineered to cover an extremely wide range of applications. These include electrographite brushes for rotating machinery, pyrolytic graphite, graphite-impervious pipe, nuclear moderators, high purity spectrographic graphite, power tube anodes, graphite rotary shaft seals, and rocket nozzles. The special qualities of natural graphite and its limitations are delineated and the almost unlimited possibilities in artificial graphite materials are discussed.

Jan 1, 1964

By Joseph A. DeCarlo

The rapid growth of the organic chemical industry in the United States and abroad has focused attention on the future raw-material sources for this important industry. Chemical products are essential to modern civilization; and millions of tons of organic chemicals are used annually, ranging from basic raw materials to finished chemical products such as drugs, cosmetics, and soaps. Hundreds of chemical products are made directly or indirectly from coal, but in this report "coal chemicals" will be limited to crude tar, crud light oil, and ammonia recovered in the high-temperature carbonization of bituminous coal and the important principal products obtained by processing these materials. Specifically these include benzene} toluene, xylene, naphthalene, creosote oil, tar acid oil, pitch, and ammonium sulfate. Therefore the term "coal chemicals", wherever used in this report, includes only these products and does not include the secondary or intermediate products such as styrene, synthetic phenol, aniline, phthalic anhydride, or finished products made from these, such as synthetic rubber, plastics, and dyes. The United States leads the world in production and consumption of coal chemicals. In the past five years nearly one-fourth of the total output of coal-tar crudes in the world was produced in the United States. Consumption of some of the more important products derived from these crudes such as benzene, toluene, xylene, and naphthalene, however, ranged from about one-third to one-half of the world total because of imports and production of benzene, toluene, and xylene from petroleum. The synthetic organic chemical industry of the United States was established during World War I on chemical raw materials obtained by the high-temperature carbonization of bituminous coal but this source of supply currently furnishes less than 40 percent. More than 60 percent of the chemical raw materials used to produce organic and inorganic chemical is supplied by the petroleum industry and production of petrochemicals is rising rapidly.

Jan 1, 1960

By E. J. Kloos, R. H. Schutz, B. I. Ferber

To protective devices, the Bureau of Mines has established five schedules of minimum performance requirements for the approval of respirators. The current revisions of these schedules include 13D for self-contained breathing apparatus, 14F for gas masks, 19B and the amendments to 19B for supplied- air respirators, 21B for dust, fume, and mist respirators, and 23B for chemical cartridge respirators. Copies of these schedules may be obtained from the Bureau of Mines, Publications Distribution Section, 4800 Forbes Avenue, Pitts- burgh, Pa., 15213. Approval tests on respirators are performed only at the request of the manufacturer of the respirator and at his expense. If the device meets the approval requirements, a certificate of approval is granted on the complete respirator. This certificate states that as long as the respirator is manufactured as originally approved, or in accordance with any changes covered by an exten- sion of the original approval, the manufacturer may advertise and sell his respirator as being approved by the Bureau of Mines. Many industries and regulatory agencies require that respirators approved by the Bureau of Mines be used where respiratory protection is needed. The Bureau of Mines, how- ever, has no regulatory power over the use of the respirators that it approves. It acts as an impartial testing agency to insure the availability of suitable and safe respirators. At frequent intervals, the Bureau of Mines purchases approved respirators and replacement parts on the open market. These are examined for conformity to the approved status, and are checked to insure that the manufacturer's pro- duction facilities are maintaining a satisfactory quality control.

Oct 1, 1965

By T. W. Cavers

The Dwight-Lloyd sintering machine was the answer to the flue-dust problem of the copper blast-furnace smelter. Then came concentration by flotation, which threatened to eliminate the blast furnace from the smelting field altogether, and again the sintering process solved the problem. As is well known, the sintering process is dual in its function; it expels sulphur from the charge and it converts a powdery material into nodules or chunks that hold together. The charge is ignited on top just as it passes over the edge of the first suction box, and the oxygen of the air that is drawn downward through the charge breaks up the sulphide and oxidizes about fifty percent of the sulphur. The heat produced by this reaction in the upper stratum of the charge ignites that lying immediately below, and, when the pallett has travelled the full length of the machine, the tire has reached the graces and the fine concentrate has changed its characteristics by being partially fused and has become a more or less solid mass. When the Granby Company was smelting its ore as mined, one small D-L machine was adequate for the treatment of the flue dust, but as soon as the policy of smelting the concentrate was adopted, it became necessary to add two large machines to the sintering plant. The three sintering units, of which two are 42 in. by 396 in. and the other 42 in . by 264 in. in hearth area, have a combined capacity of from 370 to 450 tons (dry) of charge per day. The capacity varies directly as the hearth area. The sinter produced is about 88 per cent of the dry charge, or 325 to 400 tons per day. The sintered fines returned for resintering average between 30 and 35 per cent of the charge, but this is not as great a disadvantage as might appear, since the addition of hot fines improves the burning qualities of the mixture. From 50 to 54 per cent of the sulphur is eliminated in the sintering operation.

Jan 1, 1934

By John M. Jennings

The Hiawatha pitmouth is located at the head of the middle fork of Miller creek, at an altitude of approximately 8,100 feet. The coal is lowered to the tipple down a gravity tram two miles long, in 16 car trips which carry about 60 tons net. The average running time of the trip is about nine minutes. At the bottom of the tram there are two tracks for the loads and two for the empties. The trip, after being cut off the rope, is dropped by gravity onto a feeder, where the cars are uncoupled and fed one at a. time across the pitcar scales and into the dump. The dump is of the full revolution type, friction driven. On passing out of the dump the cars are returned by a kickback onto the empty car haul. They are caught at the bottom by a brake which consists of a pair of steel squeeze blocks operated by heavy springs. The empties are elevated to the double tracks, where the trips are made up. The feeder, scales, dump and empty car haul are all built on the solid ground of the hillside instead of being incorporated in one structure with the screening plant. The coal is dumped into a small hopper with a capacity of about 15 tons, whence it is fed by a reciprocating feeder onto a scraper conveyor which takes the coal over to the screening plant, a distance of 120 feet. This conveyor is 48 inches wide and travels at 120 feet per minute. The screen itself is interesting. It is of the Marcus Horizontal type.

Jan 1, 1925

By C. L. HUSTON

MY ANCESTRAL connection with the manufacture of boiler plate runs back through four generations, and my personal acquaintance with the practice reaches back to the time, in my ,boy- .hood days, when iron plates&apos; were made in a mill operated entirely by water power. -The mill originally was driven by an old-fashioned "&apos;breast" water wheel 20 ft. in diameter and with a20-ft. face, geared direct to the roll train. When the mill slowed up and there was danger of its stalling, the men would jump upon the rim and help the wheel around with their weight, to prevent a "sticker." Later, as large plates were called for, a flywheel was set out of line so that it could&apos; be speeded up by gears from the water wheel and connected back again,. by reducing- gears, to the roll train. The flywheel, with its cast-iron rim and wooden spokes, made 90 r.p.m. and the roll train 45 r.p.m. In 1870, our company installed our first steam-driven plate mill two-high rolls, 84 in. long. In these early mills the hot metal was manipulated by hand.

Jan 1, 1920

By R. L. Nyirenda

The use of ammoniacal ammonium carbonate (AAC) leaching for the treatment of carbon steelmaking EAF dust has been investigated on a laboratory scale. The experiments have been conducted on dust samples obtained from three European steelmaking companies. As received, the dusts were found to be toxic when tested according to current EPA toxicity testing procedures. Toxicity was on account of the leachability of one or more of the following elements: Ag, Hg, Pb, and Cd. Leaching experiments with concentrated AAC solution at 40 " C showed that zinc oxide present in the three dust samples, 60-80% of the total contained zinc, was rapidly solubilized. Data on the dissolution characteristics of Cd, Fe, Pb, Mg, and Mn are also presented. Toxicity tests conducted on residues of the leaching experiments found these to have leachates below past and current EPA toxicity threshold limits.

Jan 1, 1993

By Chris Carr

This paper describes the process employed and the work undertaken to enable the surrender of the mine permit relating to the two tailings deposits at the abandoned Red Mountain Mine site near Rossland, BC. The first phase of the work undertaken was to provide urgent remedial work for protection of the environment, primarily through rehabilitation or replacement of surface water drainage systems. The second phase was to up-grade the water management systems to the appropriate level given their consequences of failure. The final phase of work is to ensure long term geotechnical stability of the facilities to the same level of risk. Establishment of a sustaining fund will facilitate long term monitoring and maintenance of the facilities.

May 1, 2002

By L. A. Weakly

The requirement for large diesel equipment to be certified for operation in potential gassy mine conditions in western oil shale mines motivated a design engineering project to develop a dry exhaust conditioner system to replace traditional wet scrubber technology. A dry exhaust conditioner for a 600 hp diesel engine was designed and fabricated for retrofitting into a 600 hp underground haul truck. The engine conditioner package was taken through a simulated certification process at the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) Approval and Certification Center to refine test procedures and to uncover any flaws in the dry exhaust conditioner technology. The engine/exhaust system was then installed in an underground haul truck to demonstrate mine-worthiness of the system. No inherent features were discovered that would prevent the system from meeting test requirements. However, the tests did point out several deficiencies in the prototype design.

Jan 1, 1989

By R. Kent Comann

The sixth survey on the mining industry by Comann Associates provided data for entry-level and midlevel engineers as well as executive officers. Average 1989 compensation - base salary and anticipated bonus - for chief mining executive officers or chief mining operating officers: $237,943. This is an increase of 20% over the results of the last survey, on 1985 compensation. The latest survey also showed that bonuses for chief mining executive officers averaged 33% of base salary. Average 1989 compensation for chief executive or chief operating officers at mining operations with under $50 million in gross sales, $148,638; at mining operation with more than $50 million in gross sales, $275,141. The survey showed that these officers averaged 14 years employment with their present company, had five years in their present position, and had an average age of 54.

Jan 1, 1990