Search Documents

By N Meyer

This paper presents a research project referring to the stability of submerged walls of open pit mines and the actual state of development. Obviously the slope stability analysis is always a rather complex problem, because it is difficult to reduce the problem to a design scheme and to define the available in situ soil strength. Especially the design of submerged slopes represents a problem. The state-of-the-art slope stability analysis is based on a simplified modelling of slope failure and soil behaviour and with this predicted stable slope inclinations of sand slopes below water-table are less then half the angle of internal friction. Slope angles calculated like that canÆt satisfy the mining companies. One of the problems that have to be solved is the reliable determination of the long-term stability of non-cohesive, submerged slopes, which is not only dependant on geotechnical and hydrogeological parameters of the subsoil, but is also significantly influenced by how the slopes are made. The research project points at the relations between mining and geotechnical engineering with the main aim to find a more suitable stability analysis which takes both soil behaviour and mining influences into account.

Jan 1, 2003

By Ed Revoort, Robert Schippers

In Rotterdam in the Netherlands the project ‘De Zalmhaven’ is being developed. The project consists of the realization of houses, parking facilities, two residential towers of 70 m and a residential high rise of 215 m. An artist impression for the project is given in figure 1. For the high rise a new development in the use of large diameter, drilled piles with a steel casing has been successfully utilized. In this article the installation method of 65 m long steel drilled piles in two consecutive sections is presented. The settlements for the building (and the influence on its surroundings) have been analyzed in detail using 3D Finite Element calculations, which will also be discussed. Finally there is focus on the results of settlement measurements carried out during construction in relation to the settlement prognosis.

May 1, 2022

By Jasinder S. Jaspal, Bradley J. Bourquin

Introduction Operation is underway at the Dutch Creek No. 1 mine of the first US longwall panel to be mined under the cooperative agreement between the US Bu¬reau of Mines and Mid-Continent Resources. The 244-m (800-ft) wide longwall face is part of a multilift longwall demonstration. A 3-m (10-ft) top slice is being extracted from the 8.5-m (28-ft) coal seam. This occurs in an area of the property where the Coal Basin A and Coal Basin B beds have come together to form one seam. This face, longest ever operated in the US, is being worked on an advancing longwall system. During the first months of its operation, this longwall face has been very productive and safe. Mid-Continent Resources operates two coal mines in the Coal Basin, located in the White River National Forest near Carbondale, CO. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. originally opened this property in 1895, and conducted a small mining operation for 10 years on the north rim of the basin and then abruptly shut down. Mid-Continent began operations in 1956, after the Coal Basin fields had lain idle for about 60 years. Operations commenced at the outcrop of the Coal Basin B bed situated at the 3-km (10,000-ft) elevation. At this time, coal was produced from Coal Basin A and Coal Basin B seams in the area. Since 1981, operations have been centralized at two mines, the Dutch Creek No. 1 and the Dutch Creek No. 2, both located in the center of the basin. Since 1981, Mid-Continent has shifted its emphasis to longwall mining as the primary method of production, and each of these mines is equipped with state-of-the-art longwalls using shields as the method of roof support. A 4-km (13,000-ft) long twin-bore rock tunnel is being driven at a lower elevation of 2.4 km (8,000 ft) to intersect the coal seams at depth, as they dip 12° in a westerly direction. This tunnel will enable the company to reduce costs by replacing trucks with conveyor belt haulage (Fig. 1). Mid-Continent began longwall operations in May 1976 with the US's first modern, mechanized advancing longwall face, using chocks. In August 1978, a second advancing longwall face was started. Results from two faces showed that the mining system could be used effectively to manage the difficult conditions encountered in both the Dutch Creek No. 1 and the L. S. Wood No. 3 mines. Unfortunately, low productivity and high costs plagued the company's advancing faces. The problems resulted principally from major equipment failures, poorly designed chocks and face conveyors, and the lack of an efficient, cost effective system for building packwalls. Flushing of rock between chocks and roof control were also major problems. In Sept. 1979, Mid-Continent and the US Bureau of Mines entered into a cooperative agreement to demonstrate the feasibility of mining thick coal seams using the multilift longwall mining method. Two lifts are to be used to mine the 8.5-m (28-ft) thick coal seam in Dutch Creek No. 1 mine. The Bureau provided mining equipment for 180 m (600 ft) of longwall face. This included the shields, face conveyor and drive units, shearing machines, panel belt, and stageloader. As a result of previous experience in advancing longwall mining, Mid-Continent purchased an additional 60 m (200 ft) of face, including roof supports and an additional face conveyor. Design The Dutch Creek No. 1 is a slope mine located on the flank of a plunging anticlinal structure that

Jan 1, 1984

By Takao Oishi, Go Ohara, Toru Kitazaki, Masahiro Tanaka

"The High Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) plant for nickel-cobalt mixed sulphide production at Coral Bay Nickel Corporation (CBNC) in the Philippines has been in operation since 2005 with a capacity of 10,000 t/year of nickel. Subsequent to the commissioning of the second plant in 2008, the production capacity increased to 22,000 t/year of nickel (Llerin et al., 2011). CBNC’s annual nickel production reached more than 24,000 tons of nickel in 2014. The concepts to achieve this capacity are the high availability and the reciprocally flexible operation of both plants. The availability depends on some factors, such as the control of impurities in the process and the equipment condition, to mention a few. In the HPAL process, it is not only the autoclave operating conditions that affect nickel extraction but also the impurities in the ore greatly influence it. The major element in the ore is iron and most of this iron is precipitated as Fe2O3, while the rest remains as Fe2+ or Fe3+ sulphate in solution. These ions in solution reduce the availability, so it is important to control the formation of iron ions by controlling the impurities in feed ore as well as the HPAL conditions. This paper presents the general HPAL process and the behaviour of impurities, focusing on iron behaviour in the HPAL process.INTRODUCTIONCoral Bay Nickel Corporation ProfileCoral Bay Nickel Corporation (CBNC) was founded on April 2002, as a joint venture of four companies; namely, Mitsui Corporation (18%), Sojitz Corporation (18%), Nickel Asia Corporation (10%) and Sumitomo Metal Mining Corporation (SMM) with a controlling stake of 54%. Aside from its capital share, Nickel Asia Corporation also supplies the ore and limestone for the High Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) plant located in Rio Tuba, Philippines, as shown in Figure 1 (Tsuchida, 2008). The objective of the CBNC project is to produce 22,000 t/year (original design) of nickel and 1,500 t/year of cobalt, as sulphide, by the treatment of nickel laterite ore which is a low grade nickel oxide ore in the Philippines (Mines and Geosciences Bureau, 2014). The sulphide product has been exported as a raw material to the SMM Nickel Refinery in Japan for 30 years. The product of this plant, a mixed (Ni/Co) sulphide, is shipped to the SMM’s Nickel Refinery in Niihama, Japan. SMM Corporation provides the technology and management personnel to the plant. SMM Corporation also supplies the sulphuric acid, which is the main reagent for the HPAL process."

Jan 1, 2016

By Fred W. Johnson

The first section of this circular has been prepared with a view to answering inquiries frequently received by the Bureau regarding laws governing the staking of claims and regulations covering requirements for holding them and obtaining title in fee to placer ground. These laws and regulations were summarized briefly in Information Circular 6796, "Placer Mining in the Western United States." These laws, however, are administered by the General Land Office, Department of the Interior, and it has been considered advisable to combine an authoritative résumé thereof by the Commissioner of that Bureau with information on small-scale placer mining previously published by the Bureau of Mines. The second section of this circular is largely a revised reprint of Information Circular 6611, "Small-Scale Placer Mining Methods", first published in April 1932 for the purpose of answering the many daily inquiries then being received on this subject. This circular has been reprinted repeatedly, and about 30,000 copies have been distributed, most of them in response to applications therefor. At present (June 1937) requests for this publication continue to be received daily.

Jan 1, 1938

By Bruno Augusto Batista Ribeiro, Felipe Terra Elias, Wagner Moulin Silva

In the pyrometallurgical production of copper from its sulfides, converting in the Peirce Smith (P-S) Converter is still the most widespread method to obtain white metal and blister copper from the matte. Despite the fact of being a century-old process, it is still possible to achieve improvements in the process, by the use of modern tools, one of the most valuable being numerical calculation and computer-aided simulation. The present study presents three cases in which the angle for the gas injection and the number of working tuyeres are changed during the slag blow phase of the converting process. It was noticed that a decrease of the number of tuyeres, followed by an increase in the injection gas velocity, results in improved reaction volume and less stress to the refractory lining. However, an increase in the amount of copper lost to the slag as oxide is likely to occur.

Jan 1, 2014

By R. V. Higgins

Tarner (1),3/ Muskat (2), and Schilthuis (1) have presented methods of calculating oil recovery by the expansion of dissolved gas with and without return of gas to the reservoir. Although electronic computers have eliminated the tedious and time-consuming calculations (4) required by each of these methods, many petroleum engineers do not have access to electronic computers. For these engineers a short method is presented that uses the Tarner method as a base. Moreover, for engineers who have access to computers and have not as yet prepared a program, the short Tamer method requires less computer time than the long iterative methods. In the proposed short method, no plotting of the calculated data is required to determine a point of intersection described in the original Tarner presentation, as only one calculation is needed to determine the value sought, or two calculations if greater accuracy is desired.

Jan 1, 1960

By E. A. Brecke

The Cave-In-Rock Flourspar District is located in the northeast part of Hardin County, Illinois and is the most northeasterly occurrence of flour spar of the Illinois-Kentucky Flour spar Area. The occurrence of these deposits is confined to an area about one and one-half miles wide and five miles long parallel to the Peters Creek Fault (Fig. 1) The delineation of several features that may be described as breccia pipes has permitted the definition of the point of ascent of solutions to the host horizon and the lateral spread from these points.

Jan 1, 1962

By Wilson R. G

The Bulli and Wongawilli Seams, the two principal sources of coking coal for the Port KKembla steelworks of Australian Iron and Steel Pty. Ltd., vary in rank and in type over the Southern and -South Western Coalfields. The Bulli Seam, ranging widely in type, produces coke varying from weak to strong. The Wongawilli Seam, more consistent in type, produces coke of more consistent strength, but considerably less strong than that from the best Bulli Seam coal. Plans of seam variation show the regional trends in rank and type for each sear. The strongest coke is derived from coal containing between 45 and 55 per cent vitrinite, m.m.f. This is obtainable from the Bulli Sean in a zone embracing Bulli and Appin Colleries.

Jan 1, 1969

By Henry M. Howe

What should be the chief aim of a metallurgical laboratory ? Before answering this, let us ask, What should be the chief aim of metallurgical instruction ? Taking a definite case, that of the iron blast-furnace, should we chiefly teach the methods of bosh- and tuyere-cooling, of storing and assembling materials, of removing the iron and cinder, of firing boilers and cleaning stoves ? Or should we aim chiefly to lay clear and bare the nature of the reactions which occur in the blast-furnace, the reason why changes in the rate of driving, in the blast-temperature, in the composition of the cinder, cause their known effects ? Shall we chiefly describe or explain ? Shall we teach chiefly the looks or the reasons ? Put thus, the question admits but one answer. Hours of labored description at a technical school give a less true and clear view of actual metallurgical operations than a brief visit to metallurgical works. If in my teaching 1 take the far more laborious course and lay so very great stress on explanation and so little on description that I seem to err on that laborious side and not to give description enough, the student will quickly make up for my lack of description in his first weeks in the works; he will there learn quickly and easily what I could have described only obscurely and with labor. Details of practice are learned easily and retentively in the works, but with difficulty and slowly at school. With the principles, and especially the chemical principles of metallurgy, the reverse is true. The works have little facility for teaching them; the school has every facility. The place then for explaining, for teaching principles, is the school. But,

Jan 1, 1900

By Carlos Ortiz

The Huelva Flash Smelting Furnace was commissioned in September 1975. The Smelter and the Acid Plant were expanded in 1995 to their present capacity of 300,000 tpa new copper equivalent and one million tonnes of concentrate per year. During these years of operational experience, most of the initial practices have been reviewed, process control has drastically improved and main process equipment has been modernised. The fourth Flash Furnace campaign lasted 9 years (1995-2004) during which 8 million tonnes of concentrate were smelted. Increasing sulphur content in concentrates and new environmental requirements imply new challenges for smelters to keep production and operation costs down. This paper is an overview of the modifications and improvements carried out in the 2007 general shutdown in Smelter and Acid Plants. Al

Jan 1, 2008

By M. W. Lewis, J. Werner

Fluctuating metal prices, declining head grade, and increased operational costs are forcing many open pit mining companies to look to their balance sheets for significant cost reductions in order to remain competitive. Maintenance continues to represent a significant proportion of the total operating costs in the mining industry. Compared with the other major cost components of the mining process, very little effort has gone into maintenance optimization. The potential payoff from maintenance optimization on the cash cost of the commodity is enormous. A large percentage of these costs are incurred in unscheduled maintenance events, which typically cause serious disruptions to the production process. These maintenance-induced production losses can be a significant contributor to the overall operating costs. A structured proactive maintenance approach using the latest advances in technology can achieve dramatic cost reductions and productivity improvements. Remote condition monitoring systems are becoming increasingly commonplace and have the potential to identify problems prior to failure. Detection of equipment degradation prior to failure will enable repairs to be scheduled thereby reducing costs and interruptions to production. Remote condition monitoring technology has evolved rapidly in recent years, with a host of new tools becoming available to assist mine operators in improving their maintenance operations. These tools have capabilities such as remote real-time vital signs and performance monitoring, alarm/event handling, trend analysis, and maintenance workflow management. When these monitoring tools are used in conjunction with a mine management system, the vital signs data can be integrated and associated with maintenance history, predictive maintenance data, operational information, and geographical information. This integrated approach to the management of vital maintenance data will help shift the mobile equipment maintenance paradigm from reactive to proactive. This paper will introduce a proactive approach to the management of the maintenance process and the tools required to facilitate this process.

Jan 1, 2005

By George C. Trevorrow

It is a pleasure to appear on this program and discuss a subject which is of particular interest to me. In my regular duties as Safety Director of Bituminous Coal Operators' Association, I am called on by member companies to discuss matters affecting face ventilation. As a member of the Joint Industry Safety Committee, as I will later describe, I have a part in processing requests for the use of auxiliary fans for face ventilation. The use of auxiliary fans in bituminous coal mines for this purpose came into rather wide use in the late. '20's when conveyor mining was introduced. In this application, the equipment consisted of a chain conveyor with a face chain conveyor parallel to the face on which the coal was loaded by hand and, in turn, was discharged onto the room conveyor and thence to a loading point on the entry at the mouth of the room. Another method was to use a shaker conveyor with a duckbill which was maneuvered across the face of the room from which the coal was loaded and transported by the shaker to the loading point. In either case the equipment did not readily lend itself to driving crosscuts or breakthroughs with the result that rooms were driven to depths of 250 or 300 feet without adequate means of ventilating the face area with the main split of air. It was, therefore, necessary to use other means of ventilating this area as the rooms were being driven and during retreat work if pillars were extracted. Auxiliary fans of the blowing type were utilized for this purpose. They were of very small capacity using small diameter tubing. By the time the room was driven half way to its projected limit ventilation was very poor or practically nonexistent. To compound the problem the fan was usually set up at the mouth or neck of the room and in many cases the intake air to the fan was the return air from the room. It is small wonder, therefore, that there is on record 12 cases where auxiliary fans were given as the cause of explosions. In 9 of these occurrences, arcs or sparks from open-type motors or accessory equipment on these fans were given as the primary ignition source. They fell into such ill repute that in a number of cases they were blamed as the ignition source even though smoking was strongly suspected as the primary cause.

Jan 1, 1967

By A. F. Matheson

"Bankfield Consolidated Mines, Limited, and Tombill Gold Mines, Limited, in the Little Long Lac area, Ontario, mined an orebody that was common to both. The discovery' of this orebody was made by surface prospecting in May, 1932, on Bankfield ground, following an original discovery made in the same manner on the same property on a small reef in Magnet lake in October, 1931. The production from the two mines between 1937 and 1942 was approximately 135,000 oz. gold from about 420,000 tons of ore, an average grade of 0.32 oz. a ton. Production was nearly equally divided between the two properties. Both mines are now closed, the ore exhausted.""The ore is mainly sheared and fractured greywacke and porphyry impregnated by silica and small amounts of metallic minerals. To a lesser extent there are definite quartz veins in the ore zone""(l). The metallic minerals present were principally pyrite, arsenopyrite, pyrrhotite, and native gold .As at other mines in the Little Long Lac area, an elongated, broad, deep trough of folded, steeply dipping volcanic and sedimentary rocks, striking roughly east-west and surrounded by younger granite, is host to the orebodies of the Bankfield and Tombill. In the immediate area of the two mines iron formation and conglomerate bands occur nearby both north and south of an intrusion of porphyry-Cliorite, suggesting repetition of beds and folding. Although considerable drag folding is in evidence, folding on the above scale has neither been proved nor disproved."

Jan 1, 1954

By H. W. McCue

In 1945 the number of oil wells drilled was less than in 1944 but the number of gas wells was greater. The oil wells numbered 176, completed for an initial production of 25,214 bbl., an average of 143 bbl. per well as against a total in 1944 of 245 drilled for 32,886 bbl., or 134 bbl. per well. All of these wells were in proven areas and no new discoveries

Jan 1, 1946

By J Karlovšek

Civil engineering infrastructures are often subjected to different types of natural and mechanical activities. These influences may result in serviceability or even in stability of structures due to material deformations, increased water content within the materials used or the formation of internal or adjacent cavities that may threaten the infrastructure. Construction practices can lead to development of such defects in the form of cavities. In civil engineering it is crucial to detect these variations in material properties and to detect the presence of defects. However, as they are often hidden from view, these attributes may be difficult or impossible to target with traditional testing methods. For these reasons rapid geophysical methods, such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), are increasingly being used. At the University of Queensland (UQ) GPR is used for detection of voids and cavities which have been caused by an over excavation of the earth pressure balance machine (EPB) operating in a closed mode.A variety of numerical simulations using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods and preliminary experiments have been carried out in order to specify information about the nature, type, size, location and other characteristics of targets to be detected by GPR. In doing this the difficulty of interpreting GPR data, which is mainly due to the complexity of the factors involved in multiple possible solutions of the observed features, can be overcome.

Mar 8, 2011

By E. V. Zelinskaya

"Mineral and industrial raw material mining and preparation make a negative impact on the environment. The main types of impact are the land resources gathering, soil and water balance disturbance, surface-water, underground space and atmospheric air pollution, as well as the vast amount of solid and liquid waste production. Considerable attention in recent decades has been given to waste recycling. The task is to maximize the use of both newly formed and accumulated solid and liquid wastes. The mining and mining and smelting enterprises industrial waters are a very promising source of secondary hydromineralic raw materials. They have high concentrations of not only calcium, sodium, but also, for example, lithium, rubidium, heavy non-ferrous metals. In general, unfortunately, we have to state that today there is no wide practice of extracting valuable components from waste enrichment, as well as processing of man-made waters to extract metals from them. The quantity of extracted components from underground, and furthermore passing waters, is insignificant. At the same time there is a tendency to increased demand for rare metals: Sr, B, Br, I. This is explained by their wide use in many industries. For example, the consumption of lithium products is steadily increasing. The obtained results showed that in the liquid phase in connection with high salt content and a significant difference in the macro- and microcomponents contents, conditions are initially created for the microcomponents selective isolation possibility. The identified conditions realization is most possible in such technological processes as cryotechnology, sorption and ion flotation. There is an urgent need to expand research in this direction and to recognize as a publicly important task the mining and industrial waste processing full-scale introduction into the practice of operating mining and processing enterprises and iron and steel companies.INTRODUCTION Mineral and industrial raw material mining and preparation make a negative impact on the environment. The main types of impact are the land resources gathering, soil and water balance disturbance, surface-water, underground space and atmospheric air pollution, as well as the vast amount of solid and liquid waste production."

Jan 1, 2018

The year 1934 saw a very thorough and intensive search for oil in Italy, both by the Government-subsidized company, the A.G.I.P., and by the few smaller operating companies. Approximately two-thirds of the exploration work, however, has been done in the Province of Emilia (northern Italy). The A.G.I.P. has been particularly active in the Emilia district and has sunk several rotary holes between Voghera and Ferrara on structures located by geophysical means in the Po Valley. Only insignificant amounts of oil have shown up in these tests to date but gas has been found in fair quantities, and apparently the company is not yet prepared to abandon its search in this part of the country without further effort. In Central Italy, the same company has put down four tests with cable tools and of these two were "dry holes" and the other two found only traces of oil. The A:G.I.P. also sank two wells in southern Italy and it is believed that in these the indications were sufficiently encouraging for the exploration work to be continued. No serious drilling has yet been done in Sicily by the A.G.I.P. or any other company. The annual subsidy granted to the A.G.I.P. by the Government for the duration of its five-year plan has been considerably reduced for 1935 and this may interfere with the completion of the coming year's program in all its details. The Società Petrolifera Italians, which is the chief producing company in the country, has continued the development of its two fields, Salsomaggiore and Vallezza, and at the same time has intensified its program of exploration. Rotary machinery has been introduced and is undergoing a thorough trial, and prospects of finding new pools at greater depths are considered good. The charcoal adsorption plant at Vallezza has operated satisfactorily throughout the year and has produced nearly 3000 bbl. of high-grade gasoline. Besides the exploration well at Rile dell'Olio, which is still drilling, another wildcat test has been started at Torre-di-Traversetolo. All operations of this company are confined to the district of Emilia. The Società Petroli d'Italia has continued to operate the old fields of Montechino, Gratera and Velleja, and has a well now exploring at greater depths in that general area. Of the two exploration wells in the Torino

Jan 1, 1935

By S. Langea, H. Lieberwirth

Impact crushers are common machines in comminution plants. Their high size-reduction ratio and relatively simple design, make them a preferred tool even when subjected to harsh wear, and producing a large quantity of fines in some applications. Until now the alignment of the operational parameters was an operator’s responsibility. Due to the random process characteristic this is mostly done based on empirical values and sensor data, such as power consumption. This paper describes a new approach for online process monitoring of the horizontal-shaft-impact crusher. The application of robust, low-cost acceleration sensors enables the permanent observation of the process characteristics. The operational and evaluation methods are determined on the basis of experiments. Subsequently the recorded measurements are analysed in regards of throughput, rotational speed and product particle size distribution. Occurring signal characteristics are described based on physical and technical principles. The measured data of the acceleration sensors at varying operation conditions provide insight in the course of process. The accurate utilisation yields the determination of the preferential process conditions providing the best balance between the pros and cons of an impact crusher. Both the experimental method and the data processing is discussed from a scientific perspective, displaying a completely new approach for the operation of impact crushers. Keywords: Impact crusher, acceleration sensors, data processing, particle size

Jan 1, 2020

By M P. Schwarz

A major issue presently faced by companies producing and processing iron ore is the need to maximise throughput while minimising capital expenditure. While present high demand means this is of prime importance, the perennial issues of maintenance, operating costs, reliability, quality and environmental sustainability are also critical to profi tability. Attempts to address these issues generally require modifi cations to existing equipment, or trials of new equipment when designing plant for new projects.The risk involved can be substantially minimised by testing equipment improvements using advanced computational models prior to implementation. Examples of application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Discrete Element Method (DEM) modelling to sampling, cyclones, conveyor transfers, classifiers, dust control, banana screens, comminution and smelt-reduction will be given to illustrate the benefi ts of such an approach. *This is an abstract only. No paper was provided for this abstract.*

Jul 11, 2011