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By Frank A. Wardlaw

My subject covers the effect that recent metallurgy has had on operations at the Utah-Delaware mine. This mine is the old Highland Boy mine of Bingham Canyon, Utah, one that has now been in operation for about 30 years. It was first operated by Messrs. Weir and Newhouse as a gold mine, under direction of the Highland Boy Gold Mining Co. The ore was oxidized gold ore and it was treated on the property in a cyanida-tion plant. During the process of development, sulfide ore was found assaying about 5 per cent. copper. It proved to be the discovery of what is yet the largest sulfide copper orebody in the State. The first shipment was made in December, 1896. A smelter was built in Salt Lake Valley to treat this ore and not long after the property was sold to the Utah Consolidated Mining Co. From 1900 to 1924, the mine was a large producer of direct-smelting ore which averaged for many years 4.5 per cent. copper, then later dropped to 2 per cent. copper. During the years 1912 to 1920, direet-smelting lead ore was also mined. In 1918 and 1919 ore developments at depth showed a decided increase in silica content and a porphyry sill so closely associated with the ore that it was impossible to mine the ore clean and it was found necessary to build a copper flotation concentrator at Tooele. The mill had a capacity of 1000 tons a day and made a recovery of 90 per cent., and would have been responsible for a continuance of profitable operations had it not been for a slump in the copper market and the necessary high cost of mining ore on the lower levels. Results of Selective Flotation In 1924 the mine was on the point of a shutadown which had all the earmarks of being permanent; it was being operated at a heavy loss and preparations were made to pull the pumps and salvage the machinery. The plant at Tooele was remodelled for selective flotation by the International Smelting Co. in order to treat custom ores, and incidentally to clean up a possible 10,000 tons of lead-zinc ore which it was thought possible to get in the Utah-Delaware before shutting the mine down. Results were so encouraging that an effort was made to develop more lead-

Jan 1, 1928

By R. Dekkers

Non-metallic inclusions in liquid steel are mainly formed during killing. As far as these particles are not captured by the slag, they are found in the cast steel where they can deteriorate the mechanical properties. Inclusions may also disrupt the continuous casting process, affecting thus directly the quality of the steel and the production capacity. Steel pin samples from the Sidmar plant (Belgium) were taken in different steps of several ladle treatments and in the tundish. Also slab samples were studied. All samples concern the same type of low alloyed aluminium killed steel. The non-metallic inclusions were isolated from the steel matrix and investigated with scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectrometry. The evolution of the non-metallic inclusions is described by their number, size, shape and elemental composition. The main non-metallic inclusions present are aluminium oxides and spinel type compounds.

Jan 1, 1999

Mining Subscribes to Murphy?s Law Personal observations on the past ?Perfect, benign deposit mines can be screwed up-spills and concentrate handling issues ?Long term contamination and water management assessments inadequate ?The ?permitting mentality? and its effects on the application of proponent and regulator resources ?Reliance on simple principles but nature and chemistry is more complex

May 1, 2010

By Suresh K. Bhatt

A mathematically simulated modeling technique is used in this U.S. Bureau of Mines report to represent a hypothetical mining operation with existing mining technology and prevalent mining costs. Mining scenarios were prepared and evaluated for potential benefits and costs available through computer-assisted mining. Base criteria, parameters, and methodology are described.

Jan 1, 1993

By Suresh K. Bhatt

A mathematically simulated modeling technique is used in this U.S. Bureau of Mines report to represent a hypothetical mining operation with existing mining technology and prevalent mining costs. Mining scenarios were prepared and evaluated for potential benefits and costs available through computer-assisted mining. Base criteria, parameters, and methodology are described.

Jan 1, 1991

By Chuanfu Zhang, Jinliang Wang

"Brickless reaction shaft is the latest progress for flash smelting furnace. However, there are many factors influence the melting point of the freeze slag inside brickless reaction shaft, and their variational regularities are not obvious, thus, it is difficult for conventional methods to analyze accurately the complex data. In this research, the experiment data of slag melting point were processed based on optimal discrimination plane. For this method, two orthogonal vectors were firstly built up based on the Fisher's criterion, and then the experiment data were projected onto the two vectors, thus, two-dimensional feature vectors were extracted as criteria to determine the factors effect degree on the slag melting point. Results show that the CaO content is the greatest factor to the melting point of the freeze slag inside brickless reaction shaft, the content of Fe3O4, SiO2, Cu2 O and MgO is the second, and the FeO content is the last.IntroductionBrickless reaction shaft is the latest progress of flash smelting furnace reaction shaft. To research the influence factors on the slag melting point inside the brickless reaction shaft is significant to form freeze slag with compact structure, good heat insulation, certain intensity, appropriate thickness and reasonable distribution, to extend furnace life, to reduce energy consumption, and to promote safe production.However, due to the complex components, there are many factors influence the melting points of the freeze slag inside brickless reaction shaft, and their variational regularities are not obvious. Therefore, it is difficult for conventional methods, such as variance analysis, data fitting, etc., to analyze accurately the complex experiment data.Pattern recognition can easily classify information, even if there are many influencing factors. For pattern recognition, there are some sub-disciplines such as discriminant analysis, feature extraction, error estimation, cluster analysis (together sometimes called statistical pattern recognition), grammatical inference, parsing and matching (sometimes called syntactical and structural pattern recognition) [1, 2]."

Jan 1, 2012

By Kevin J. Melong

"Redpath Canada Limited and joint venture partner Thyssen Mining and Construction Canada have recently completed the sinking of the Scissors Creek service in Saskatchewan through its joint owned company, Associated Mining Construction (AMC). The Scissors Creek service shaft was sunk at Nutrien’s Rocanville mine. The following paper outlines the shaft sinking plant and the methodology related to sinking and shaft lining. KEYWORDS Hydraulic shaft jumbo, Hydraulic shaft mucker, Potash shaft sinking, Shaft lining, Sinking galloway INTRODUCTION The sinking and lining of shafts at mines to access mineral deposits has always been one of the great mining challenges for owners, engineers and contractors. Over the course of history in Canadian mining, the sinking of potash shafts through the notorious Blairmore formation of Saskatchewan has proved to be some of the most challenging shaft sinking projects on record. There is no doubt that today’s shaft sinking business demands the utmost in safety performance while delivering projects within schedule and budget. Given these requisites, Redpath and TMCC (executed under the joint venture company, Associated Mining Construction or AMC), were taxed with developing the shaft sinking system to deliver this program in the safest and cost effective manner, with due regard to schedule and quality. Traditionally the potash shafts sunk in Saskatchewan involved a significant level of manual labour, owing to the methodology of excavation by means of chipping the frozen shaft sections with hand held pneumatic machines, and manually placing tubbing segments or steel liners of the shaft lining system. Most certainly, the AMC team wanted to make a step change from those earlier sinking programs and develop systems for sinking this potash shaft that removed the high level of manual work, thus making this project inherently safer, while endeavoring to sink more efficiently. With that in mind, the team embarked on a design program to improve its overall shaft sinking systems without the requirement for excessive capital and methodology flexibility to adapt to potential changing conditions expected to be encountered during shaft sinking. This was especially important should the new approach be met with less than expected success, and retrofitting of the system was required. The concepts were developed to provide for a much improved work environment, while easing the manual labour burden on the workers with innovative equipment and approach to the work."

Jan 1, 2019

By R Hoeppel, D Harimon, A Fisher

This paper examines the importance of examining the relationship between biology and geochemistry when designing a biopile to treat alkaline soils impacted by petroleum hydrocarbons. At a site in Nevada a large, unlined pit was constructed in a loamy sand soil and filled at regular intervals with a mixture of jet fuel, lubricating oils and waste solvents which were set on fire by the local fire department for training purposes. During its period of operation numerous chemicals were also dumped into the pit for disposal purposes, including dichlorobenzene and various chloroethylenes. As a result of these activities a large groundwater contaminant plume was formed. As a part of the site remediation process a decision was made to perform a limited source removal and excavate the top three to four metres of contaminated soil from the burn pit and place it in an engineered biopile. The location of the training pit is in a heavily mineralised basin where the background sulphate level in groundwater exceeds 5000 ppm. Due to naturally occurring biodegradation of the petroleum hydrocarbons a large portion of the sulphate was converted to sulphide which deposited in the soils as marcasite in the anaerobic soils. The initial attempt at soil remediation was to use a forced air treatment scheme that had worked well in small scale laboratory testing. Unfortunately, when attempted in the field on a large scale, marcasite reacted with atmospheric oxygen resulting in internal biopile temperatures exceeding 90¦C resulting in the virtual sterilisation of the soils without remediation occurring. In order to solve this vexing problem Pintail Systems, Inc developed an anaerobic culture that allowed the pile to be operated under anaerobic conditions. Within three months the biopile successfully demonstrated on a large scale significant biodegradation of the refractory petroleum hydrocarbons.

Jan 1, 2004

By R Strand, L Reading, G Keir

A major challenge in managing coal seam gas (CSG) water is predicting how much water will be produced as the industry develops. Klohn Crippen Berger Ltd (KCB) was commissioned by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) to develop a tool to forecast where, when and how much CSG water will be produced in the Surat and Southern Bowen Basins under various industry expansion scenarios.The water production tool (WPT) uses the Theis equation, a non-equilibrium groundwater flow equation that accounts for the effect of pumping time on well yield in confined aquifers, to predict water production volumes. Where multiple pumping wells are in close proximity, the required pumping rates for coal seam depressurisation are reduced. Therefore, pumping effects are projected spatially to assess interference effects between wells. Water production is then upscaled to the projected scale of the CSG industry within the Surat and Southern Bowen Basins.Two modifications were made to address the dual phase nature of CSG extraction (a transmissivity reduction factor) and the impact of weathering at the eastern margin of the Surat Basin (a ænear edge effectÆ factor). These factors modify relevant hydrogeological parameters in a consistent and defensible manner to more closely match observed water production.The WPT was verified by comparing results to equivalent Theis equation calculations and to type curves provided by CSG proponents. Calibration was achieved by varying the spatial distribution and intensity of the near edge effect factor in conjunction with a chi-squared analysis of residuals.The tool, which is now being maintained and further developed by the Centre for Water in the Minerals Industry (CWiMI), was built to balance numerical complexity against relative flexibility and simulation speed. The result is a tool that can produce statistically relevant results of prescribed scenarios to plan water handling and treatment requirements in discrete zones of operation.CITATION:Strand, R, Reading, L and Keir, G, 2013. Water production simulation tool for coal seam gas operations in Bowen and Surat basins, in Proceedings Water in Mining 2013 , pp 311-320 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 26, 2013

By Emmet K. Oslen

Kaiser Steel Corporation, the pioneer steelmaker on the Pacific Coast, was founded by the late Henry J. Kaiser. In 1944 the Company purchased from the Southern Pacific Railroad an iron ore property 200 miles east of Los Angeles known as Eagle Mountain. Today the domestic operation of Kaiser Steel Corporation consists of the iron mine at Eagle Mountain; two coal mines, one each in Utah and New Mexico; an integrated steelmaking complex at Fontana, California; and several steel fabrication and erection facilities along the west coast. Kaiser Steel also has interest in Hamersley Iron, Ltd., Australia, and Kaiser Resources, Ltd., British Columbia. Eagle Mountain Mine is located about 80 miles east of Palm Springs and adjacent to the southeast corner of Joshua Tree National Monument. The area is one of the most arid in the world averaging only two inches of rain annually. Geologically, the mine is at the western edge of the Basin and Range Province which covers about one-half million square miles of the western United States. The Province is typified by north to northwesterly trending fault block mountain ranges separated by sediment filled valleys, Production has totaled over 82 million tons of finished products since the first shipment in June, 1947. Over 500 million tons of material have been mined from the deposit to date. Eagle Mountain Mine is noted for the pioneering use of the largest and most up to date equipment to mine and process its ore. In 1961 Eagle Mountain received the first fleet of 100-ton haulage trucks in the mining industry. There were thirteen semi-trailer units in the fleet. The first 12 to 17-yard size shovel in the mining industry was placed in operation at Eagle Mountain during 1962. Rotary drilling was introduced at Eagle Mountain in 1954 to replace churn drilling. Eagle Mountain was the first major mine to use metallized slurry when three aluminum slurries were introduced for primary blasting in 1962.

Jan 1, 1972

By R. C. Berry

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has become a routine requirement for mining operations on federal lands. A similar document is being required in developing countries. Baseline studies are needed prior to writing an EIS and these studies involve surface water, groundwater, air quality, and wildlife/ native plant evaluations. The required baseline hydrology and geochemical studies are often the most expensive and lengthy evaluations. This paper summarizes the hydrology and geochemical baseline studies required for .An EIS and presents suggested methods to expedite these studies and to shorten the time and the cost to complete the studies and the EIS.

Jan 1, 1999

By J. M. Locke

BRÜCKNER's revolving cylinders for roasting ores, etc., are now used at a number of the mills in Colorado and New Mexico, for the purpose of roasting and chloridizing silver ores, with highly satisfactory results, even from those cylinders of small size, erected before the many improvements of recent date. As examples of the larger improved cylinders, reference can be made to those erected at the Tennessee Reduction Works, Silver City, Grant County, New Mexico, and those which were built, in 1871, at the celebrated Caribou Silver Mill and Mines, Colorado, a mining enterprise which has proved so satisfactory as to have been lately sold to a Holland company for an enormous amount. These cylinders, as now constructed by Messrs. Lane & Bodley, of Cincinnati,, Ohio, are shown in Plate III, in which Fig. 1 is an elevation in perspective, Fig. 2 a longitudinal, and Fig. 3 a trans¬verse section. Fig. 4 is a sketch of a mill, with Brückner's cylinder. The exterior of the cylinder is a shell of boiler iron, 12 feet long by 5 feet 6 inches in diameter. The ends are partially closed with similar material, leaving in the centre a circular opening about 2 feet in diameter, bounded by a flange projecting several inches.. Upon one side is placed an opening closed by a hinged door. Upon the outside of the cylinder are bolted three bands, as shown in Fig. 1, in which the section of the first is square, and that of the third semi¬circular; the second, or middle band, is a strong spur gear. Passing through the cylinder are six pipes parallel to one another, in a plane at an angle of 15° to the axis of the cylinder; these pipes also lie in this plane at an angle of from 30° to 35° to the longitudinal, axis of the plane, as shown in Fig. 2, where the internal arrangement of the cylinder is seen, a perforated diaphragm being formed through part of the cylinder by means of perforated plates placed between

Jan 1, 1874

"Air Products approached LAC Minerals in 1987 to initiate trials with pure oxygen in the leach circuit at several LAC facilities in Canada. This paper gives an overview of oxygen use and covers specific operating data from the Doyon and Terrains Aurifères mills near Val D'Or in northwestern Quebec. LAC also uses oxygen at the Macassa mill in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.In addition to the LAC facilities, oxygen is currently in use for test purposes at the Holt McDermott mine in Kirkland Lake, Ontario and the Camflo mine near Val D'Or.There are two requirements for oxygen in the cyanide leach mill. Firstly, oxygen is required in the familiar gold dissolution reaction as follows:(1) 4 AU (s) + 8 NaCN (aq) + 02 (aq)+ 2H 20(aq) - 4NaAu(CN) 2(aq)+ 4Na OH(aq)Of the reagents on the left side of the equation, the availability of gold is fixed by the ore in question. Obviously, water is available in excess, 1eaving cyanide and oxygen as the limiting constituents in the process. Most mills operate with an excess of cyanide, which is fairly closely monitored. Dissolved oxygen levels, however, are not normally watched very closely and find their own level based on the temperature, the availability of compressed air and the ability of the ore to consume oxygen.Typical D.O. levels are in the 3-8 ppm range, however levels less than 1 ppm are not uncommon for refractory ores.With pure oxygen, dissolved oxygen levels as high as 30 ppm can be achieved. (Figure #1). This greatly accelerates the kinetics of the leach reaction and may also shift the reaction further towards completion thus increasing gold dissolution slightly."

Jan 1, 1990

By Y. G. Seredkin, A. A. Vasiliev, A. Y. Senchenko, A. V. Aksenov

"The valuable materials resulting from the processing of gold-bearing ores are often refractory to direct gold recovery through cyanidation. There are multiple methods for chemical liberation of gold prior to cyanidation such as pressure and biological oxidation as well as atmospheric oxidation which is typically used in combination with physical activation of material by ultrafine grinding such as the Albion ProcessTM. This paper will examine the data from process testworks carried out to estimate the efficiency of the Albion Process™ for the oxidation of materials with a wide composition range prior to cyanidation. The data will be compared to that obtained by direct cyanidation of the feed (without oxidation) and from the testing of pressure oxidation on the feed prior to cyanidation. Albion Process™ tests were conducted in Institute TOMS with participation of Glencore Technology Pty Ltd (Australia). Refractory concentrates obtained from the ores of several Russian and CIS deposits were used as feed for the testing. These concentrates were also subjected to a material composition study and testing using conventional recovery methods. The resulted test data make it possible to perform an integrated assessment of process properties for materials with different compositions, compare performance of various process flowsheets for the materials under study, and conclude on efficiency of Albion Process™ application for gold recovery from refractory materials different in their composition.INTRODUCTION It is often the case that gold ore concentrates are refractory to gold recovery by direct cyanidation. This refractory nature is as a rule attributable to fine gold dissemination in minerals, most often in pyrite and other sulphides, as well as to the increased amount of components impeding cyanide leaching of gold due to cyanide consumption and reducing process conditions. The refractoriness of the concentrates results in low gold recovery values when conventional cyanidation technology is used. In this context, various additional processes are applied to breakdown such refractory sulphide concentrates, i.e. mechanical breakdown (fine and ultrafine grinding), chemical breakdown (atmospheric oxidation, e.g. Leachox, acid-oxygen oxidation, pressure oxidation – POX, bacterial oxidation – BIOX), and thermochemical breakdown (various roasting methods). Such breakdown processes allow for increase in recovery of finely disseminated gold during the downstream cyanidation, however, their application is cost-intensive and does not always ensure economic benefit."

Jan 1, 2018

By J. A. M. van Liempt

Since the discovery of von Laue, that a crystal forms a natural grating for X-rays, our knowledge of the structure of solids has gone forward with rapid strides. This progress is not only of purely scientific interest, but has also yielded direct technological results. One of the most valuable results is the broadening of our knowledge of the structure of pure metals and alloys. To promote these studies it is often desirable to have at our disposal pieces of metal consisting of one single crystal. As is so often the case in the natural sciences, we obtain the best results by making our earliest experiments on pure, simple materials and avoiding unnecessary complications. The Cryogen Laboratory at Leyden followed this method with much success, because the work was done at such low temperatures that the heat movement of the atoms was almost absent. Similarly we can simplify the studies of metals by leaving out of consideration the influence of the grain boundaries and the mutual influence of the crystals by using unicrystalline instead of polycrystal-line metal. Methods of making single crystals have been scientifically studied during the past few years. Some methods were already known in the arts, but these have been improved and new methods have been developed. The methods for making metallic single crystals may be divided into the following groups: A. From the liquid state B. From the gaseous state C. Electrolytically D. By recrystallization in the solid state Method A 1. Tamwmnn's Method1—Tammann succeeded in making bismuth single crystals of a maximum length of 20 cm. by undercooling the molten metal 0.1 to 0.3' G. below its melting point in glass tubes of a maximum

By Dan Urich

This paper covers the construction and operation of the Grate-Kiln system at the Humboldt Mine. The mine concentrator and pellet plant are located approximately 14 miles West of Ishpeming, Michigan, on the Marquette iron Range. Production of pellets began in mid-July, 1960.

Jan 1, 1962

By R. Togashi, S. Kuramochi, T. Yamada

In 1972, the Akita Zinc Co., Ltd. commenced operations with an annual capacity of 86,000 tonnes of electrolytic zinc, and it has operated with an annual capacity of 156,000 t-Zn since 1974. The business surroundings for non-ferrous metals production have become more severe with the high Yen rate for the dollar and low domestic demand in the last few years. Consequently, the company tried to survive with some improvements and succeeded to reduce operating costs and to improve profitability as follows: 1) expansion of its production capacity to. 196,000 t-Zn annually, 2) saving man-power by the introduction of fully-automated machines for cathode handling in the cellhouse, 3) improvement of the hematite process by means of the recovery of rare-metals. These improvements made Akita Zinc a competitive refinery in the modern world. We have been trying to improve the operations more and more. One of the challenges is to purify the iron oxide made in the hematite process by applying an As removal process, which is coming into operation in the near future.

Jan 1, 2000

By U. Srivastava

In the processing of manganiferous ore, it is useful to control whether the manganese (Mn) goes to the iron product to produce ferromanganese, or to the slag for extraction as a high Mn product. This can be done by manipulating the thermodynamic conditions for manganese oxide(MnO) reduction to control whether it remains as MnO or converts to metallic Mn. Results are presented showing that during production of iron nuggets, reduction of manganese oxide (MnO) can be controlled by changing the furnace temperature and reductant composition appropriately.

Jan 1, 2010

By J. Gong

Fine mineral particles pose two challenging problems in froth flotation, i.e., ineffective recovery of fine hydrophobic particles and mechanical entrainment of fine hydrophilic particles. The first problem has attracted much research effort while the second problem has received much less attention. We have recently proposed a method to deal with mechanical entrainment, i.e., utilizing the flocculating power of polymeric depressants to flocculate fine gangue particles and making the flocs big enough so that the mechanical entrainment of these particles can be reduced or eliminated. In this paper, we report results on the use of polyethylene oxide (PEO) in controlling quartz gangue in the flotation of sulphide ores. PEO was found to flocculate fine quartz and lower its entrainment. It was also found to modify air/water interfacial properties and acted as a frother, which could increase gangue entrainment. Nevertheless, when used at starvation dosages, PEO was found to significantly improve the grades of the floated sulphide concentrates.

Jan 1, 2014

By James D. Cooper

Technologic advances in materials utilization during the past two decades have brought is a long way toward the point where we can make the products we need from the materials we have readily available. Notable examples are the synthesis of diamond, zeolites, quartz crystal, mullite, and mica, and the development of phosphate bonded tale. Two of these--zeolites and mullite--involve the use of clays. There is little reason to doubt that equally important advances will be realized in the next decade, and that clays will play an important role in the developing materials technology. Indeed, the stage is already set for many of them. This discussion is concerned primarily with the high quality, relatively high priced clays, kaolin, bentonite, fuller's earth and ball clay. The first three have enjoyed demand growth rates over the past two decades which on the average exceeded the growth rate for the economy as a whole. There are indications that demand for ball clay will be growing at a faster rate in the future.

Jan 1, 1970