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By William F. Hahn

This project focused effort on three separate areas: demonstration of a low seam longwall illumination system, design of illumination systems for low coal auger miners, and an assessment of machine lighting systems for machinery used to mine low seam coal. Results indicated illumination systems can be purchased by the mine operators of low coal seams. These systems can be supplied with the equipment as a factory integrated system or can be retrofitted to the machine or longwall equipment.

Jan 1, 1982

By M. A. Hararah, T. Neesse, M. G. Farghaly, G. Proellss, P. Kaniut, W. Rubarth

ABSTRACT: This paper presents two new options for hydrocyclone control. Volume split control using a control valve in the overflow is applied for the stabilization of separation results at changing feed conditions. Controlled water injection to the conical part of the cyclone leads to the reduction of fine particles in the underflow. Hydrocyclone monitoring in both cases is performed by optical sensors that indicate the spray angle of the underflow. Applications in mineral processing for desliming, classification in closed-circuit grinding, and dewatering are demonstrated.

Jan 1, 2011

By E. A. Sobering

Hydraulic filling or sand filling is a system used to fill underground excavations with a dense pulp. Milltailings are commonly used. The resultant fill, after being placed and de-watered, is known as hydraulic fill. These fills have been effectively used to (a) provide immediate support of the workings place during stoping; (b) .facilitate the recovery of pillars; (c) limit surface damage by subsidence; (d) permit the mining of parallel hanging-wall orebodies; (e) stabilize the ground in mines, thereby reducing the rock burst hazard; (f) control and prevent mine fires; and (g) solve tailings disposal .problems. The various uses of hydraulic filling have been developed during the last ninety years. In 1864 it was employed only to control surface subsidence. Since then, this system has been successfully applied to meet specific ground support problems. Methods of handling mine-fill derived from a source outside the stope include transportation ?Of the material by hand, mechanical, pneumatic, and hydraulic means, or a combination of these methods. The hydraulic method has many advantages not found in the others; a significant advantage is the low compressibility of the material when compared to other mine-fill material. The hydraulic filling operation includes the .preparation and transportation of the pulp. The underground practices in .placing the fill vary from mine to mine. The chief reason, formerly, for using hydraulic fill was the exceptional support it provided, but recently it has proven an important means of reducing mining costs. This is especially true where labour is a large part of an alternative method, or where timber consumption is greatly reduced. The indirect benefits of hydraulic filling are probably as important as the direct benefits, and few important disadvantages exist.

Jan 1, 1956

By Liming Yuan, Wei Tang, RICHARD THOMAS, DAVOOD BAHRAMI

The location and orientation of fire suppression nozzles is critical in suppressing mobile mine equipment fires. To effectively suppress such fires, optimization needs to be considered for the suppression nozzle locations and discharge angle. Detailed experiments were conducted to study the effectiveness of fire suppression agents with different nozzle configurations. A variety of fire suppression systems including dry chemical, wet chemical, dual agent (dry and wet chemical), carbon dioxide, and water mist were used. Six types of nozzle locations were studied, and their fire suppression effectiveness were compared. Results from this work highlight potential considerations when determining effective fire suppression designs.

Feb 1, 2025

By E. H. Burroughs

Persons interested in th_e study of petroleum and allied substances have long felt the need of a bibliographic index to the literature. This bibliography, which is intended to be the first elf a yearly series, has been compiled by the petroleum division of the Bureau of Mines with a view to satisfying this need. The references include only the more noteworthy writings that appeared during the year 191.5 in both ·the United States and foreign countries. Only patents plainly applicable to the industries in point have been included, although, of course, a close scrutiny of the great volume of patent literature might reveal many other patents of possible value. The references are arranged according to the subject classification on pages 3 to 11. This classification, which is to be followed in the succeeding bibliographies of this series, is offered as a guide for further study and classification of the pertinent literature.

Jan 1, 1918

By A. D. Trippel

The Cripple Creek Mining district is located in Teller County, Colorado, 30 km west of Colorado Springs and 9 km southwest of Pikes Peak (Fig. 1). Since its discovery in 1891, the district has produced almost 21 million tr oz of gold (Gott et al., 1967), most of which has been from high-grade vein deposits. Globe Hill is located in the northern part of the district (Fig. 2). Production from its summit has yielded over 100,000 tr oz of gold. Early production was concentrated along high-grade veins and fault structures, but emphasis was soon placed on the extensive, low-grade (0.0X oz/t), breccia-hosted mineralization. From 1977 to 1981 Newport Minerals, Inc., a subsidiary of Gold Resources, Inc., mined 680,000 t of low-grade gold ore from the Globe Hill pit (Fig. 3) and production is expected to resume in 1986. These strongly-altered and -oxidized breccias are amenable to bulk-mining methods, and thus similar deposits are currently being sought elsewhere in the district. Numerous publications and reports discuss the breccia-hosted mineralization at Globe Hill. They include Cross and Penrose (1895); Argall (1905, 1908); Lindgren and Ransome (1906); Keener (1962); Peters (1982); Thompson, Trippel, and Dwelley (1985); and Trippel (1985). This preprint is a summary of the recently-completed research documented by Trippel (1985).

Jan 1, 1986

By Bill Morgan

This paper discusses the economic zones of application for several different types of earthmoving equipment: dozers, wheel loaders in load-and-carry applications, wheel tractor scrapers, articulated trucks, rigid-frame trucks and wagons. Only the medium to large pieces of equipment were considered. From this chart (Figure 1), you can see the size range, in tons of carrying capacity, of Caterpillar equipment and the specific models analyzed.

Jan 1, 1994

By G Fergus, M Hart, S W. Weeks

Rio Tinto Alcan has undertaken feasibility level assessments into the expansion of its bauxite mining operation in an area south of the Embley River in far north Queensland. The project has the potential to extend their Weipa operations by approximately 40 years.The construction and operation of two additional mineral ore processing plants are proposed for the South of Embley project. Golder Associates was engaged to develop and conduct modelling assessments of potential sources of water supply required by mineral ore processing.Two models were developed using GoldSim: a dam yield model and a water balance model. GoldSim is a graphical object-oriented modelling environment with a capacity to carry out dynamic probabilistic simulations. Originally developed by Golder, GoldSim has been applied successfully in a decision support role to a range of mine water management operations.The dam yield model was used to provide estimates of reliability and volume of annual water supply of several potential surface water dams. This information was then used to determine a hierarchy of water supply options for processing plant operations. The water balance model dynamically simulated the water demands of the two production plants and the consequential response in water supply, with respect to the timing and discharges provided by the various source options.Use of the model provided a preliminary operational tool to assist with water supply management decisions. Water quality issues required a blending of water from separate sources and attention paid to scheduling to ensure water supply through the dry season. The model also helped identify risks to water supply in the event of underperformance of one or more water supply sources. This allowed the operational rules to be refined to minimise those risks.The dynamic and stochastic modelling approach provided a method for identification of water supply issues susceptible to seasonal climate variability.CITATION:Weeks, S W, Hart, M and Fergus, G, 2013. A dynamic evaluation of water supply security susceptible to climate seasonality, in Proceedings Water in Mining 2013, pp 197-208 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 26, 2013

By Marcus Weldon

We are at the beginning of an era of profound transformation and human progress — a new industrial revolution. This “Automation of Everything” era will be brought about by digital interfaces, data analysis and control of the physical world through networks employing the Nokia Bell Labs Future X1 architecture — networks to support the digitization and connection of everything and everyone with the goal of automating much of life. The interconnection of robots, machines, drones, sensors, processing platforms and people through Future X networks will provide transformative tools for the automation and optimization of factories and warehouses, ports, electric grids, transportation networks, food, healthcare, construction, logistics and supply chain, emergency response, mining, and other physical industries. To date, the level of automation has been modest at best. Automating these physical industries — industries that account for 70 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product, for example — has the potential to drive significant increases in the world’s economic productivity.2 Realizing the potential of this next industrial revolution will require billions of wirelessly connected endpoints for high fidelity physical-to-digital conversion, millisecond response times to tightly control and coordinate machines and robots, and intelligent analysis to optimize real-time decisions — tasks beyond the reach of current networks. Increased levels of automation are already being achieved through the use of 4G advanced wireless access technologies. The untethering of sensors and actuators in industrial environments through the low-latency, high-bandwidth, high-reliability, and massive scale provided by 5G wireless access will complete this evolution, providing an unprecedented ability to digitize, analyze, comprehend and manipulate the physical world at a scale never previously thought possible. These new capabilities will enable us to create digital models of the physical world with ever higher levels of fidelity, further enhancing our ability to improve operational efficiencies and increase productivity and worker safety. Doing this will require a dramatic evolution in network architecture toward massively distributed cloud control and baseband capacity to achieve the required ultra-low latency and ultra-high bandwidth for industrial and infrastructure automation services — the Future X architecture. In early 2019, Nokia Bell Labs will publish a sequel to “The Future X Network: A Bell Labs Perspective”. “Future X for Industries: A Nokia Bell Labs Perspective” will explore how the Future X architecture will automate many of the world’s physical industries, including chapters devoted to electric power, cities, rail, mining, public safety, manufacturing, ports, logistics and supply chain, and an overarching chapter devoted to securing this highly automated world. To give you a small taste of the feast that’s to come, we’re sharing with you an initial installment — “Future X for Industries: Mining” — the Nokia Bell Labs view of how mining will be transformed through a Future X architecture..

Oct 1, 2019

By R. B. Paine, B. M. Wright

"Syncrude has entered a new era involving the use of pipeline slurries to convey oil sand to the extraction plant. Hydrotransport operations and base plant operations encounter vast performance differences when processing different types of oil sand. This paper describes the hydrotransport process, its history at Syncrude, methods of describing the source ore characteristic and plant performance. The use of this information within Syncrude and how it will be managed on an ongoing basis will also be described. IntroductionThe Syncrude Canada Ltd. site is located 43 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, on the Athabasca oil sand deposit. The Syncrude operation consists of mining, extraction, upgrading, utilities and other support facilities. The mined ore is sent to the extraction plant where water and solids are removed from the bitumen. The bitumen is then sent to the upgrading plants to be further processed into Syncrude Sweet Blend (a light sweet crude oil). Syncrude produced 73.5 Mbbls of Syncrude Sweet Blend in 1996 and produced 75.7 Mbbls in 1997. Prior to 1993, Syncrude moved ore from the pit to the extraction plant via four dragline / bucketwheel/ conveyor systems. These systems, supplemented by auxiliary ore crushers, satisfied the feed requirements of the extraction plant. Ore was conveyed to the control tower area and placed in the dump pocket via four radial stackers. Various blending scenarios occurred at this point, using feed from the four mining quadrants and from auxiliary feed crushers. Upon entering the extraction plant from the base mine, the oil sand passed through a series of tumblers where it was mixed with hot water and caustic. It then proceeded to one of four primary separation vessels where bitumen froth was floated off and the middlings and coarse fractions were recombined and sent to the tail oil recovery vessels, or TORs, for further processing."

Jan 1, 1999

The BHP Billiton Cannington mine uses sequential flotation to treat a silver, lead and zinc ore supplied from an underground mine. The final products from the process plant are a silver rich lead concentrate and a zinc concentrate. Operational history of plant performance highlighted that the majority of valuable metal losses to final tailing occurred in the -5 ¦m fraction. Research completed on the flotation characteristics of this size fraction in plant feed resulted in the development of a split flotation process to improve the silver and lead mineral recoveries. Construction of a $A 9.5 million brownfield project to install the new split flotation circuit at Cannington was completed in July 2002. The circuit consists of three stages of cyclone classification to recover the ultra fine material to a final cyclone overflow stream, conditioning of this pulp to achieve optimal process conditions, and conventional rougher and three stage cleaner flotation to produce a silver rich lead concentrate. The rougher tail from the new circuit is recombined with the cyclone underflow streams and processed through the original lead-zinc flotation circuit. This paper discusses the circuit design, material properties, material selection for components of the circuit, operational practices and requirements to ensure the circuit succeeded in meeting production targets. The technology is subject of a number of patent applications including international application No PCT/AU02/00400.

Jan 1, 2003

By R. L. Godfrey

The Custom Coals advanced coal cleaning plant will be designed with a unique blending of existing and new processes to produce two types of compliance coals: Carefree Coal? and Self-Scrubbing Coal?. Carefree Coal will be produced by cleaning the coal in a proprietary dense media cyclone circuit utilizing fine magnetite to remove up to 90 percent of the pyritic sulfur and correspondingly greatly reduce the ash. While may utilities can achieve full S02 reduction compliance with Carefree Coal, others face higher sulfur reduction requirements due to the higher sulfur content of their existing fuel supplies. For these circumstances, a patented Self-Scrubbing Coal will be produced by taking Carefree Coal and pelletizing limestone-based additives with the finest fraction of the clean coal. These technologies will enable over 150 billion tons of non-compliance U.S. coal reserves to meet compliance requirements.

Jan 1, 1995

By Patrick Granitzki, Alicia Plinio, Janitha Batagoda, Peter Howell

The City of Newark is making a comeback with new mixed-use multi-storied Residential Development projects. The majority of developers tend to use driven H-pile deep foundation systems to support their super-structures. A different approach was recommended for one particular new development near the Passaic River. The surficial geology included glacial deposits consisting of loose to dense sand overlaying relatively soft silt and clay and a lower stratum of medium-dense sand. During a preliminary site investigation for the project, bedrock was encountered at depths ranging between approximately 168 feet to 182 feet below the ground surface. Design capacity required a single pile of 200 tons. Two different pile foundation systems were evaluated in conjunction to the typical driven H-pile system in order to review potential costs and construction schedule impacts. The two alternative pile systems evaluated were tapered tube piles and drilled displacement piles. Theoretical calculations were followed by in-situ load testing. The field testing results indicated the use of drilled displacement piles as the best option for a portion of the proposed building. This paper discusses the different piles systems considered, installation and using drilled displacement piles to minimize cost and optimize construction.

Sep 8, 2021

By Dennis R. Dolinar

The danger to personnel, equipment, and pillar structure created by the spalling of a coal rib can be minimized by installing rib bolts. To assure that a configured support system will maintain a coal rib, the U.S. Bureau of Mines developed a rib bolt system based on a nonpreventable failure concept. A statistical equation quantitatively relates the amount of rib retained to the bolt spacing and the width of the spalled material. Laboratory test results show that the equation accurately predicts the amount of material retained and confirm the validity of the support concept. The examination of rib bolting at a coal mine experiencing rib sloughage provides evidence that the effectiveness of the support can be related to the failure pattern of the spalled material. An analysis of roof and roof support reaction to rib sloughage at the mine indicated that the rib sloughage had little effect on roof stability. Although supporting ribs might not affect roof stability, laboratory test results indicate that the material retained by the support can sustain a load up to 20 pct of the intact compressive strength of the material.

Jan 1, 2010

By B. Gorain

"INTRODUCTION The last few decades have seen some remarkable advancement in information technology, but recently various digital technologies have resulted in several synergies to deliver innovation in diverse applications. The mining industry has been relatively slow in adopting these technologies compared to the other industries, but this scenario is changing fast. Keywords: Digital Transformation, Operational Intelligence, Gold Recovery, Mine to Mill integration, Planning and Execution strategy, Theory of Constraints. Challenges Mining companies globally are going through a series of challenges such as declining ore grades with complex metallurgy, increasing depth of ore bodies, high capital and operating costs, lower productivity, shortage of technical resources, significant pressure from stake-holders to deliver, along with growing environmental and corporate social responsibility issues. Improvement in profitability would need significant improvements in operational performance. Consequently, over the last few years, there has been a major focus amongst some mining companies to imbibe Operational Excellence. This has been only possible because of the replacement of a silos based approach by an integrated view of the organization. Such an integrated view is now possible via the evolving digital technologies. Even so, such a transformation calls for a change in culture, which, for most organization is not trivial. Attempts in the past to integrate functions such as through Mine-to-Mill initiatives in the mining industry have demonstrated significant benefits to many operations (McKee, 2013). Still, sustaining these benefits has clearly been a challenge due to manpower turn over and lack of proper systems and structures that integrate information between business functions within an operation and between operations and the corporate.Opportunities The advent of digital technology has opened-up opportunities to integrate inter-departmental information for a unified understanding of, and across, an entire organization. The advances in instrumentation, equipment control systems, supervisory control systems (SCADA/Historian) and industrial networks have helped in the direction of enterprise wide integration. The availability of real time information across an enterprise has given rise to numerous possibilities to improve organization performance. As suggested by Seshan & Gorain (2016), some of the potential opportunities are as follows:"

Jan 1, 2018

By Alfred Weiss

These volumes report on the study initiated by the U. S. Bureau of Mines to develop and apply a methodology to quantitatively assess the probability and potential benefits of technological innovation over the next twenty-five years. The potential was recognized for new technology to solve copper industry problems in the United States. Objectives of the study were to: (1) Develop a methodology to obtain the opinions of mineral experts about future events -their likelihood of occurrence, and, conditional on occurrence, when and to what extent they are likely to occur; (2) Identify, select, and describe potential technological innovations which would have significant impact on copper production; (3) Implement the methodology and obtain the opinions of the mineral experts regarding selected copper technologies; and (4) Analyze the expected future benefits of successful technological innovations :n the copper industry. Although individual technologies are continuously examined throughout the copper 'community', this study is the first known comprehensive forecast of future copper technology. This study is also believed to be unique 1n that it represents the consensus opinion of over sixty expert copper technologists on the expected use of innovative technology in the industry over the next 25 years. The report is contained in three volumes.

Jan 1, 1983

By Peter Rubie

For many years, optimising the relining of hard rock grinding mills has been complicated by: ?? the large number of variables; ?? the low frequency of relines (slow feedback loop); ?? the potential economic risk associated with some changes. A technology that has its roots in the automotive manufacturing industry is being utilised to construct a statistically accurate, configurable, and dynamic simulation of the mill relining process. The effects of various mechanisation and process changes can be rapidly modelled and compared. This technology will provide mill maintenance managers and contract relining companies with the opportunity to benchmark current performance against world?s best practice. It will also provide an opportunity for concentrator plant designers and mill manufacturers to plan for maximum plant efficiency, by designing an infrastructure and equipment combination that maximises annual plant availability. This simulation tool and its associated data set, has been developed using recent grinding mill performance data from mills of varying dimensions, liner configurations, mill relining equipment, operator and tool variables. The simulation will provide an output that the various stakeholders can utilise to make optimal decisions within the given financial, physical and technological constraints of the individual concentrator plant.

Jan 1, 2012

By M. Kul

In this study, the effects of various extraction and stripping parameters, such as equilibrium pH (7.0, 8.5 and 10), extractant concentration (5, 10 and 20 volume %), organic-to-aqueous (O/A) ratio and stripping agent type and concentration were studied on chromium (VI) recovery from chromium electroplating rinse bath wastewater using Aliquat 336. Results showed that these parameters all had significant effects on chromium (VI) recovery. A pregnant strip solution from a chromium electroplating rinse bath wastewater with 33.4 g/L chromium content, suitable for sodium dichromate production, was generated by 20 vol. % Aliquat 336 in commercial kerosene. The O/A ratio was 1/4 and the equilibrium pH value was 0.87, the as-received pH value. The wastewater was treated with a two-stage countercurrent extraction process to produce a loaded organic phase, which was later stripped at the O/A ratio of two with a 4-M NaOH solution in a two-stage countercurrent stripping process using Taguchi?s optimization technique.

Jan 1, 2010

By H. Y. Sohn

The ignition and combustion of chalcopyrite particles under suspension-smelting conditions, in which the particle-particle interaction is neglected, has been analyzed by considering the intrinsic kinetics of oxidation and heat and mass transfer between the particle and its surroundings. Reasonable agreement has been obtained between the calculated results and experimental results from a laminar-flow furnace reported in the literature. This computation- al procedure has further been applied to flash-smelting conditions. Under suspension-smelting conditions (Sh = Nu = 2), chalcopyrite particles ignite at around 960 K. The effects of various parameters, such as oxygen concentration, particle size, and gas temperature, have also been evaluated. Comparison between calculated results in this work and experimental observations indicates that SO is the important gaseous product that forms at the surface of the particle.

Jan 1, 1993

By P Gomez, R Baumgartner, G Escobar

"The Cerro Corona mine consists of a Cu-Au porphyry deposit located in the Andes of northern Peru. The deposit comprises a typical Cu-Au multiphase porphyry mineralisation that has been overprinted by an epithermal event. This has generated a complex pattern of argillic alteration facies, which was accompanied by a locally structural-controlled Au-Cu mineralisation with the presence of gold and limited Cu sulfides and sulfosalts. These features, along with the porphyry-style mineralisation, produced a multifaceted occurrence of gold.Since the beginning of operations at Cerro Corona in 2008 there has been a continuous improvement of the geological and mineralogical knowledge. All mineralogical studies have mainly focused on host rock types and, to a lesser extent, alteration minerals, but little work has been done on the mineralisation itself. As a consequence, limited mineralogical information was available for use in the process optimisation initiatives.In the last two years, a series of mineralogical characterisation studies were undertaken with two main goals. First, to gain an understanding of the mineralisation genesis and second, to obtain a detailed characterisation of copper and gold minerals to support ongoing process optimisation. The first goal was achieved by conventional optical microscopy while the second required electronic microscopy and other microanalyses due to the necessity of quantifying several minerals of interest for the processing.The results were used to refine pre-existing geometallurgical domains, explain copper and gold losses in the flotation process and to some extent, improve copper and gold recoveries. The mineralogical characterisation is an ongoing work. Mineralogy provides the basis for any optimisation exercise since it looks in detail at the material to be treated and therefore, should be part of all geometallurgical programs.CITATION:Baumgartner, R, Gomez, P and Escobar, G, 2016. Comprehensive Mineralogical Characterisation at the Cerro Corona Cu-Au Porphyry Mine – the Fundamental Key for Geometallurgical Applications, in Proceedings The Third AusIMM International Geometallurgy Conference (GeoMet) 2016, pp 221–230 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Jun 15, 2016