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By M. L. Bakker

The ISASMELT? top submerged lance (TSL) bath smelting process was developed in Mount Isa, Australia by Mount Isa Mines Limited (now a subsidiary of Xstrata plc) during the 1980s. By the end of 2011, the total installed capacity of the ISASMELT? technology will exceed 8 000 000 metric tons per year of feed materials in copper and lead smelters around the world. Commercial plants, operating in Belgium and Germany, are also batch converting copper materials in ISASMELT? furnaces. This TSL technology is equally effective for continuous converting processes, in which role it is called ISACONVERT?. This paper presents the recently patented ISACONVERT? process for the continuous converting of nickel and platinum group metal (PGM) containing mattes using the calcium ferrite slag system. The paper focuses on the potential application of the ISACONVERT? technology to existing nickel and PGM smelting complexes.

Jan 1, 2011

By R. Rushforth

The surge of activity in the solar energy market, spurred by government incentives, has created new and more efficient solar technologies, but issues surrounding land- and water-use have backlogged the full-scale development of solar farms. This paper explores siting solar power plants on degraded or polluted lands, such as mine tailings impoundments. Historically, mining and has been integral to Arizona?s economy, but has dwindled in relevance due to urban pressures and environmental regulations. Currently, it is legal to site solar power plants on degraded or polluted lands, but the question remains whether the economics of this degraded lands solar development is more favorable than developing pristine land. Therefore, we explore economics of developing mine tailings impoundments at both the institutional and financial level. Methods of research for this paper were interviews with government regulators, environmental advocacy organizations, farmers, and mining company executives. Financial models using extant tax incentives show a positive net present value for the installation of solar power plants, even when accounting for the costs of land remediation.

Jan 1, 2011

By J. Muller

Keywords: Pyrometallurgy, blast furnace, slag viscosity, slag liquidus temperature, phase equilibria The viscosity of molten slag in blast furnace operations is an important process variable, influencing the rate and location of reactions inside the furnace, as well as the ease with which the final slag could be removed from the furnace. To optimize these processes, it is necessary to estimate the slag viscosity and liquidus temperatures as accurately as possible, and know the target values. Models to predict viscosities and liquidus temperatures, incorporating phase equilibrium calculations, have been developed and validated with measured data. Various diagrams have been developed to illustrate how the properties vary with composition and temperature, including pseudo-ternary diagrams of SiO2-MgO-CaO-Al2O3 for viscosity and liquidus temperature. Models were also applied and methodologies developed to analyse historical blast furnace operations and determine target values.

Jan 1, 2011

By T. G. Joseph

ABSTRACT: The Canadian oil sands provide some of the harshest mining conditions in the world. Asoperations demand ever bigger tools, the toll on large mobile mining equipment is high, with structurallife often half of that expected. Soft ground conditions predominantly lead to fatigue failure scenarios, poor stability, and inconsistent payload evaluations. These challenges are not solely a concern for Canadian oil sands mines; there are far-reaching implications for surface mining equipment in any poor ground-operating environment. This paper focuses on the basics of payload evaluation, motion response and a simple estimate of structural life for haulers.

Jan 1, 2011

By M. J. Collins, B. Parekh, A. Hasenbank, B. Hewitt

Newcrest Mining Limited, originally as Lihir Gold, has operated a pressure oxidation plant for the recovery of gold from refractory ore since 1997. The mine and gold plant are located on Lihir Island in Papua New Guinea. Design of the original pressure oxidation circuit was based on the results of pilot plant tests conducted by Sherritt in Fort Saskatchewan. Following a decision to expand the plant in 2008, Lihir Gold contracted Sherritt to design a new autoclave. The design exercise utilized the original pilot plant test results, commercial process results at Lihir, and an understanding of advances in autoclave technology since the original plant was built. The new Lihir autoclave will be the largest horizontal, multiple-compartment autoclave in the world. The design process for the pressure oxidation expansion is described in this paper.

Jan 1, 2011

By Sang Joon Pak

Deep-sea mineral resources explored by Korea are categorized into mainly three types; manganese nodules, manganese crusts and seafloor massive sulfides. Manganese nodules have high Pt enrichment factors (EF=400, ore/crust ratios). Rare earth oxides (REO) contents from manganese nodules show from 0.037 to 0.302 REO% with mean value of 0.12%. Te and Pt are highly enriched in manganese crusts, displaying EFs of 10800 and 150, respectively. REO contents of manganese crusts are slightly richer than manganese nodules (0.013~0.387 REO%, average = 0.18 REO%). Seafloor massive sulfides deposits are featured by outstanding values of Se (EF=1300) well as In (EF=110). Au (0.8~26.3 g/t) and Ag (0.9~348.0 g/t) are another enrichment metals in SMS, although they belong to precious metals. Rare earth elements of SMS are meaningless as resources but REE are increasing in sediments overlying SMS. Heavy rare earth elements (HREE) from both manganese nodules and manganese crusts are typically higher than ones from land-based REE deposits. HREO grade and their portions of manganese nodules as well as manganese crusts are greatly similar to ion-absorbed type REE deposits in China, implying REE of subsea mineral resources are absorbed in nodules and crusts. Rare metals including REE could be exploited as by-production of commodities such like Ni, Co, Cu and so on. Rare metal resources from manganese nodules and manganese crusts are featured by low-grade and large scale deposits. Therefore rare metals in subsea mineral resources will add its economic values.

Jan 1, 2011

By Tom Barczak

Early in my career, while giving a presentation on shield design for longwall mining at one of the International Conferences on Ground Control in Mining, the late Jim Scott told me that I was finally getting it, because ?I was starting to think like a rock!? Although I didn?t realize it at the time, those few words changed my career forever. At the start of my career, I did a lot of laboratory testing, taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the Mine Roof Simulator to study the performance and design characteristics of longwall shields. I had a pretty good handle on what made shields work and what made them fail, but I was still struggling with how and why they develop their in-service loads and what they were actually controlling as opposed to being passive bystanders in a world beyond their control. It became clear to me that the simplistic models of dead weight loading could not explain the behavior I saw and measured underground. The problem did not go away when I started studying standing support systems. Again, I learned much about the strength, stiffness, and stability of these supports and helped the industry develop several new support products that attempted to provide more efficient support designs. But here, too, the simplistic models of dead weight loading did not seem to fit for me. That?s when I began to incorporate the ground reaction concept as a way of integrating the support response and the ground behavior into a cohesive design methodology. The concept has its limitations, no doubt, but I believe some form of it will be the future of not only designing supports but also, in the broader sense, enhancing the engineering aspects of ground control. The paper presented at the International Conference on Ground Control last year by Esterhuizen (2010) on pillar behavior is evidence of this. Think like a rock. Jim Scott was right. It takes two to dance. You can?t dance alone and you will never understand ground control by thinking like a support! ?Dumb as a box of rocks?? I don?t think so. The answer lies in the rocks!

Jan 1, 2011

By Jeffrey K. Whyatt

Estimation of the initial vertical stress carried in a coal seam is an important first step in virtually all methods of evaluating the required size of pillars in coal mines. Such estimates are a trivial exercise in coal fields overlain by gently undulating topography. The LaModel program is easily and routinely applied in such cases to efficiently estimate mining-induced stresses throughout the coal seam. However, application of LaModel to coal mines operating under rugged topography and/or in tectonically disturbed regions is more difficult. LaModel estimates stresses in a twostep process. Topographic and multi-seam mining effects on insitu stresses are estimated in an initial step, and then mininginduced stresses are estimated in an independent second step. A LaModel program function has recently been introduced that decouples these two steps, allowing in-situ stresses to be directly entered from a file rather than calculated. One application of this function is to streamline sensitivity studies by avoiding repeated recalculation of in-situ stress. The function also allows importation of in-situ stress estimates developed by other means. There are no constraints on the imported stress field, which may include significant stress perturbations due to topography, faults, etc. Hence, the range of geologic environments that can be examined by LaModel is significantly increased. This study uses the new decoupling function in an exploration of in-situ stress estimation in mountainous terrain. One option is to use the topographic stress estimation feature included within the LaModel program, and the influence of important parameters in this routine is explored. Another option explored is importation of results from a detailed volume element model. Results of this study suggest that the method used to estimate in-situ stress, and the details of its execution, can have a significant impact for mines in mountainous terrain with strong overburden. More generally, decoupling is an efficient and flexible function that should be considered for most design studies.

Jan 1, 2011

By Keila Gonçalves, Aline Tavares, Danielly Couto

"The sulphide copper deposits from the Carajás area (North region of Brazil) were generated by the percolation of hydrothermal fluids in volcanic and granitic rock and are denominated as IOCG deposits (iron oxide copper-gold deposits). During these hydrothermal events a wide variety of gangue minerals such as amphiboles, biotite and fluorite were formed. These gangue minerals are enriched in fluorine and chlorine which are deleterious elements in the copper concentrate. Chalcopyrite and bornite are the main copper-bearing minerals and they can occur in veins, in brecchia or disseminated in gangue.The study, which included bench scale flotation tests and minipilot plant tests was aimed at improving the fluorine rejection in the flotation process during the flowsheet design for one of these Carajás sulphide copper deposit. All of the study was supported by quantitative mineralogical techniques such as QEMSCAN and the use of a scanning electron microscope (SEM).This paper describes and discusses the results obtained in the metallurgical tests and emphasizes the importance of the quantitative mineralogical characterization during the process conditions optimization and flowsheet design.INTRODUCTIONIron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) deposits encompass a wide spectrum of sulphide-deficient low-Ti magnetite and/or hematite ore bodies of hydrothermal origin and normally have important copper sulphide reserves. In the Carajás mineral province, located at the southeast part of the Amazon Craton in Pará State (Brazil), there is a variety of world-class (>200 million tonnes) Fe-oxide Cu-Au deposits (e.g. Salobo, Cristalino and Sossego), whose genesis has been assigned to hydrothermal fluid percolation in volcanic and granitic rocks. Figure 1 displays the location of the Carajás area.The hydrothermal thermal fluid composition was extremely variable. It may have contained gases, salts (brine) and metals. The metals were carried as various complexes and it is thought to have involved sulphur, chlorine and fluorine containing species. This resulted in some minerals formed during the hydrothermal alteration having high fluorine and chlorine contents. These elements result in smelter penalties in a copper concentrate because they cause the smelter off-gases to be more corrosive."

Jan 1, 2011

By Ananta L. Yennamani

Blast movement measurement (BMM) transmitters are a practical method to measure three-dimensional (3D) rock movement because of blasting. The BMM transmitters are activated, programmed and installed in specially designed drill holes prior to the blast and the BMM detector locates the transmitters after the blast. The BMM software then calculates and summarizes the 3D movement of each BMM transmitter ball. This information helps to redefine the ore and waste boundaries and enables improved ore and waste selection, resulting in a genuine step change in grade control. The BMM program was carried out at Newmont Mining Corp.?s Phoenix Mine, in northern Nevada near the town of Battle Mountain. The mine is in a historic mining district that contains gold, silver and copper. The geology of the pit consists of different formations made up of sandstone, siltstone, limestone, chert-pebble conglomerate, shale, skarn and quartzite, to name a few. Some of the rock is extremely hard and a powder factor of up to 0.5 kg/t (1 lb/st) is required to get adequate fragmentation to ensure sufficient throughput through the crusher and the mill. The result of using such a high powder factor translates into considerable blast movement and heave. This movement means that the ore/waste digging polygons estimated by the ore control engineer from sampling the initial blast holes will no longer be located in their original posi-tions. The purpose of this project was to test the measurement method and to see if locating the digging polygons in the broken muck pile and excavating to those polygons will improve grade control through the mill. Case studies (Zhang, 1994), (Taylor, 1995), (Gilbride, 1995), (Harris, 1997), (Taylor, 2003), Barrick Goldstrike (Gold-strike Mine, 2008), Ruby Hill Mine (Hilkewich, 2009), (Porcupine Mine, 2005) and (Aguirre, 2010) have shown that, by accounting for the blast movement, there is a potential to increase mineral recovery by as much as 25 percent for individual blasts for only a modest cost increase.

Jan 1, 2011

By Lori Bassman, Cassandra George, Cullen McMahon, Md. Zakaria Quadir, Michael Ferry

"Complete and accurate analysis of subgrain microstructural features must include three-dimensional information. Three-dimensional electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) data can be used to characterize these features; however their boundaries first must be determined. This cannot be accomplished simply with pixel-to-pixel misorientation thresholding because many of the boundaries are gradual transitions in crystallographic orientation. Fast Multiscale Clustering (FMC) is an established image processing technique that we have combined with quaternion representation of orientation to segment this kind of data. Segmentation algorithms often have issues handling images with both distinct and subtle boundaries. Our implementation of FMC addresses this by using a novel distance function and statistical analysis to take into account the variance in orientation of each feature. Although FMC was originally a twodimensional image processing algorithm it can be generalized to analyze threedimensional data sets. As an example, a segmentation of microbands in cold-rolled aluminum is presented.IntroductionThree-dimensional electron backscatter diffraction (3D-EBSD) is a method for mapping the local crystallographic orientations of points in a volume. The technique uses a dual beam platform consisting of a focused ion beam (FIB) and SEM with EBSD, where FIB is used for serial sectioning and EBSD for orientation mapping of 2D slices. These 2D slices may then be stacked to create a 3D volumetric data set.Typical uses of such a data set include characterizing the geometries and crystallographic orientations of surfaces between structures in 3D [1-5]. This involves identifying boundaries accurately, either in 2D slices with subsequent 3D reconstruction (as illustrated in Figure 1) or in the 3D data set. All such data sets present the challenges of i) aligning data slices to correct for instrument drift, ii) identifying relevant boundaries, and iii) implementing appropriate smoothing or interpolation algorithms. The focus of this paper is boundary identification."

Jan 1, 2011

By H. D. Brenk

"The German Federation of International Mining and Mineral Resources (FAB) is a federation of German companies that are active in international mining and mining related business. The FAB presents a platform for the exchange of information about the worldwide mining commodities in the dialogue with German and foreign institutions. The expertise of the member companies in mining and related activities is based on a long term operation and consulting experience in Germany and abroad. This forms the basis for the special international competitiveness "Made in Germany". The FAB is particularly engaged in the following topics and tasks and acts as a focal point for: • international project developments with the German mining industry, • sustainable mining, consulting and equipment services, • geological and environmental technologies, • project financing and • intermediation of contracts, project enquiries, professional symposia and events. The FAB acts as a contact- and coordination site for international business partners, organizations and governmental authorities. Together with the federal government the FAB organizes bilateral working group meetings in the commodity and mining sector. Project enquiries are being distributed from the FAB among their member companies."

Jan 1, 2011

By Rustyn Sherer

Curis, the name of a new Arizona-based mineral development company, is an acronym which stands for ?Cu? (elemental symbol for copper), ?r? (recovery), ?is? (in situ, the Latin for ?in place?). The company was created specifically to advance the development of the Florence Copper Project in Florence, AZ and to pursue other next generation copper development projects in progressive jurisdictions around the world. ?We are extremely excited about this project,? said Curis Resources president and chief executive officer Michael McPhie. ?We?re here to set the standard for Greenfield in situ copper recovery (ISCR) operations in Arizona and around the world. We believe in our people, our technology and our process; and we are passionate about our commitment to environmental stewardship and community development. We?re making a long-term investment in Florence, and in Arizona.?

Jan 1, 2011

High-pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) are an accepted, but continuously expanding, comminution technology. The copper industry has a growing need to process harder ores with progressively lower grades, more challenging metallurgy and increasing demand for efficient bacterial leaching applications. This has resulted in a major focus on HPGR use in a crushing circuit. If the industry is to increase leach extraction while lowering energy costs in high-throughput hydrometallurgical operations, HPGR will be of inherent significance. The following paper summarizes test work on copper leach ores utilizing the benefits of HPGR comminution, while increasing several critical metallurgical parameters. Based on the current work and previous investigations, it was found that HPGR comminution within a crushing circuit, in specific instances, can result in 2 - >10% increases in cop-per extraction. The tested variables are crush size, rock type and copper mineralogy dependence. Various other process parameters may also be optimized.

Jan 1, 2011

By W. S. Steinberg

Keywords: Pyrometallurgy, furnace, open slag bath, Evraz, Highveld In 1963, the full-scale engineering study for the development of an Iron, Steel, and Vanadium plant was initiated. This was the birth of Evraz Highveld and its process flow as it is known today. Highveld started out as a steel works that produced steel and vanadium-bearing slag by using a titaniferous magnetite iron ore mined from its own mine site near Steelpoort. The process utilized co-current rotary kilns for pre-reduction, and submerged-arc furnaces for the production of pig iron with approximately 1.15% vanadium. Because of various technical challenges that the submerged-arc furnaces experienced over the years, a decision was taken in 2004 to convert the furnaces to Open Slag Bath (OSB) operation, in order to enable the maximum production of iron and vanadium while improving the control over operational parameters. The conversion proved to be highly successful and, since 2005, three furnaces have been converted to OSB operation. The fourth furnace will be converted in the first half of 2011. The conversion to OSB furnaces not only yields higher vanadium recovery to the metal at the iron plant, but also improves the overall throughput of the steel plant. This is the result of a higher carbon content of the liquid iron from the OSB furnaces, eliminating the need for anthracite addition to the shaking ladle process. This reduces the blowing time by approximately 60%. The conversion of the furnaces to OSB configuration is seen as an enabling technology change and a prerequisite to the implementation of other plant improvements that are envisaged. The long-term vision of EHSV is to convert five furnaces to OSB mode, and permanently decommission the two remaining submerged-arc furnaces. This will allow EHSV to maintain current steel and vanadium production but at a significantly improved overall efficiency.

Jan 1, 2011

By P. Kluge

Mining engineers frequently encounter complex design problems for which the critical components of the design are difficult to quantify or compare. Teams of people typically work on these designs and human perceptions and judgments play a strong role. To assist with this process, the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) as a decisionmaking tool is described in this paper. Although the technique is used in many other disciplines, it is currently not widely used in mining engineering in South Africa. To use the AHP process, the problem should be treated as a hierarchy that defines the goal, the alternatives to reach it, and the criteria for evaluation of these alternatives. Pair wise comparisons are conducted on the criteria of the hierarchy to establish priorities. The value of the technique is that it is simple to test for consistency amongst the pair wise comparisons to ensure that the answer obtained is better than that provided by a random selection. To illustrate the technique, the use of a backfill support system in a platinum mining project was investigated. Ten design parameters, which will be impacted by the use of backfill, were identified and weighted according to their relative importance. The result of the AHP evaluation was that the use of a backfill support system should be preferred to a conventional support system at the mine.

Jan 1, 2011

By Mark Jolly, Xiaojun Dai

"Foundry engineers in the traditional foundry usually regard the quality of casting component as the most important issue and leave the energy saving or energy efficiency as the subsidiary one. This frequently causes disproportionate energy consumption as a result of the inefficient casting processes used and increases the production costs. This paper presents the novel CRIMSON aluminium casting process and compares its facility and melting process with traditional melt furnaces and aluminium alloy melting process. A real example is investigated to demonstrate quantitatively how the traditional foundry wastes energy and what the improvement of energy efficiency can be achieved using the new CRIMSON method. The results of this investigation will help the foundry engineer recognize the importance of energy saving and demonstrate how to use this new technology to reduce production costs and carbon footprint without decreasing the quality of the cast component.IntroductionAluminium melting in metal casting industry is an energy intensive process where it is estimated that the energy consumption is in the order of 1,700 ~ 4,700 kWh tonne-1 in using crucible and natural gas [1]. Different countries may use different energy resources for aluminium melting: in US the main energy resources are natural gas, electricity and coke [2] and in UK most of the foundry use electricity, gas and oil as energy resources [3]. Due to the pressure of rising energy price and the strict environment law, it is anticipated that under the right socioeconomic conditions, the efficiency optimisation of industrial process can be an important step toward increased industrial sustainability [4]. In metal casting industry the energy efficiency of a casting facility depends largely on the efficiency of its melting and heat treating performance. In association with the two performances, over 60 % of the total process energy costs are represented in a typical casting facility [5] where there are huge opportunities for metal casting industry to adopt the best energy practices for potential energy saving. How to ameliorate the current processes for increasing energy efficiency will have a vital effect on reducing the production costs and increasing the competitiveness. For instance, by implementing some state of the art technologies such as the CRIMSON method in aluminium alloy casting will make use of such opportunities."

Jan 1, 2011

By S Sokhanvaran

Electrodeposition of silicon from a cryolite based electrolyte at a relatively low temperature (1000°C) is a promising approach to generate high purity silicon. In order to obtain fundamental data pertaining to electrowinning of silicon from Cryolite?SiO2 melts, density and electrical conductivity measurements were made. A range of temperatures and SiO2 contents was studied for each property. It was found that while density has an inverse relationship with temperature, the dependence for electrical conductivity is direct. Increasing silica content up to the saturation limit (~ 5 wt%) increases the density whereas further increase in SiO2, lowers the melt density. On the other hand, the conductivity is lower for the melts with greater SiO2 content, at any temperature.

Jan 1, 2011

By Luben Xie, Lin Hu, Qiang Wang, Min Gan, Tao Jiang, Wenqi Li, Yi Wang, Xiaohui Fan

"The mineralization behaviors of typical fluxes are studied by investigating the microstructures with optical microscope. The results show that the reactions begin with between iron ore and lime, limestone with small particle to form primary liquid. Then coarse limestone, dolomite and serpentine take part in reaction under the action of primary liquid. Limestone is the easiest to mineralization, next dolomite, and the last is serpentine. The higher basicity and smaller fluxes size favor the mineralization process of dolomite and serpentine.IntroductionThe purposes of adding fluxes into sintering are that:(1) to increase the basicity of sinter, so as to reduce even eliminate addition fluxes into BF(blast furnace) and decrease the coke ratio of BF[1,2]. (2) to decrease the melting point of sintering mixture to ensure sintering can be carried out at a lower temperature and reduce the energy consumption. (3) to improve the qualities of sinter by forming binding phase with iron ore fines [3].Flux is another significant component for sinter besides iron ore, especially for high basicity sinter[4]. The proportion of flux is usually higher than 10% in sinter mixture(excluding return mine).There were many reports about the influence of the flux types on sintering, such as limestone, dolomite, lime and so on[5-7]. It is very important to choose suitable fluxes for iron ore sintering. Although the effect of flux size on sintering also has been researched, the mineralization behaviors of the fluxes in the sintering process has not been illuminated. The paper will study the mineralization behavior of fluxes in sintering."

Jan 1, 2011

The vast majority of the roughly 100 million rock anchors installed in mines in the USA each year use resin cartridges1. About 4.5 million of these bolts are installed using a mechanical shell in addition to the resin to create an active (pre-tensioned) bolt. Over 1 million of the bolts are passive cable bolts and typically have an effective grout length of 1.2 m, regardless of the cable length, which could be as long as 6 m. The successful performance of the resin grouted bolts depends on several parameters, including the annular gap between the bolt and hole wall, which should be relatively small, ideally from 3 mm to 5 mm. This requirement, combined with the high viscosity of the resin, produces a high back-pressure that can cause the bolt being installed to buckle or not be installed to standard. It is this back-pressure that limits the effective grout length with passive cable bolts and causes the mechanically anchored bolt failures (typically called ?spinners? where the mechanical shell does not anchor). This creates potentially unsafe conditions and wastes time and money. A purpose, built rig was used to mimic underground installations and record the back-pressures during full scale applications in the laboratory. This information was used, and is still being used, to reduce the failures and sub-standard installations by producing improved designs. In addition, a flow model was calibrated that can act qualitatively to estimate the back-pressures and can be used as a crude screening process before full scale prototypes are built and tested. To date, the results obtained have been used to stop the use of a mechanical shell due to the proven higher rate of failures. A new, improved mechanical shell is being field tested and another system is underdevelopment. The use of the rig is therefore ongoing to develop improved mechanical anchor systems. It is too early for real data; however, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that significant improvements can and will be made.

Jan 1, 2011