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By Mark E. Emerson

INTRODUCTION A long time has passed since geologists encountered encouraging mineralization in their regional exploration program for base metals deposits. Detailed drilling during the following two field seasons served to delineate the configuration of the deposit. Various statistical techniques were employed to provide confidence levels regarding the extent of the reserves and to categorize them according to whether proved, indicated or inferred. At this juncture, it appears that the company has an orebody. Time elapsed? - three years; money spent? - $2.5 million. Much remains to be done before the orebody becomes a mine. The company urgently needs to develop new orebodies to replace its existing mines which are being depleted. It therefore has expended sizable amounts in exploration, the life blood of the company. A staff of specialists is maintained to evaluate new projects and to conduct feasibility studies. The scale of new mining projects today is beyond the resources of most mining companies. Bank financing, therefore, is often vital if the company is to survive. The following scenario describes how a company goes about evaluating mine projects and what is needed to meet lender's criteria in securing the needed financing. MINE PLANNING Now that the company engineers have taken over the project, their concern is no longer with finding ore but in developing it. An exploration shaft has been put down and a tunnel driven into the orebody to verify, on a large scale, what has been seen so far only in pencil- like drill cores. A large tonnage bulk sample is mined and shipped off to an independent metallurgical process laboratory for beneficiation testing. The budget is expended to cover engineering studies. Preliminary capical and operating costs are developed in- house and profitability studies are made based or1 assumptions concerning the markets for the main product and the indicated gold, silver, and other by-products. Time elapsed? - four years; cost to date? - $3.5-$4.5 million. The staff prepares its own pre-feasibility study. After review, the Executive Committee authorizes management to proceed with full-scale studies. The task is to make preliminary designs and to develop definitive capital and operating cost estimates. Specialized consultants will be engaged to study slope stability for the open pit and rock strength if underground recovery proves more feasible. If it is near the sea, an oceanographic report might be commissioned to see if the tailings can be disposed of off shore. Environmental impact studies are commissioned from a firm familiar with government requirements and regulations in this important area. The company subscribes for an expensive multi-client study of the supply- demand-price outlook for the product to support its own long-range price forecast. Now all the numbers are available to make a definitive appraisal of the value of the project. Cash flow analyses and sensitivity studies follow. Reams of computer printouts are generated. Time elapsed: five years. Amount spent? - up to $9 million, depending on the size, complexity and attractiveness of the project. Marginal projects always take longer. Finally, an engineering and construction (E&C) company is given the task of integrating and compiling all the data into a feasibility study. The results of dozens of reports, memoranda, computer printouts, and charts are boiled down to one final summary report of a few hundred pages together with conclusions and recommendations. After thoughtful review at a board meeting, the directors authorize management to proceed with detailed engineering work - provided that

Jan 1, 1985

ION exchange is one of hydrometallurgy's new tools, new in application, vet old in principle. Cation exchange between solution and a solid exchanger has been known for more than a century, but ion exchange is still in its infancy for metallurgical use. Still hampered by cost of media, it is faced with much development of actual physical handling. Growing consumption of the rarer metals and need to treat leaner ores are pushing extractive methods ahead. Public concern with stream pollution, or legal requirements, are forcing a clean-up of waste discharge. Industries are finding it vital to make some recovery from heretofore waste material to help pay costs of discharge treatment.

Jan 5, 1953

New equipment for seabed sampling, presently at the prototype stage, operates on the principle of diamond core drilling with wire line core barrels and is designed to drill cores from the seabed at depths down to 200 m with a continuous recovery of cores from an attendant vessel. The machine operates on the seabed by remote control from a console on the vessel. Neither installation nor operation requires the use of divers. Principal Applications Principal areas of application for the drill which is dubbed Maricor include investigation drilling in the continental shelf, mapping geological conditions before large drilling platforms are installed and exploring proposed undersea tunnel routes.

Jan 11, 1973

By William O. Hotchkiss

IN COMMON with every other good citizen I long for conditions that will make perpetual peace a reality throughout the world. I have studied the statements of our public men relating to what we must do to bring this about after this war is over. In most of these I find one common error. They always build their plans on the unstated, subconsciously accepted premise that there can be such a thing as an ideal nation whose citizens are possessed of infinite wisdom and actuated only by motives that are above reproach. This heavenly vision fails to correspond with the facts. We wish it could be true but we are forced sadly to admit that the human beings that will live here after this war is over are going to be much like the fallible race that has occupied our planet for the past centuries.

Jan 1, 1943

By Robert Greenwood

The advent of the space age and its promise of interplanetary flight has prompted new ideas for propulsion systems that will allow maximum energy with minimum fuel weight. The use of cesium as the source of energy for such rocket flights has been found desirable. Theoretical efficiency of a rocket fuel is measured in terms of specific impulse, defined as the number of pounds of thrust per pound of propellant consumed per second. Specific impulse is usually expressed in seconds (the number of seconds for which one pound of fuel would produce one pound of thrust) although it is really a measure of total energy, not of power. The most sophisticated chemical fuels have a specific impulse of 300 to 400 sec; liquid hydrogen heated by nuclear reactor has a specific impulse of 1000 to 1200 sec. Specific impulses as high as 20,000 sec, however, are theoretically attainable with the ion rocket, in which free cesium ions are accelerated across a voltage drop and ejected at high velocity.' Characteristics of the system have been sketched by Boden. The desirable properties of an ion propellant are: 1) low ionization potential, 2) low boiling point, and 3) high atomic weight. Alkali metals best fulfill these requirements, and Table I indicates the superiority of cesium. The use of heavy complex ions such as UCl; is ruled out by their instability and other disadvantages.

Jan 5, 1960

By Frank Ruskey, Richard G. Burdick

Many problems associated with potential hazards in a proposed mining area may not be adequately appraised because of the complexity of trying to evaluate them in terms of production requirements. Frequently, encountered hazards have to be dealt with by day-to-day operational schemes that require the miner to either force a way through them or avoid them by blocking off the area in which the hazards are known to exist. These considerations, after the mine is in full production, can be costly to the mine operator and can increase the danger to the miners. A hazard-evasion computer program for mine planning that will appraise proposed mine layouts on the basis of existing or potential hazards has therefore been developed. The program is intended for use during the planning phase of a mine, where it should assist the mining engineer in making decisions in mine design, With the output from this program, the mining engineer should be able either to corroborate his judgments made on the basis of mining experience or to find unanticipated solutions to design problems. The program tests hundreds of possible solutions to a mining layout, and by sorting out the 10 best (based on a criteria of minimum-abandoned-coal) limits the number of choices that need to be considered and appraised for applicability to a given mine scheme.

Jan 1, 1976

By H. Landsberg

Biological as well as geological research has made very successful use of the qualities that the physicists have detected in radioactive substances. Outstanding examples for the vast new fields opened in this part of the border-land between the disciplines of geology and physics are the "radio thermal geology" [July, 1909, see 1 of "References" at end of paper] and all that is connected with the use of the radioactive disintegration clock for the age-determination of rocks and minerals [2]. In structural geology, not unlike to recent bi-ological uses of radioactive material, their "tracer" properties were helpful. Changes in Radon concentra-tion in soil-air, especially accumulations, led to hidden crevices and fault-zones. High contents of Radon in spring-water gave clues as to the types of rocks they had flowed through [3, 4). One specific application of the small admixtures of radioactive material, however, has only lately found some atten-tion and that is their use in linking beds of sedi-mentary strata otherwise only poorly identified be-cause of the lack of fossils or other characteristic properties. To be useful for this purpose, two con-ditions have to be fulfilled: (1) The amount of radioactive material per unit-weight of rock in a given horizon should be uniform over a large area; (2) this same amount should change fairly rapidly in the vertical succession of layers.

Jan 1, 1940

By Wilbur E. Sanders

AT some period during the operation of metalliferous and other commercially valuable mineral-deposits in connection with their underground mining, when the developments therein have become so extensive that their description is tedious and confusing, some scheme for naming or numbering the various workings and their parts is necessary for convenience of ; reference.. A simple and symmetrical yet expansive system of classification must be devised, one that is capable of being extended to cover all possible exigencies and conditions of future operations within the property. Such a scheme, properly arranged, greatly simplifies communication between the various departments of the mining business, as, for instance, between the administrative and the operating departments of the concern, and is of the greatest assistance to the officers of the mine in enabling them to locate and describe particular points and parts of workings and specific kinds of work. Again, in the proper segregation and differentiation of mine-accounts, when they are carried out with that detail which will furnish ready information concerning the cost of a particular piece of work, or the various items and totals of expense connected with the, development,, operation and repair of each or all of the mine-workings, some such method of designation becomes a necessity. . Moreover, such a plan is admirably adapted to the needs of the mining engineer, who, in connection with his reports upon mining-properties, is sometimes required, in his descriptions of certain blocks of ore, to locate lists of assays of samples taken from many and various places, and to designate workings and parts of workings that are located in different parts of the mine, sometimes at points wide apart.

May 1, 1906

By R. D. Caudle, Yoginder P. Chugh, V. K. Agarwala

Longwall coal mining is a growing mining technique in the United States. However, very little premining exploration data are collected presently by coal companies to 1) select coal winning equipment, 2) select and design face supports and supports in gate and tail entries, or 3) optimize operational parameters such as length, width, and orientation of face. The authors are of the opinion that much of the data needed for mine planning and design for longwall mining can be obtained during exploration. In this paper, the authors identify the data requirements, discuss how these data can be obtained during exploration, propose an exploration program and estimate the cost to obtain the necessary data.

Jan 1, 1982

By C. H. Stein

THE Pennsylvania Legislature, on March 13, 1837, passed an act authorizing the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co. to construct a railway to connect the North Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal with the slack water navigation f the Lehigh River; the navigation company accepted this act on May 10, 1837. Edwin A. Douglas, chief engineer for the navigation company, located the route for this railway from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre, which was called the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad. The object was to transport coal from the Wyoming Valley, of Pennsylvania, to the Atlantic seaboard. This railway was considered a marvelous piece of engineering, as it included a tunnel nearly 13 mi. long, and a series of inclines, or planes, up which the cars laden with coal were raised from the vicinity of Ashley to the summit f the mountain near Solomon's Gap, whence they were taken to White Haven by rail. There the coal was transferred to canal boats. In June, 1862, floods almost completely destroyed the upper division of the canal, so on March 4, 1863, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed an act prohibiting its restoration, but granted a charter for the construction of a railway from White Haven to Mauch Chunk to connect with the line from White Haven to Wilkes-Barre, previously built. On March 16, 1864, a supplementary act was passed extending the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad to Easton, Pa. This completed a direct all-rail route from Wilkes-Barre to the New York harbor (by way of the Central Railroad of New Jersey). Up to this time, all freight and passenger traffic passed over the planes, but in 1866 and 1867 there was constructed what was known as the "back track" down the mountain side between Solomon's Gap and Ashley over which all the passenger traffic and empty cars thereafter passed; it is now known as part of the main line. For the handling of the heavy coal traffic, however, this would have involved a continuous climb from Ashley, 170.27 mi., from New York, to Solomon's Gap, 157.8 mi. from New York, or a distance of 12.47 mi., and a total ascent of 1,013.75

Jan 9, 1921

The members of the Institute have probably seen in the daily papers notices of the plans of the Secretary of the Navy to. form an Advisory Board to assist the Government to make available the latest inventive genius of the country. Secretary Daniels has appointed Mr. Thomas A. Edison Chairman of this Advisory Board and has officially invited the Institute to secure the selection of two of its members to serve. on this Board. The Secretary in his letter states: "I feel that the work your Institute has done has been such as to give it the right to be in a way officially represented, and the Navy Department desires in this way to testify to its own appreciation of the splendid work for our country that your Institute has done. I have the emphatic approval of Mr. Edison, and he agrees entirely with me that your Institute should he represented in this way and that no better method of getting the kind of men we need could be devised." The invitation of the Secretary of the Navy has been officially accepted and steps have been taken to nominate the two members. Since the Constitution provides for no meeting of the Board of Directors until September, and as Secretary Daniels urged early action, the matter was discussed at a special meeting of the Executive Committee of the Institute, at which were present as many members of the Board of Directors as were in New York City at the time. Invitations were also extended to other members of the Institute who happened to be in the vicinity. At this meeting it was decided to submit the matter by a special letter-ballot to the Board of Directors and in doing so to suggest or nominate five members of the Institute, accompanying this nomination with the statement that the Directors might vote for two of the members so nominated or for any other members of the Institute not so nominated. It was voted at this meeting that it. was the sense of those present that in view of the fact that this committee was an advisory one the type of men to be chosen should be men of administrative or executive ability, cap-

Jan 9, 1915

RECENTLY, we were asked to name the greatest contribution to progress in mining technology during the past 25 years. Immediately, the introduction of the pneumatic hammer for making blastholes came to mind because it can be credited with speeding the excavation of rock and the elimination of hand drilling. Possibly this answer was so spontaneous because we were working on this "drilling issue" Of MINING ENGINEERING. Present drilling tools have devel¬oped so rapidly, that a great deal of engineering is. required in the selection of bits, steel, and machines for the drilling conditions at each mine. Formerly a modicum of engineering was utilized in selection of equipment for it was purchased from manufacturer preference. With the development of alloy drill steels, tungsten-carbide bits, throwaway bits, and the jackleg drill, mining companies began doing more experimental work before making selections. It is unfortunately true, that each operator must begin at the beginning by doing his own test work before choosing his drilling method, and tools. Some of this work has been done very well-under controlled conditions and obtaining proper data on the variables. Such data should be accumulated from the various mines, tabulated, and published. Such a volume would be of tremendous help to the small operator in selecting equipment and would permit the research departments of the larger companies to formulate some measure of rock drillability and to undertake more specialized research on the different phases of drilling.

Jan 1, 1952

By Raymond E. Funderburk

Today, there are four alternatives available for disposal of highly toxic, non-radioactive hazardous waste: deep well injection, chemical processing, landfill and incineration. However, based upon research conducted by the author, a fifth alternative now exists. Disposal in salt. Salt, because of its chemical characteristics, is an ideal medium for retention of inorganic hazardous waste. Except for a few elemental compounds such as lithium and potassium, there is no reaction with sodium chloride. In the family of inorganic wastes, there are basically seven suites of waste that may be mixed together without any chemical reaction. The process developed by the author would be to take a suite of waste, either dewater or add moisture, add a solidification agent to the mix and slurry pipeline the mass into a cavern. Residence time before hardening can be adjusted, but the nominal time until full solidification is 48 hours. Once solidified, the mass will reach compressive strengths exceeding 3000 psi. The slurry can be introduced into an evacuated cavern pumped free of brine, or it can be placed beneath the brine and the waste will force the brine to the surface. The latter technique requires a high degree of engineering control to prevent contamination of the brine leaving the cavern-thus creating more hazardous waste and additional problems. The Environmental Protection Agency endorses the concept both at the research level and within EPA Headquarters. The technology will soon be utilized in a salt formation in Texas.

Jan 1, 1985

By F. W. McQuiston

Teamwork is the key to an efficient organization. Cooperation among mining staff members is an obligation owed to the company. The more cooperation the metallurgist receives from underground, the higher milling yield will be, which in turn makes for a greater mine profit. There is no pay for metal left in mill tailings. The metallurgist is not in a position to be of help to either the geologist or mining engineer, but can receive valuable assistance from both. Therefore, the metallurgist must win underground cooperation. The mining engineer is usually interested in geology because of its relation to ore control; in milling because that is where the rock goes. However, any overlapping of interest between geologist and metallurgist is quite remote.

Jul 1, 1956

By John Cogan

INTRODUCTION Lake tapping is a method of blasting an intake into a body of water from below the natural water surface without first lowering that surface or installing a protective cofferdam around the tap hole. Lake taps are done by first excavating a tunnel almost to the water/rock contact and then blasting out the final protective rock plug at one time to allow water to suddenly inflow into the tunnel from the lake. This procedure can be done "dry" or "wet." In the dry method the tunnel is empty of water before the final plug blast while in the wet method it is partially filled with water. This paper describes a wet method lake tap as performed at Alaska Power Authority's Tyee Lake Hydroeletric Project in southeast Alaska. The Tyee Lake project is located approximately 40 miles southeast of Wrangell, Alaska, in a glacially formed valley called the Bradfield Canal. The project consists of a powerhouse located at sea level on the canal, a system of tunnels and shafts connecting the powerhouse to Tyee Lake at elevation 373 m (1225 ft), and an 129 km (80-mile) electrical transmission line leading from the powerhouse to Wrangell and then Petersburg, Alaska. Tyee Lake itself is a natural lake gouged out of the rock by glacial ice during the last ice age. The objective of the project was to tap into the lake and use the water as a source for power production. The techniques used for lake taps have been developed in Norway where conditions are favorable for their use in hydroelectric proj¬ects. Over 100 have been performed. In the United States the Tyee

Jan 1, 1984

By Tomek Ulatowski

This presentation discusses the necessary ingredients for the creation of an acceptable credit structure, i.e., the structure that enables the borrower to attract the funding from different groups of lenders. As the amount of debt in the capitalization of new projects increases, it becomes quite critical that the mining venture sponsors obtain funding in a manner which maximizes the project economics. Attention normally is focused on the inherent operating cost characteristics of a venture such as the cost of mining, milling, transportation, smelting, and refining. The projected costs are derived from lengthy feasibility studies often taking millions of dollars and years to prepare. For a variety of reasons as the amount of equity directly provided by the sponsors declines, the balance must be made up from external credit sources. As a result, once the project becomes operational, debt service requirements assume crucial importance. For most new ventures, in the early years of production, the total amount of periodic debt amortization charges together with the projected interest expenses equals or exceeds the total operating cost. Utmost care must be taken, therefore, to reducing these costs which will then increase the chances for the implementation of the project. Project sponsors must carefully evaluate different funding sources in terms of their potential economic impact and, concurrently, evaluate alternative credit structures in order to be able to attract the selected funding vehicles. In this presentation I will discuss credit sources in the order of their relative appeal; i.e., from the standpoint of maximizing rates of return to the project owners. The tenor of the credit, that is the period from signing a loan agreement to the time of last repayment under the loan agreement, is undoubtedly the most important variable in evaluating the attractiveness of debt sources. Therefore, I will begin by discussing debt sources with the longest maturities and will end with a description of credits with relatively shorter tenors. The availability of different funding possibilities will naturally depend on the geographic location of the proposed venture, the creditworthiness of the borrower and the sponsors, the project economics, and finally the actual liquidity conditions in the capital markets at the time that the funds are committed. U.S. LONG-TERM DEBT MARKET - PUBLIC OFFERINGS AND PRIVATE PLACEMENTS The long-lived nature of most mining projects dictates that the majority of the mine financing be raised from long-term sources. In today's world capital markets U.S. debt issues probably carry the longest maturities available. The maturities can range from 5 to 40 years. Various types of long-term corporate debt instruments can be differentiated from one another by their terms, seniority as to claims against the assets of the issuer, legal form, and whether issued privately or through a public offering. The terms of these debt issues vary widely. For example, the interest rate which is typically fixed at the time of issuance, is determined by the credit quality of the issuer, the maturity, the average life, the seniority of the debt, the quality of control covenants or type of assets pledged as security, and other exogenous factors such as: economic policy, general level of interest rates and cur-rent level of financing activity. The entire principal amount of the debt may be due and payable at maturity (known as a "bullet" maturity) or, more typically, through periodic repayments in equal or staggered amounts. Almost all such debt issues allow for prepayment at the option of the issuer, but require varying amounts of repayment penalties. Disbursements are made over a relatively short period after signing of the debt documentation which may not coincide with the actual funding needs of the project. Financial covenants can be quite stringent, covering areas such as the issuer's financial leverage, working capital, payment of dividends and other distributions, merger and acquisition activities, and limitations on the disposition of property. Long-term debt issues may also be distinguished by the seniority of their claims against

Jan 1, 1985

By A. M. Mirani

The Mine Planning System consists of two parts: 1. A Sales Forecast (Sales Planning) 2. A Production Planning. The mathematical methods of the sales forecast are the exponential smoothing and a method with Markov-Chains. By these methods the quantity of material (ore, coal) will be calculated for the time planned. These quantities constitute the points in the production-planning. In the production-planning , special kinds of networks are used for calculating the resources-equipment required, labor and costs. A special routine optimizes the sequence of the mining areas within the mine on the basis of the lowest costs. The resources can be limited. The activities will be shifted when the demand exceeds this limit. The basis of the production-planning are computer files, in which the geological data and economical evaluations are stored.

Jan 1, 1969

By Giovanni Barla

In engineering analyses, rock is frequently treated as a homogeneous, isotropic, and linearly elastic medium. However, rock material exhibits, in most cases, physical nonlinearity, time-dependency, and anisotropy. In some instances, anelasticity due to nonmechanical effects, such as density and temperature changes, must also be taken into account. The influence of these different anomalies in the physical behavior of a rock material is often neglected. An estimate of the discrepancies which are introduced when classical theory of elasticity is used is consequently required. The easiest theoretical path by which these discrepancies can be analyzed is to vary the constitutive equations of the rock material. The constitutive equations, representing various physical experiences with different types of media, define a class of ideal substances. Assuming different constitutive equations for the description of the rock physical behavior, one can establish a sensitivity analysis to determine how much information is contained in elastic theory for reliable design purposes. The method may be applied also using numerical techniques (e.g., finite element or finite differences) which, because of the nature of the formulation, require one to assume in each case the rock constitutive equations. Theoretical and experimental work is needed to be able to perform such analyses with confidence. Adequate and practical procedures for the determination of the material functions which enter the various constitutive equations must be established. This paper presents such an attempt with respect to the simulation of some behavior patterns of rock material. It is felt worthwhile to stimulate activity in this field and it is hoped to contribute to this objective.

Jan 1, 1970

The plan for establishing relations of American industry with national labor on a definite basis so closely follows the channels of the efforts of Engineering Council, principally in the classification and compensation work, that it is of special interest to the engineering profession. The principles laid down under the following headings are about to he submitted to a referendum vote of the membership of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. These principles were prepared by a special committee of the Chamber of Commerce after a long period of study of the entire subject of industrial relations. 1. Industrial enterprise, as a source of livelihood for both employer and employee, should be so conducted that due consideration is given to the situation of all persons dependent upon it. 2. The public interest requires adjustment of industrial relations by peaceful methods. 3. Regularity and continuity of employment should be sought to the fullest extent possible and constitute a responsibility resting alike upon employers, wage earners, and the public. 4. The right of workers to organize is as clearly recognized as that of any other element or part of the community. 5. Industrial harmony and prosperity will be most effectually promoted by adequate representation of the parties in interest. Existing forms of representation should be carefully studied and availed of in so far as they may be found to have merit and are adaptable to the peculiar conditions in the various industries. 6. Whenever agreements are made with respect to industrial relations they should be faithfully observed. 7. Such agreements should contain provision for prompt and final interpretation in the event of controversy regarding meaning or application.

Jan 6, 1919

By P. V. Roundy

PUBLIC lands in Florida were first withdrawn from entry by President Taft on July 2, 1910, as a conservation measure because of their possible phosphate content. The reserve thus established was subsequently modified by further withdrawals and by restorations, so that on Jan. 1, 1934,' it contained 66,796 acres, of which only a small part had been defi-nitely classified. The reserved land was in scattered parcels, ranging from less than 40 acres to 320 or more, distributed in many counties. For administrative purposes and for final disposal of any of the numerous parcels, mineral classification of the land is legally necessary. In 1934 and 1935 the United States Geological Survey, under two successive grants from the Public Works Administration, prospected some 83 tracts of these lands in Polk County, comprising in all about 3300 acres, and six tracts comprising 240 acres in Citrus and Marion Counties. The tracts in Polk County were all in the so-called land-pebble field and the others in the hard-rock field. The Survey field party was under the direction of P. V. Roundy, from whose unpublished report the material in this paper is largely taken. The foreman of the prospecting crew was J. H. Wingate of Zephyrhills, Fla. The individual tracts were identified through the cooperation of the General Land Office, by transitman Hugh B. Crawford. This prospecting work fitted well the classification adopted for Public Works projects in general: it could not he done on any considerable scale under the Survey's usual appropriations; it gave employment to unem-ployed labor; and it may be expected ultimately to repay the Government in royalties more than the cost of the exploration.

Jan 1, 1937