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By J. Routh

Analysis of AI, As, Ba, Be, Ca, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, K,. Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Ni, Pb, Sb, Se, Sr, 11, V and Zn in various types of samples collected at Van Stone mine (a Pb-Zn deposit in Washington) and surrounding areas indicates that the concentrations of several elements in water, soil and sediment are higher than their background. values. Concentrations of metals in water decrease sharply downstream and are below the maximum contaminant levels specified for drinking water. Under present physico-chemical conditions, contamination of water is insignificant but the enrichment of heavy metals is found in soil and sediment.

Jan 1, 1994

By L. Adler

To properly analyze and apply mining equipment, a systematic, current, inclusive, and simple classification scheme is required. This paper provides such a classification for Roadheaders. This Roadheader classification is based on factors, such as the rock cutterhead, the boom type, and the chassis configuration. It first assigns Roadheaders as an equipment type within the larger group of Integrated Excavators. The Roadheader type is then delineated into the following subtypes: the standard, the extended boom, the tunnelers, and the miscellaneous. Next, these subtypes are devolved into kinds, and finally variants and attachments are considered. To resolve inconsistencies in characterizing the Roadheader, cross-referencing is employed within the classification scheme.

Jan 1, 1996

By G. A. Parkison

The sequential copper analysis method is a particularly useful technique to semi-quantitatively define the geologic, mineralogic, and metallurgical types and zonations commonly associated with porphyry-type copper deposits. The method is based on the partial dissolution behavior displayed by the prevalent copper minerals malachite, chrysocolla, chalcocite, and chalcopyrite to solutions containing sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide. Results from sequential analyses of the sample and analytical residue using sulfuric acid followed by sodium cyanide and then aqua regia solutions when compared with conventional total copper analyses can determine the amounts of leachable oxide minerals, leachable secondary sulfide minerals, and primary copper minerals, respectively. Sequential assay analytical results and interpretation are presented for copper deposits in Chile, Mexico, and the United States.

Jan 1, 1995

By S. K. Sharma

The Bureau of Mines' rapid method of dewatering fine-particulate slurries uses extremely high molecular weight polymers. These polymers form large, strong flocs which can be dewatered by sieving or sedimentation. However, sometimes these flocs deteriorate rapidly if water is not removed immediately. During field tests, clay slurries have been encountered that could have been dewatered economically if it were not for the rapid floc deterioration. A kinetics study was conducted to determine the rate of kaolin-PED floc degradation in which polymer addition, to bring the flocs back to their original condition, was used to determine the extent of floc decay. Results showed that the amount of polymer added, to replace polymer lost by spreading, was less for the lower PEO concentrations. For this clay-polymer system, floc breakage as judged by polymer additions followed first order kinetics. It was also found that the addition of fluoride ion stabilized the kaolin flocs.

Jan 1, 1992

By D. T. Kirkwood

The practice of impounding mine water and liquid fine waste in underground mines is increasing. Often these underground impoundments are created by constructing seals or bulkheads designed to withstand the expected hydraulic pressures. Occasionally seals are built for another purpose, usually to act as explosion-resistant ventilation barriers. Due to factors such as clogged drain pipes or unexpectedly high inflow rates, these explosion-resistant seals sometimes become subjected to hydraulic pressures. The incidence of seal failures due to inadequate design and/or construction is also on the increase. Fortunately, to date, no lives have been lost by water seal failures, but a clearer understanding of the design and construction considerations specific to water seals is vital to keep this from occurring in the future. This paper presents technical considerations for the design and construction of seals which will specifically be required to withstand hydraulic pressures in underground mines.

Jan 1, 1995

By H. Colijn

Belt conveyors have proven themselves for many years as a dependable and low cost method of handling bulk materials at high flow rates. The success of a belt conveyor system greatly depends on the initial loading of the material on the belt. If the material is loaded on the belt at the center, at approximately the same speed and with minimum impact, then most of all belt conveyor problems disappear. Proper belt loading is primarily determined by the engineering and design of the conveyor transfer point. This paper will establish and discuss some general design criteria required for proper loading and transfer of materials from one conveyor to another. Specific attention is given to loading points, chutes, skirt board length and general design of transfer structures.

Jan 1, 1971

By Leo R. Love

A comprehensive study of the environmental conditions of the area affected by the Colfax and Cheswick Power Stations is of extreme importance to Duquesne Light Company. The residents in the valley where the two plants are located have complained for many years about the emissions from the Colfax Plant which is of the 1920 to 1930 vintage and which has a capability of generating approxi¬mately 200 Mw. They were extremely happy to hear that the Company had plans for shutting it down, however, they were extremely unhappy to hear that we were planning to build another even larger one to take its place in the same vicinity, namely the Cheswick Plant with a capability of 570 Mw. They had visions of a plant twice the size of the Colfax Plant and belching out twice as much smoke. A few of the citizens from that area were most vehement at the public hearings that were held by the Allegheny County Air Pollution Bureau for obtaining an installation permit. With two power plants already existing in that area (Duquesne Light Company's Colfax Plant and West Penn Power's Springdale Plant), the primary concern of the Allegheny County Air Pollution Control Bureau was that the Cheswick Station might increase air pollution levels beyond what they considered to be dangerous limits. It became very evident that the Allegheny County Air Pollution Control Bureau would be extremely reluctant to grant installation and operating permits unless they were satisfied that the new plant would not increase local pollution levels and that we were taking sufficient steps to monitor the emissions from our plants and also the ambient air in the general area. We concluded that an extensive air pollution monitoring program must be conducted in the area to determine the effects of the operation of our plants. The program was conceived with our consultants, NUS Corporation of Rockville, Maryland, and was begun in June, 1968. It was designed to accomplish several things: 1. Determine the effect on the ambient air of the operation of each of

Jan 1, 1972

By Wendell E. Bearce

At the, Crescent Valley Mine of the Hanna Coal Company, several 10,000 ton unit trains of 41" x 0 strip coal are loaded per week during the lake season. This is accomplished without the use of any accumulation of prepared coal. A large raw coal pile is built up during the winter months adjacent to two truck dump bins. This is added to whenever trucks are coming in from the pits and trains are not being loaded. During the loading of trains, trucks from several pits dump into the truck hoppers and coal is also dozed in from the pile. At a rate up to 3200 tons per hour this coal is screened, the plus 6" hand picked, the plus 4" crushed, and' all weighed and sampled as it goes directly to railroad cars being handled on two tracks by car retarders. With such an arrangement it is possible to exercise some control over coal quality, if it can be assessed rapidly. For instance, if the moisture rises to a level where it seems probable the BTU per pound will be reduced to the point where the contract calls for penalties, the trucks from, the wettest pit may be stopped, more or less coal may be moved in from the stockpile, or other measures taken to assure that the average BTU of the trainload will be satisfactory.

Jan 1, 1967

By J. Gathje

Normal process development for pressure preoxidation treatment of refractory gold ores starts with laboratory batch autoclave tests, followed by operation of a continuous autoclave pilot plant for confirmation of the various process options. This scheme will generally provide good information showing the effects of such variables as grind size, time, and temperature, and will indicate whether autoclave preoxidation will produce solids that are amenable to cyanidation for gold recovery. However, several recent test programs conducted over the last three to four years have shown that the cyanide leaching responses of treated solids from the batch tests can differ considerably from those achieved by the continuous pilot plant autoclave. Examples are provided to demonstrate these differences and to show the importance of extending the laboratory investigations to include the use of a semicontinuous autoclave test procedure. A test case is cited in which this procedure provided data that could not be obtained from batch tests.

Jan 1, 1995

By Richard H. Oitto

With increased interest and urgency for coal mine safety and the passage of the Federal Coal Mine Health 'and Safety Act, the Bureau's research effort in roof control has been greatly expanded. One new project, the subject of this paper, concerns improving conventional roof bolting and has been involved with the effects of different variables on the performance of roof bolt expansion anchors. These include types of expansion anchor, rock type at the anchorage horizon, borehole roughness, rate of torquing a roof bolt to set the anchor, installed tension, bolt length, and relative humidity fluctuations. For this work, two types of experiments were carried out. One was concerned with tension loss in bolt-anchor assemblies and simulated anchor performance in a static roof. The other dealt with anchor slippage as tension was increased and simulated anchor performance in an active roof. Trials were made in the laboratory under controlled conditions so that factors suspected of affecting expansion anchor performance could be selectively studied. Because of the natural variability in rock and the fact that most expansion anchor components are essentially rough castings or forgings, the experiments were designed to permit using analysis of variance techniques for analyzing data. Thus, in this paper, "significant" means statistically significant.

Jan 1, 1972

By W. N. Brown

One of the seemingly eternal problems with which we are frequently faced is that of providing adequate and economical warehousing facilities to store large quantities of bulk product. Seasonal consumption, transportation, marketing, and other factors very often dictate extensive product warehousing requirements for an operation geared for steady, year-around production of a material requiring weather protection during storage. Fertilizers such as potash and urea are examples of such products; the consumption of these materials is extremely heavy in the early spring at which time the materials must be placed in the soil, whereas, for obvious operating efficiencies, production is more or less constant for a given operation throughout the year.

Jan 1, 1961

By Rocky Gunderson

When operations begin early next year at the $100-million Port Kembla coal loading facility in New South Wales, Australia, a sophisticated computer system, directed by two of Hewlett-Packard's HP1000 mini-computers, will perform a number of functions ranging from monitoring and reporting arrivals and departures to maintaining a library of events for up to one year. The three-processor HP1000 system configuration, valued at $215,000, is one of the largest single orders, in terms of dollar value, ever submitted in Australia for Hewlett-Packard's line of engineering and manufacturing minicomputers. The processors will be linked in a fully "backed-up'' configuration using Hewlett-Packard's fourth generation distributed networking system, DS/1000-IV, making the system one of the most sophisticated in Australia. Interfaced to a number of weightometers and programmable logic controllers (PLCs), the computers will be the heart of a coal inventory system for the facility which, in its first phase, will be capable of handling more than 13.5 Mt/a of coal. The computers will report on all plant functions, including conveyor belt and water spray operations. Specifically, the system will: • Monitor and report all coal movements related to road and rail deliveries, dispatches from ship loaders, and interstockpile transfers. •Maintain a ''running log" of all events pertaining to overall plant operations, such as conveyor starts and stops and anti-pollution spray activation. • Accept and maintain plant data entered manually or acquired automatically from various remote locations via either visual display units (VDUs) or PLCs. • Maintain complete historical records of all transactions and related plant events for up to one year. • Provide a facility for stockpile management, modeling-type programs, and training or other simulation activity. The facility was designed with the following characteristics in mind, based on an analysis of requirements for an automated coal loading operation that would optimize productivity and be flexible to change and grow with facility needs and changing technology: • Continuous Operations-Due to the need for continuous plant logging and control, the overall facility will be capable of uninterrupted, 24¬hour operation. • Handling Current and Projected Workloads-The facility will be capable of not only handling current workloads, but also any additional workloads required during future coal loading operations. • Expansion-The facility will be capable of expansion, for a minimum cost, at any time with minimum disruption in operations. • Single Source of Supply and Maintenance-The facility will be supplied and maintained by one supplier, through hardware and software maintenance support contracts. System Configuration Two HP1000 minicomputers, each with 500K bytes of main memory, will be front-ended by a pre-processor with 256K bytes of main memory. These three systems, active, backup, and front-end, will be interconnected into a triangular array, as shown in the accompanying diagram. Under normal conditions, the front-end will transmit plant status data to one of the main systems, whose primary function will be to monitor coal flow and maintain a relevant dialogue with operators. The front-end, therefore, handles all communication with the plant PLCs, effectively removing this overhead from the current plant monitor (either of the two main systems). The front-end pre-processes and post-processes all information flowing from the plant monitor to the PLCs and vice versa, thus effectively handling all communication between the two units. A second main system will handle reporting, administrative, and modeling functions, and will also be capable of performing both front-end and monitoring operations. Linking all

Jan 11, 1981

By M. M. Botz

Cyanidation tailings which are disposed in a surface impoundment experience a loss of cyanide due to natural degradation, frequently reducing the cyanide concentration to very low levels. Quantifying cyanide losses in terms of pond geometry, local weather conditions and feed solution chemistry has been largely empirical though in many cases mining operations rely on surface impoundments to reduce cyanide to below an internally regulated concentration or an effluent limitation. To permit a more quantitative evaluation of cyanide losses in an impoundment, a computer simulation was developed to estimate the losses of free, WAD and total cyanide due to dissociation, photolysis and volatilization. Results of the model are compared against data collected for a North American tailings impoundment during 1998.

Jan 1, 1999

By S. Tuylu, D. Adiguzel, A. Bascetin, H. Eker

"Tailings can be more stable in-site where they are stored and and so the risk of conventional tailings dam accidents can be reduced by alternative methods. In recent years, surface paste disposal (SPD) method is one of the alternative tailings storage methods. According to the results obtained from the previous lab scale experiments, optimum storage design was determined and then, this design was carried out in-site application under atmospheric conditions by a pilot scale tests. In the field study, two separate dams with no environmental hazards were established by the hazardous waste storage directive, whose surface area is measured as 400cm × 200cm. Also physical changes in the paste tailings were measured by the sensors such as volumetric water content, mutric suction and oxygen consumption. In addition, seepage water was collected in the drainage pool and examined for acid mine drainage and metal mobilization risks. As a result of the preliminary data obtained from measurements of pilot scale tests, when the pH value of seepage in the cemented dam (only 1th and 10th layers with cemented) is about 11, the pH value of seepage in the uncemented (reference) dam is measured at 8-9. INTRODUCTION Environmental damages occurred during the deposition of mine process tailings at surface using conventional methods (tailings dam etc.) can be reduced and/or eliminated with the use of new technologies and methods to an important extent. Nowadays, it has been investigated to safely deposit metal mine wastes generally discharged into surface tailings dams, seas, rivers, creeks etc. using Paste Tailing Technology which gains the growing importance in recent years. Meanwhile, Paste Tailings Technology has two applications in industry as an underground paste backfill and surface paste deposition. Particularly scientific studies about deposition of process tailings as paste sample in underground and surface have been increased. These studies showed that surface paste deposition can minimize the free water amount which is the biggest problem in conventional tailings dams. Additionally, it also provides less particle segregation, in other words, the formation of more homogenous material, the development of geotechnical properties which causes to obtain more stable material, increases the strength and stability of the paste with addition of binder where necessary surface paste material, and reduces the risk of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) (Bascetin et al., 2017a). Theriault et al. (2003), Martin et al. (2006) and Simms et al. (2007) reported that Bulyanhulu mine in Tanzania is the first gold mine to employ surface paste disposal (SPD) worldwide. Here, tailings are deposited alternately via several towers. The tailings flow away from each tower to forming a conical deposit. Each layer had a lower thickness than 30 cm. The fresh tailings were poured on top of drying and hardening layer after a waiting period of 5-30 days. No cement was added into the tailings to prepare paste material. Uncemented paste was deposited by a solid content of 73% which corresponded to a 250 mm slump cone height (Yilmaz et al., 2014). In a study conducted by Yilmaz (2010) illustrates the preliminary results of a field cell testing undertaken to investigate the effect of in situ climate conditions and material properties on the performance and quality of fine-grained, sulphide-rich paste tailings at the LaRonde mine in Quebec, Canada. A total of two field cells are constructed in the surface disposal site of the mine and categorized as cemented cell CC and uncemented cell UC (Bascetin et al., 2017b)."

Jan 1, 2018

By E. De Souza

Rockbursts and rockfalls cause very large safety and productivity losses in underground mines. One of the major unsolved problems of safe, economical rock support in underground mining has been that of maintaining anchorage during dynamic rock loading conditions or seismic related occurrences. It is recognized that the large displacements and high strain rates in excavation walls and underground structures cannot be countered by increasing the strength of stiff rock-reinforcing systems but must be accommodated by introducing yieldability into the support elements. This paper introduces a low cost yieldable support system which provides viable solutions to dynamic support loading. Such system should not only provide a feasible and more effective rock mass stabilization strategy but improve mine safety and reduce losses.

Jan 1, 1998

By M. T. Ityokumbul

The use of yield index, the product of the yield and gangue rejection, for the optimization of separation processes is presented. The characteristics of the yield index are contrasted with separation efficiency calculations and applied to laboratory froth flotation and washability data. Data from continuous froth flotation tests conducted to "optimize" froth flotation using process optimization software were also evaluated with the yield index procedure.

Jan 1, 1997

By Laurence B. James

The California Department of Water Resources is concerned with the development, distribution, and protection of the State's water resources. Geologic activities of the Department relate to planning, construction, and operation of water projects, supervision of the safety of over 900 dams under state jurisdiction, and investigation and control of ground water supply. The Department is engineering oriented, and the role of the geologist is to assist with the solution of engineering problems. Some of these problems require the integration of many talents, including not only those of geologists and engineers, but also those of economists, lawyers, seismologists, chemists, geophysicists, and hydrologists, Frequently, a task force of several disciplines will attack a problem as a team.

Jan 1, 1965

By Jack Parker

Cycles of mine convergence coincide with annual cycles of temperature and humidity in the mine. Laboratory measurements confirm that the presence of moisture reduces rock strength and induces internal rock stress. Findings are used in the design of mine openings.

Jan 1, 1969

By Peter L. Siems

Humid tropical environments pose many problems for mineral exploration. The problems result from thick lateritic soils, dense vegetation, seasonally heavy rains, deep chemical weathering, few outcrops and thick saprolites. Although geochemical exploration should be potentially a useful technique in these environments, it appears from the scarcity of reports in the literature that insufficient attention has been paid to developing procedures that are specific to the needs of humid tropical areas. For this reason, the authors believe that this account of a geochemical study in a tropical coastal area on the edge of the Brazilian shield is of general interest and importance for potential geochemical exploration surveys in similar areas within the tropics. The objective of the geochemical study was to develop a practical technique of reconnaissance geochemical prospecting for copper deposits in Brazilian tropical coastal lowland areas. In order to achieve this objective, information concerning the secondary dispersion of copper in these areas was required. Consequently, an orientation survey was designed to provide this information. The present account contains details of the geochemical study and the information about the secondary dispersion of copper that was acquired during the course of the orientation survey. Location and Climate The field area is on the Atlantic coastal lowland of Brazil at latitude 13°S. It lies approximately 10 kilometers south of Maragojipe, a city of 15,000 inhabitants; this city is on the western side of the Bay de Todos os Santos about 45 airline kilo¬meters northwest of Salvador. (See Fig. 1) A good gravel road from Sao Felipe to Sao Roque do Paraguay crosses the southern part of the field area. The climate of the area is hot and moist, and is without prolonged dry periods. The mean annual rainfall is about 1600 mm (63 in.) and the greatest precipitation occurs during the winter months of May and June and the summer months of December

Jan 1, 1972

The initiation of a panel cave is an extremely important and infrequent event in the life of a large underground caving operation. A new cave was initiated at the Henderson Mine in 1991, 15 years after its first cave had been developed in 1976. The original cave was started after a half billion dollars had been invested in the development of the mine, mill and 23 km haulage system. Many things had changed since 1976, the most significant of these being much lower realizations for molybdenum. In 1976 the high demand for molybdenum and uncertainty of caving characteristics, formed the basis for a very conservative cave initiation sequence with miles of boundary weakening and inspection drifting. In 1991 the highly competitive molybdenum market in conjunction with 15 years of caving experience made for a very different mining climate.

Jan 1, 1994