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By D. W. Scott

Ontario has a diverse industrial mineral resource base including abundant resources of structural industrial minerals such as sand and gravel, crushed stone, building stone, clay, shale, limestone and dolostone. These resources are used in the production of aggregates, brick, metallurgical stone, fillers, lime, cement and other construction materials. The majority of the operations are in deposits of Paleozoic and Quaternary age in southern Ontario, close to the major markets. Province-wide, there were over 140 million metric tonnes of aggregates produced in 1985, approximately 115 million tonnes of which was produced in southern Ontario with the remainder being largely from Crown land in northern Ontario. The structural industrial minerals account for over 80% of the value of total industrial mineral production, with the remaining 20% of the value king accounted for by the non-structural minerals being led by salt which is produced in southwestern Ontario. A host of other non-structural industrial minerals are known but production is currently restricted to calcite, gypsum, quartz, talc, nepheline syenite and by-product metallurgical sulphur products (Fig. 1). Location and Market Area Major production is in the area closest to the large markets of urbanized southern Ontario and the northeastern and north-central United States. In general, with the abundant variety and widespread resources of industrial minerals and the large population within 400 miles of most deposits, the market offers great potential. Ontario's 9 million population accounts for about 35% of the entire gross domestic product of Canada of $476.361 billion dollars in 1985. This equates to about 113 of the nation's buying power being within a 200 km (125 miles) radius of Toronto. This major concentration of industrial and economic activity has resulted in a well developed industrial minerals industry fulfilling most of the structural industrial minerals demand in Ontario, as well as a subsidiary demand in neighbouring provinces and states.

Jan 1, 1987

By A. Shtiza

This literature review discusses the role of the Albanian institutions, the natural resources industry, potential investors and stakeholders in order to provide a set of indicators that can help to monitor amelioration within sustainable development principles. A map with the potential prospects of the natural resources will be a first step in identifying the further potential for exploitation. Mineral resource policies and governance, sustainable processing and supply chain as well as environmental management information system are some of the crucial tools identified, that will help to set up the indicators and quantify the achievements in environmental management in Albania. Moreover, the integration of practices that will support institutional capacity building; follow-up practices; the mainstreaming of global environment into planning; and the compliance monitoring process will additionally improve the environmental situation in Albania. Aligning business strategy with environmental policy, socio-economic analysis, environmental auditing are decisive tools in order to provide the Albanian authorities with a clear overview of the economic costs and the social benefits for sustainable development.

Jan 1, 2011

By Pentti Seppanen

The activities of Outokumpu Oy in the mining industry span all branches from prospecting to the production of refined metals and the manufacture of semifinished products. Products include copper, zinc, mercury, cadmium, nickel, cobalt, sulfur, gold, silver, iron ore, stainless steel, selenium, ferrochromium, lead and chromium concentrates, as well as chromite foundry sand. In addition, the activities of Outokumpu Oy extend to development and production of instruments, planning of industrial projects and instrumentation as well as the manufacture of specialized machines for ore concentration. The company now operates ten mines, eight of which are underground and all of which are in sulfide deposits except one. The fully automated monitoring and control of underground mine ventilation at the Pyhasalmi mine are an important technological contribution to the industry. Development work on the ventilation control was started in 1969, and since May 1973 it has operated in a fully automated computer-controlled mode. The Pyhasalmi mine has been in production since 1962, having begun as an open-pit operation. Development of underground mining began in 1967. The present annual production is one million tons all from underground mining. The underground mine is equipped with a main shaft and an auxiliary shaft, and two raises for ventilation. There is also a rampway from the surface to a depth of 500 m. The main shaft is for ore hoisting and the auxiliary shaft is used for waste-rock hoisting and for downcast ventilation. One of the raises is for downcast ventilation and the other is for upcast ventilation. The mining methods employed at Pyhasalmi are sublevel stoping with backfill, sublevel caving, and sublevel shrinkage stoping. Copper and zinc concentrates are produced. The Pyhasalmi mine is highly mechanized with about 4000 installed diesel horsepower underground. The maximum capacity of fresh air is 150 m3/s.

Jan 1, 1979

By M. T. Ityokurnbul, M. P. Trubelja

Concentrate flow rates were measured for the flotation of -100-mesh Lower Kittaning coal in a computer-controlled 0.076 x 3.5-m pilot flotation column. The variables studied were recovery zone height, airflow and solid feed rates. The specific projected surface areas of the feed, concentrate and tailing streams were determined from the measured particle size distributions. The results obtained show that the concen¬trate flow rate was independent of recovery zone height but was dependent on the hydrostatic pressure setting (measure of froth depth), gas flow rate, solid loading and particle size. New correlations for column carrying capacity and yield are provided as a function of bubble surface area flux and the specific particle projected surface area.

Jan 1, 1999

By J. D. Raulerson, R. P. Farias, G. A. Gruber

A flotation process has been developed to successfully treat ore from the Santo Domingo phosphate deposit in Baja California Sur. The ore contained less than 4% P2O5 with quartz, silicates, and carbonates as gangue minerals. Flotation of the low- grade feed in seawater required that the conventional Crago process, comprising direct anionic flotation, deoiling, and inverse cationic flotation, be augmented by an anionic cleaner flotation step, phosphate depression, and a calcite flotation step.

Jan 1, 1988

By Kefton H. Teague

History of the feldspar industry in the United States has been summarized by DuBois (I)*. The earliest production of feldspar in the United States is reported to have been from Mitchell County, North Carolina, about 1744, with the product shipped to England, In about 1825 several pegmatites were worked to a limited extent in Connecticut, with the production shipped to England. The first feldspar grinding facility was constructed about 1850 in Connecticut, with chaser mills used. Feldspar has been produced continuously in the United States since about 1870. Feldspar is produced from the following states: North Carolina, California, Georgia, Connecticut, South Carolina, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Arizona, and Wyoming. Total United States production for 1969 will amount to approximately 900,000 tons. The most current published figures for world production is 1966, at which time 2,165,000 tons was produced. It is estimated that world production of feldspar for 1969 will amount to 2,410,000 tons. Historically, feldspar has been produced by hand sorting and hand cobbing of coarse block feldspar obtained from the intermediate and wall zones of zoned pegmatites. In the United States the reserve of known block feldspar, recoverable by hand sorting is nearing depletion. More emphasis is now placed on feldspar sources contained in finer grained rocks, especially coarse granites or fine-grained pegmatite and beach, dune, and river sands from which the feldspar is obtained by beneficiation.

Jan 1, 1970

By Nolan B. Aughenbaugh

Zoning and environmental restrictions on land usage now make open- pit quarrying more and more difficult, especially near urban areas. One option for quarry operators is to go underground for mineral production. While underground-mining costs are higher than those for open-cut work, there are several compensating advantages. In many cases it is possible to produce the same material underground without affecting land values, and the surface is preserved for industrial, residential, or agricultural purposes. Proper planning can yield underground sites which have great potential value for industrial plants, warehouses, or other business uses. It is essential to plan underground mineral extraction using a three-dimensional modular-room architectural concept to fully exploit secondary space utilization. Prior to the start of underground mining an operator must make a careful geological engineering study to deter- mine the suitability of the deposit and must prepare a plan for safe and economical mining for the purpose of converting to secondary usage.

Jan 1, 1974

By R. G. Lundquist

The idea that fragmentation for mineral processing results from some tradeoff between increased drilling and blasting and increased load on the primary crusher is well known. In a previous paper (Lundquist and Konya, 1963) the authors reported on the results of a laboratory scale study which attempted to quantify this tradeoff in energy terms. If we look only at the production of new surface area, blasting is 1700 times as energy efficient as crushing. On an energy cost basis, crushing is 57 times as expensive per unit surface produced as blasting with dynamite and more than 700 times as expensive as blasting with ANFO. The comminution process at an open pit operation starts with the drilling of blast holes and ends after the material has gone through the fine grind circuit. Operators usually break the process into several separate operations and do their cost analysis based on this approach. Often drilling and blasting is considered as one system and crushing and grinding are considered as one or two separate and independent systems. Operators will independently optimize each system. The cost for the drilling and blasting system is obvious in operations which use contract drillers to do the drilling and either contract the blasting to a distributor or do the blasting themselves. The cost of rock breaking in this manner is readily available since the contract driller will supply a monthly drilling cost to the operation and either the distributor who is contracting the blasting or the distributor who is supplying the powder to the blasting operation will also supply a monthly billing. In either case, the costs can easily be seen on a monthly or per ton basis. They are not difficult to compute even when drilling and blasting are done entirely in-house.

Jan 1, 1985

Introduction The objective of the design and operation of a mine is to make as much money as possible within certain reasonable and responsible constraints. The imposition of constraints on the objective of maximizing profits can result in an optimum mine design. This paper deals with the maximization of profits. Optimization will be discussed in a future paper. In the mining industry, it is generally accepted that the maximum economic recovery is defined by identifying the reserves and the sequence of mining that results in maximum net present value (NPV) or discounted cash flow-rate of return (DCF-ROR), as indicated in Fig. 1 (see Lemieux, 2000). Current parametric analyses techniques, such as varying the mining costs; profit reservation; sales price or metal content, to define pit limits and mining sequence technically referred to single, double or triple parameterization, do not assure that the curve in Fig. 1 will be maximized. In defining the sequence, the first material to be mined should be the first grouping of recoverable mineral that has the highest after-tax unit value and that forms a feasible mining unit. The assumed mining of the first pit should be followed by the assumed mining of the second most profitable and practical pit or pit expansion. If this process of grouping and sequencing is followed until the profitability approaches zero, the general sequence required to extract the maximum economically recoverable reserve is identified. The curve in Fig. I is constructed by calculating the NPV for a series of sequences, each assuming operations are terminated on successively lower profit pits. If the operation ceases on a pit with too high of a profit, opportunity is lost, and the NPV is lower than the maximum. The NPV curve peaks and then starts to decline before the zero-profit pit is assumed mined. This occurs because the money invested in advanced stripping would have produced a greater return if it was invested at the dis¬count rate. The maximum economically recoverable reserve is defined by the pit limit corresponding to the maximum NPV or DCF-ROR. Pit and phase definition The real challenge of reserve definition is identifying the phasing and after-tax profit per ton, so that the curve in Fig. 1 can be plotted. The after-tax profit cannot be properly addressed until after the pits are designed, the production is scheduled and the cash flow is estimated. Throughout the years, many investigators have ad¬dressed this problem. A major thrust of the famous paper in which Lerchs and Grossman (1965) presented their algorithm was to identify a sequence that would produce a result similar to that identified in Fig. 1. Whittle's (1988) four-dimensional analysis is designed to address this issue. The author addressed this same issue in a paper presented to the 1968 Canadian Institute of Mining national convention (Lemieux, 1968). Without a relatively simple methodology to con¬struct the curve in Fig. 1, the number of iterations in a trial-and-error method becomes prohibitively burden-some. The pit designer seeks a simple pit-planning parameter that will serve as a proxy for the after-tax profit per ton used in defining the curve in Fig. 1. The designer's goal is to apply this pit-planning parameter using standard pit-wall location techniques to design a series of pits that will provide a guide to the sequencing. Common techniques used to position pit walls are strip-ratio limits, highwall incremental analysis, floating-cone methods or "maximizer" applications1. Costs, revenues, noncash charges, taxes and profits are usually structured on a unit basis for use in the pit-wall location analysis. Application of the proxy parameter using the pit-design tools should, ideally, result in the definition of pits and sequences that will maximize the curve in Fig. 1. 1 The pit-design tool frequently referred to in the literature as an "optimizer" defines a pit boundary that maximizes the value contained within based on the input parameters and the safe pit-wall angle. The optimization of the pit design involves selection of rate of production, cutoff grade, product quality and other considerations. These considerations constrain the maximization of value. Therefore, pit-design tools that maximize value should be called "maximizers."

Jan 1, 2000

By K. T. Mau

Hawaii is located approximately 2,500 miles from the mainland, but has basic needs for its thriving developing community. Cement is one of these needs Cement production in Hawaii is not without handicaps. The necessary raw materials are practically non-existent except for limestone. Even at that, the available limestone is marine in origin, coralline in nature and amorphous in characteristics - unlike calcite which is normally the calcium carbonate source for cement manufacture. There is no clay or shale for the argillaceous portion of cement raw mix. Hawaii being volcanic in origin is too young geologically for clays and shales to evolve and whatever there is, most likely is washed into the ocean.

Jan 1, 1982

By Richard R. Klimpel

This paper summarizes the author's laboratory and industrial experiences in designing and evaluating frothers for optimal coal flotation circuit performance. The key variables discussed are particle size distribution hydrocarbon addition rate, frother chemical structure, and frother dosage. A number of detailed examples will be used to illustrate the important rare/recovery/selectivity interactions that can occur.

Jan 1, 1995

By Bruno C. Boik

INTRODUCTION Cost Management is the evaluation and control of project scope, budgets, and costs with the objective to minimize costs and maximize the benefits to be derived from the use of project resources in conformance with Criteria stipulated or approved by the Owner. In order of importance, Cost Management is one of the most prominent Project Management functions because of its impact on the financial success of the venture. Cost Control and Cost Accounting are essential parts of Cost Management. The principal objectives of Cost Control are to monitor project commitments and expenditures, and measure performance for the detection of variances from acceptable standards and from control budgets so that timely action can be initiated to minimize costs. Cost Control is evaluation of current costs and projection of future costs, rather than the reporting of actual costs. Cost Control is not Cost Accounting. The primary objectives of Cost Accounting are the determination, classification, analysis and reporting in useful detail of actual costs. Following are some considerations on Cost Management and Cost Control as practiced by Owners and Contractors of industrial projects, Mining and Metallurgical projects in particular. COST MANAGEMENT Functions Conforming with the requirements of Owner's Criteria, the principal Cost Management functions are to • evaluate estimates of project costs and establish budgets for a scope of work and schedule; conversely, evaluate the scope of work that can be executed most effectively within a budget and schedule. • promote investigations and comparative evaluations of alternate designs and plans to find the most cost effective way to execute a project and minimize its operating costs. • based on Cost Control and Cost Accounting input, evaluate and initiate appropriate actions to correct deviations from approved budgets. assess project economics, the effect of changes on project economics and, if necessary, revise Project Criteria to modify their impact on costs.

Jan 1, 1986

By William Cass, Ellen Caftel Turcotte

The Elliot Lake Centre was established in 1965 as an independent Centre for Continuing Education offering a variety of adult education services. In 1976 all retraining and community college type activities were transferred to the Sault College of Applied Arts and Technology which had opened a branch campus in Elliot Lake. Upon the completion of this transfer, the Elliot Lake Centre was then contracted in 1977 by the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology to study the feasibility of establishing a research and information institute dealing with various health and safety concerns of the uranium worker. By late 1980, a federal charter was granted for the establishment of the Canadian Institute for Radiation Safety, made possible through the cooperative efforts of the Governments of Canada and Ontario, the Ontario uranium mining and refining companies, and the Elliot Lake Centre. On 1 April 1981 the Institute officially began operations. PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND COORDINATION In May 1978 the Elliot Lake Centre initiated a voluntary sputum cytology program for uranium workers. This program was financed by the Ontario uranium mining companies: Agnew Lake Mines Limited near Sudbury; Madawaska Mines Limited in Bancroft, and Denison Mines Limited and Rio Algom Limited in Elliot Lake. In 1981 additional funding was granted by Eldorado Nuclear Limited for a small group of employees at the company's uranium refinery in Port Hope, Ontario. Initially in 1978, program participants were accepted according to length of employment, radiation exposure levels (calculated in working level months) and/or smoking history. These restrictions were abolished within a few months and all uranium workers were encouraged to participate. From 1978 to 1979 the sputum cytology program was medically directed by personnel from the Montreal Cancer Institute. Until 1979 all data maintenance for the program was performed manually, however the effort required to sustain the system increased significantly as the number of participants grew. In September 1979 the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the Toronto General Hospital, under the direction of Dr. F.G. Pearson, submitted a proposal to the Elliot Lake Centre to develop a data processing system to help coordinate the surveillance program. In October 1979, Dr. Pearson became the new Project Director. Director of the Cytology Program is Dr. D.W. Thompson of the University of Toronto who is responsible for all cytologic analyses. Developmental work to establish the new surveillance system was initiated in January 1980 and became fully operational at the beginning of March 1981. The following sections describe the Elliot Lake operations of the sputum cytology program now conducted by the Canadian Institute for Radiation Safety. PROGRAM PARTICIPATION As of 1 September 1981 the sputum cytology program has 518 participants enrolled. Eligibility is restricted only to a willingness to participate and the ability of an individual to produce adequate sputum samples. Each participant registers for the program at the Institute and is given personal instruction on methods of sputum collection. The majority of the participants in this program are employed by the uranium mining industry; some work for firms which are contracted by the larger companies. Many participants are either retired from the work force or receive disability pensions or workmen's compensation benefits. Other participants have been employed in the uranium mining industry and have since gone on to other employment; some work for various federal and provincial governmental agencies concerned with the mining industry. Some participants are referred to the program by their family physicians because of smoking histories and/or various respiratory conditions. A small number of these individuals have never been involved in the mining industry at all. A chart describing program participation by employment is found in Appendix 1. PROGRAM REGISTRATION In the Elliot Lake area, persons interested in registering in the program are required to go directly to the Sputum Cytology office located at the Canadian Institute for Radiation Safety. Each individual is interviewed personally by the Program Officer. For the employees of Agnew Lake Mines, Madawaska Mines and the Port Hope refinery of Eldorado Nuclear Limited, registration is possible during the Program Officer's semi-annual on-sitevisits. Participants are assigned, in chronological order, "program numbers" for easier identification. File labels are color-coded according to place of residence or, in some instances, place of employment. Each file is stamped with the date each sample bottle is distributed. A file contains: all original test results, a completed registration

Jan 1, 1981

By Sebastian Avalos, Julian M. Ortiz

The long-term mine scheduling is the optimal decision on how to extract and process the mining reserves. The resulting plan is mainly driven by economic, metallurgical, and geological factors. Accounting for their uncertainties leads to a robust solution and the feasibility for economic-risk quantification. In this work, we model the spatial uncertainty of grade distributions of multiple correlated elements, by using a multivariate morphing transformation. The result is a set of multivariate geostatistical realizations of the grades, which honor the conditioning data, the direct and cross variograms, and the multivariate statistical distribution, inferred from a set of samples. These models are the input in a reinforcement learning framework, adopted to train a deep neural network that considers the grade uncertainty and leads to an optimum mine plan after training using deep Q-Learning. Mining and processing capacities, as well as economic parameters and metallurgical constraints, are incorporated as the reinforcement learning environment rules. The method is validated on a real deposit, providing insights for future applications.

Jun 25, 2023

ABB Industrial Systems is one of the largest electrical engineering companies in the world. ABB develops, manufactures and markets electric drives. The company has more than 100 years experience in the application of medium- and high-voltage AC machines. And ABB's continuous research and development program ensures that its machines use the latest technologies and materials. Each motor is custom designed to meet specific applications. The HXR high-efficiency motors (100 to 1,900 kW or 134 to 2,250 hp at 50 Hz) are efficient and have low noise levels. Typical applications are pumps, fans, blowers, compressors and pulverizers. The enclosed units are constructed with external cooling ribs and fans. And the motors are equipped with solid, longlife stators and rigid rotor construction. The patented rotor construction provides for low vibration levels. ABB's large synchronous motors (1 to 50 MW or 1,340 to 70,000 hp up to 900 rpm) are used in the mining industry for crushing, grinding hoisting and conveying systems. These motors are designed to customer's specifications, including existing foundations. They can be equipped with fixed or adjustable speed control.

Jan 1, 1998

By J. Kelleher, R. Saulters, K. H. McDaniel, L. Griswold

To improve underground safety and visibility during mining applications, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant designed and built a dry-dust filtration unit. The unit works in conjunction with a Spendrup 1120-70 fan with ventilation tubing to filter the face exhaust air during mining operations. The closed- loop system is designed to filter 17 m3/s (36,000 cfm) and is intended to screen 10- µm (1,250 mesh) and larger particles at 90% efficiency. To accomplish this, the unit uses a combination of Dollinger Staynew Inertial Spin filters, cyclones and traditional mesh filter media.

Jan 1, 2002

By Gretchen K. Hoffman, George S. Austin

Soil amendments or soil conditioners generally carry the con- notation of being useful for problem soils or soils needing special treatments to produce maximum yields. Many different materials have been utilized, both inorganic and organic. Only the most commonly used and those that appear to have potential to become commonly used will be discussed. Soil productivity depends on many factors. Soil amendments mainly modify physical characteristics and microbial action, and/or change the pH of a soil, rather than directly supplying plant nutrients. They give soil the needed physical properties to allow plant growth, fight erosion, or save water. Some soil amendments provide nutrients in addition to altering the physical, biological, or chemical characteristics of soil. The term "soil amendment," as it is used by Soil Science Society of America, allows soil amendments to be materials other than those used primarily as fertilizers (Anon.,1987). Soil amendments as fertilizers of any type will not be considered here because this aspect is more relevant to the previous chapter entitled "Agricultural Materials: Fertilizers" in this volume. Several inorganic soil amendments have been used since the early 20th century to alter the character of soil: limestone, lime, and similar calcium-rich carbonates and oxides for acid soils, and calcium sulfate (gypsum) and native or uncombined sulfur for alkaline soils. The use of these amendments (limestone, lime, gypsum, and sulfur) or their equivalents has been studied and documented in many basic soils tests (McCaslin and Boyle, 1980). Perlite and vermiculite are considered in separate chapters and only a brief statement of their use as soil conditioners will be made in this chapter. Peat is the principal natural organic soil amendment, but manure, both as a fertilizer and soil conditioner, is used in every part of the world. In less-developed countries, manure is the primary soil fertilizerlconditioner. An organic-rich material designated as "humate" has been marketed as a soil amendment for many years and will be addressed in this paper. Other materials are discussed by the Soil Science Society of America in its Special Publication 7, "Soil Conditioners" (Stewart, 1975). They include bitumen emulsion, polyacrylamide, polyvinyl acetate, polyvinyl alcohol, bentonite, nonionic surfactants, and natural mulches. Zeolites can be added to the list of miscellaneous soil amendments (McCaslin and Boyle, 1980), as can calcium chloride (Pressler and Pelham, 1985), sulfuric acid, ferric and ferrous sulfate, aluminum sulfate, ammonium polysulfide, calcium polysulfide, and ammonium bisulfite (Stromberg and Tisdale, 1979). Sludge will not be considered as a soil amendment because it has properties more consistent with fertilizers. All these "other materials" account for a very small amount of the volume and value of soil amendments used and will be only briefly discussed.

Jan 1, 1994

By H. S. Kibler, A. E. J. Gallagher, J. J. Sebesta

A review will be made of the nature, value, costs, and factors associated with industrial minerals production in general. Comparisons will also be made between some of these data and similar criteria for metallic mineral production.

Jan 1, 1987

By Harry Perry

The decline in coal production has been slowed somewhat in recent years, mostly because of the industry's own remarkable success in holding the line on costs, and partly as a result of advances achieved through industry and government research. Nevertheless, the decline has continued. This downward trend combined with the increased productivity of labor through mechanization that has been necessary for coal to retain even its present competitive position, has resulted in a serious reduction in the number of miners required and large scale economic dislocations in mining communities. For coal to regain a more favorable position it must either expand existing markets by reducing the cost of the delivered product and thereby compete more effectively with other fuels or develop new uses that will require large tonnages of coal. New markets involving several million tons, which would look extremely attractive to most other United States industries--including the organic chemical industry--would do little to alleviate the coal industry?s depressed economic conditions, While such small new markets would be welcome, an industry producing over 400 million tons per year must look to large tonnage outlets for solutions to its long range economic problems.

Jan 1, 1964

By P. R. Wotruba

The Fortitude gold-silver deposit is related to a "wallrock" copper porphyry system developed within Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian Antler Sequence rocks adjacent to a Middle-Tertiary altered granodiorite intrusive stock at Copper Canyon. Gold-silver ores of the Fortitude deposit occur with disseminated and massive sulfide replacement mineralization of skarn-like or calc-silicated limy horizons of the Antler Sequence contact meta-sedimentary rocks. A major, north-trending, steeply westward dipping normal fault was important as a conduit for hydrothermal fluids responsible for the metallization in the Fortitude area. Gold-silver mineralization is best developed near a marble front where retro-grade chloritization and destruction of prograde calc-silicate mineral phases is most prevalent. Fluid-inclusion studies performed on the Copper Canyon system indicate a wide variation in fluid chemistry during several hydrosilicate stages that ranged in temperature from 500°C to 220°C.

Jan 1, 1986