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By K Watters

API Management Pty Ltd (API) is currently developing the West Pilbara Iron Project (the ‘Project’). The Project is a substantial greenfi elds mining and infrastructure development proposed for the west Pilbara region of Western Australia. The Project will establish API as a new and independent supplier of direct shipped iron ore. API manages the Australian Premium Iron Joint Venture (APIJV) on behalf of joint venture participants Aquila Resources Ltd and American Metals and Coal International Inc. The APIJV was formed in February 2005 with the objective of developing a long-term iron ore export operation in the west Pilbara region.Development of Stage 1 comprises a 30 million tonne per annum (Mt/a) channel iron deposit (CID) operation scheduled to commence in the second half of 2014 subject to approvals. JORC compliant CID resources total nearly 700 million tonnes and the Stage 1 mining area comprises eight iron ore deposits located between 30 km and 85 km south of Pannawonica. Run-of-mine ore from the eight deposits is transported to a central processing facility for crushing, screening and blending into a sinter fines product, which API has named West Pilbara Fines or WPF. Construction of a 282 km main line heavy haulage railway from the Stage 1 mining area to the proposed greenfields multi-user port at Anketell Point near Wickham, is capable of accommodating large Capesize bulk carriers and providing export facilities for other third parties. Capital investment in the order of $A6 billion includes essential support infrastructure including power, water, accommodation, roads and an airport at the mine.A feasibility study for the development of the Stage 1 mine, rail and port infrastructure has been completed along with environmental surveys of the mine, rail and port areas with Public Environmental Reviews (PERs) for each submitted for public review by end 2010. Consultation and cooperation with various stakeholders of the Project areas, and early engagement with traditional owners of the respective areas has commenced. Various sampling and metallurgical characterisation programs combined with independent institute and steel mill based testing have confirmed the positive sintering characteristics of WPF ore, which is higher in alumina (3.37 per cent) than typical Pilbara ores. *This is an abstract only. No paper was provided for this abstract.*

Jul 11, 2011

Miners and mineral explorers are concerned at the increasingly hostile environment being generated towards their industry and their profession. There is little official or public recognition that the mining industry is essential for the maintenance of the country's standard of living; a large part of this hostile feeling is caused by the assumption that mining destroys large tracts of our attractive countryside. This paper presents a historic review of the impact on the countryside of the major land using groups commencing with the Polynesian migration. European farming practices, subsequent expansion of the urban dweller and the land management practices of the two Government Departments, Lands and Survey and New Zealand Forest Service who between them control half of the total land area, are discussed. Estimates of total land area to date, directly and indirectly affected by mining have been calculated and a broad estimate of 18 000 ha or 1/1500 of total land area is indicated; current annual mineral production requires some 240 ha. These gross areas take no account of subsequent land rehabilitation, its improvement upon the original in some cases and the recreational, historic and aesthetic areas gained. Comparisons are then drawn with some current land practices in New Zealand.

Jan 1, 1977

A four monthly period was analysed for each retreating longwall face which indicated that output increased from 1140 tonnes/day for Longwall 1, to 1620 tonnes/day for Longwall 2 and to 2090 tonnes/day for Longwall 3. An output of 2500 tonnes/day should be achieved from the new Longwall 4, largely due to the improved tailgate corner design and despite a continuing lump coal problem. The evolutionary trend is a feature of longwall mining; the evolution occurring both with mining and mechanical design at the colliery itself and with the longwall equipment offered by manufacturers. The trend is towards simplicity, increased strength and capacity, simplified maintenance and increase relia- bility.

Jan 1, 1976

By A G. Guinea

Every person in an organisation has what could be called ‘a different take’ on what it means to be a safety leader. The directors will tell you they are ultimately responsible for everyone’s safety and that they can be imprisoned as a consequence of a workplace fatality. Managers, take more of a focused approach and would explain that they are totally responsible for the safety of their teams. And then there are front-line leaders. Those that not only have the responsibility (like directors and managers) but they also have the accountability, and the ability, to influence how safely their teams work. But it is not just physical safety that leaders should be concerned with.

May 5, 2022

By Macaulay J

The recovery of gold from cyanide liquors is frequently effected by using activated carbon. Process economics however require non destructive methods of gold extraction from the carbon so that it may be recycled.Stripping at atmospheric pressure usingthe method of Zadra et al(l) suffers from the disadvantage of unfavourable kinetics with strip times of the order of 48-72 hours. Subsequent research has led to development of processes which strip the gold more rapidly namely: A.A.R.L. process, (2,3) organic solvent (4,5,6) and pressure stripping (7,8)This paper reports on a development of the pressure stripping technique in which stripping and electrowinning are carried out at elevated temperature and pressure.

Jan 1, 1984

By A R. Cruden, M S. Egglseder

The formation of banded iron formation (BIF)-hosted high-grade iron ore deposits in the Hamersley Province, Australia has been debated for decades. Although a structural control on their formation is widely accepted, only the roles of large-scale structures (ie faults and folds) formed by brittle and ductile deformation have been considered to date. However, the deformation of multilayered sequences in the Hamersley Province (ie the Mount Bruce Supergroup), with their contrasting rheological behaviours, creates challenges for understanding the complex structural framework at regional to deposit scales, including the significance for mineralisation and orebody location.Our approach to understanding these complex relationships is based on an established principle of structural geology, which is to extrapolate microscale structures to deposit-scale structures and vice versa, supported by state-of-the-art 3D modelling techniques. Complexly deformed hand samples associated with the Mount Tom Price iron ore deposit (Hamersley Province, operated by Rio Tinto Ltd) have been analysed and visualised with 3D explicit (Move™, Midland Valley Ltd) and implicit modelling software packages (Leapfrog™, AranzGeo Ltd) and supported by microstructural investigations (optical and X-ray microscopy) and fieldwork.Our study shows that the deformation of BIFs in the central Hamersley Province is controlled by microscale chemical processes (ie dissolution precipitation creep) due to rheological differences between iron oxide and chert layers, contrasting fluid flow properties and layer thickness variations. These processes account for the removal of vast amounts of silica, its transportation by diffusion in the presence of a fluid and reprecipitation at low-pressure sites. Consequently, this structural framework was used by different upgrading fluids to form iron orebodies.CITATION:Egglseder, M S and Cruden, A R, 2015. Evolution of a structural framework for high-grade iron ore deposits, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2015, pp 255–262 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Jul 13, 2015

By L MacDonald, D Molver, D Pepper

Increasing contamination/impurity levels (including arsenic, antimony, mercury etc.) of concentrates is an issue of global commercial and health / environmental significance. With increasing environmental pressures at smelters, penalties for contaminants in concentrates continue to rise, accompanied by lower reject limits. There is a strong incentive for miners to investigate alternative means to remove contaminants in order to increase the value of complex ores and concentrates. This paper discusses the global problem of contamination in complex ores and concentrates, how the Toowong Process technology is a potential solution to this problem, and the opportunities this technology brings to the business of dealing with deleterious elements. CITATION: MacDonald, L, Molver, D and Pepper, D, 2018. The Toowong process for treatment of complex ores, in Proceedings Complex Orebodies Conference 2018, pp 119–121 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 21, 2018

By K M. Cook, D Clark

Fatality prevention and zero harm are key focus areas for resource companies. However, they remain an ongoing challenge for high hazard industries, including the mining sector. As one example the latest International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) Safety Performance Report shows that, while there is generally a declining fatality trend since the organisation commenced publishing data in 2012, there were still 33 fatalities across member companies in 2022 (ICMM, 2023b). Every fatal incident brings significant pain and suffering to the colleagues, friends and family of those involved, however the failures and causal factors leading to each incident are frequently very familiar to people working in the industry, particularly those tasked with managing risk and safety. In the words of Dame Judith Hackitt, Grenfell Tower Fire Investigator, ‘there are no new accidents – just different people making the same mistakes because they haven’t learned’ (Hackitt, 2022). The recurring themes in terms of the nature of fatal hazards and their associated causes across the mining sector show that, despite improvements evidenced by the favourable declining fatality trends over the long-term (in general and outside of catastrophic multiple fatality events), changes are required to achieve fatality elimination and the aspiration of zero harm. This extended abstract and the accompanying presentation apply a mining frame of reference to the idea that there are no new accidents, examining how this applies within the industry and why the lessons from past failures are not always well understood or applied to prevent the reoccurrence of material unwanted events. Many contemporary mining and resources organisations have extensive internal incident history data and a wide variety of information on fatality incidents is publicly available, including the annual ICMM Safety Performance Report. This extended abstract and the accompanying presentation explore how this existing data can be used effectively to learn from the past and proposes practical ideas regarding strategies for successful knowledge transfer to the workforce as a key component of preventing history repeating and improving safety performance across the industry. As noted by ICMM, ‘sharing lessons from failure is vital to improving health and safety, but it’s not enough’ (ICMM, 2023a).

Apr 16, 2024

By A Krishnan, C Garcia, I Luna-Berbesi

The discovery and exploration of deposits are progressively shifting to extremely remote regions and greater depths. As a result, exploration costs and the economic risk of a bad investment increase. Current megatrends in the exploration and mining sector indicate a growing demand for the implementation of automation, digitalisation, and machine learning techniques. The implementation of a multi-sensor-based core logging device (DMT, 2024) was done on 400 m of drill cores to optimise interdisciplinary processes in terms of time and quality, by using interlinked and consistent data in real-time, to obtain reliable predictions that support and speed up decision-making. The results are consistent with the laboratory data previously obtained by the mining company, highlighting the benefits of introducing ANCORELOG into their core logging procedures.

Sep 1, 2024

By G Anderson, V Lawson, P Voigt

Glencore operates zinc concentrators at both Mount Isa and McArthur River. Both orebodies have a history of complexity and required the development of new technologies to maximise the value from these long-life assets. The Mount Isa orebodies were plagued since operations started in 1931 with complex mineral textures making separation challenging and many areas uneconomic. Examples are given in Figure 1 with different grain sizes from the same orebody in different areas. The McArthur River deposit, located in the Northern Territory, was discovered by Mount Isa Mines geologists in 1955 (Logan, Murray and Williams 1990). The extremely fine-grained nature of the ore was quickly recognised and the difficult separation of the minerals was soon obvious. The geographical, metallurgical and economic factors resulted in the orebody not being developed until the technologies for the mineral separation had been developed. The development of the IsaMill allowed for an economic mineral separation flowsheet to be developed and ore treatment commenced in May 1995 (Nihill, Stewart and Bowen 1998). CITATION: Lawson, V, Anderson, G and Voigt, P, 2018. Developing technologies for a complex orebody, in Proceedings Complex Orebodies Conference 2018, pp 116–118 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 21, 2018

By G McCullough, B Mutsaers, J Jessop

"*This is an abstract only* Geometallurgical initiatives have demonstrated considerable value to operations that have trialled them. However, it is extremely difficult for these initiatives to become properly embedded into the operations and for that value to be realised on an ongoing basis.This paper will explore some of the historical reasons why this is the case. Some of these reasons include the limited tools available to manage an integrated operation. These, in turn, have resulted from poor communications infrastructure, inadequate sensor capability and the way technical mining software has evolved over the last 30 years.This paper will then investigate how the evolution of technology in recent years can help overcome these constraints and compare progress with similar industries.CITATION:McCullough, G, Mutsaers, B and Jessop, J, 2013. Obstacles to embedding geometallurgy decision-making into operations and how to increase maturity of this critical capability, in Proceedings The Second AusIMM International Geometallurgy Conference (GeoMet) 2013, pp 139-140 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Sep 29, 2013

By Woodcock JT

This paper deals with some innovations and current proposals for the treatment of gold ores and considers the possibilities of incorporating new developments in new or revised ore treatment flowsheets. The main topics considered are I. typical practice in relation to the size of gold particles, 2. concentration of coarse gold, 3. leaching reagents, 4. in situ leaching, 5. heap leaching, 6. carbon-in-pulp adsorption, and 7. treatment of complex ores (gold in pyrite, gold tellurides, and carbon-containing ores).

Jan 1, 1982

By M S. Tuohy

Since the independent review of fatal accidents in the mining industry carried out by Dr Sean Brady (the ‘Brady Review’), High Reliability Organisations (HROs) and their operating principles have been discussed across the Queensland mining sector. HROs are organisations said to consistently avoid serious failures, reliably delivering their organisational objectives despite operating in environments characterised by high levels of inherent risk and/or operational complexity. HRO concepts have previously found application in other similarly hazardous industries to mining. However, as Hopkins (2009) pointed out, HROs ‘are very elusive creatures that inhabit the realm of theory more than the real world’. The Queensland Resources Council (QRC) with support from the Commissioner for Resources Safety and Health initiated a review of how HRO principles can be translated to the mining industry. The review was conducted by Noetic, an Australian management consulting company that specialises in hazardous industries, including mining and metals, and has prior experience applying HRO theory.

May 5, 2022

By M Zoorabadi, B Hebblewhite, S Saydam, W Timms

Based on the cubic law, the hydraulic aperture of rock discontinuities has the most significant effect on the hydraulic conductivity of jointed rocks. The hydraulic aperture of rock discontinuities is a stress-dependant parameter and reduces with increasing applied stress. Furthermore, the rock stress increases with increasing depth. Therefore, hydraulic aperture is a depth-dependant parameter. In this paper, new empirical equations are introduced to calculate the hydraulic aperture of rock discontinuities at different depths. These equations were developed on the basis of back analysis of compiled packer tests from different actual cases. They provide the capability to calculate range of variation and average hydraulic aperture when the orientation of discontinuity and field stress tensor are given. Furthermore, it is possible to calculate the hydraulic aperture of rock discontinuities when its value is given for another depth. A hydraulic aperture of 7.7?µm was calculated by this method, comparing well with a reported site value of 8.3?µm for rock discontinuities at the Stripa mine project at a depth of 385?m. These new equations can be used by analytical or numerical methods to estimate the hydraulic conductivity of jointed rocks.CITATION:Zoorabadi, M, Saydam, S, Timms, W and Hebblewhite, B, 2014. New empirical equations to estimate the hydraulic aperture of rock discontinuities at different depths, in Proceedings AusRock 2014: Third Australasian Ground Control in Mining Conference , pp 375–380 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 5, 2014

The Que River Mine is a small under-ground base and precious metals mine located in north-western Tasmania. Current production rate is 220,000 tonne/yr from reserves grading 0.37% copper, 7.1% lead, 12.2% zinc, 195 g/tonne silver and 3.4 g/tonne gold.Ore is mined using longhole open stoping techniques. Cemented fill is placed in primary stopes to permit safe and efficient recovery of pillars. The operation is trackless with both shaft and decline access from surface.Ore produced is trucked 40 km by road to be sold to the Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australia Ltd., for treatment at their Rosebery concentrator.

Jan 1, 1985

The low grade Mount Charlotte orebody was first mined with minimum capital expenditure by mechanised cut and fill stoping. The lower block was prepared simultaneously for open stoping by shaft sinking and installing another crusher and services. Similar development for the third block was discouraged by economic factors and reduced tonnage. Decline develop- ment required less capital and opened up ore reserves commensurate with advance, providing flexibility to stop operations without commit- ment: A 1 in 7 decline measuring 4.25m x 5.5m to accommodate standard Euclid 25 tonne dump trucks was developed south of the orebody. A fleet of four trucks average 12 loads each per shift over a haul distance of 700m.

Jan 1, 1973

By Kyle J. H, Browner R. E

The selective adsorption of gold cyanide by the weak base ion exchange resins, PAZ-4* and Duolite A-7*, the neutral polymeric adsorbent, Amberlite XAD7*, and the strong base resins, PAZ-8 and IRA-400+ have been studied in both low and high salinity waters, and performance compared with activated carbon. The selectivity of the neutral polymeric adsorbent and activated carbon for gold decreased in highly saline water, while the selectivity of weak and strong base resins for gold increased in highly saline water. This supports the contention that the adsorption mechanism for neutral polymeric adsorbents and activated carbon is the same. Copyright

Jan 1, 1992

The demand for minerals will grow strongly to satisfy the needs of an increasing world population for materials and energy. The technical problems involved in producing these minerals will be daunting and the engineers who will have the responsibility for designing and controlling the mineral production processes must have a high level of skills. This will place a heavy responsibility on the education system. A small number of large, well equipped university departments dedicated to mineral processing and having a close working relationship with the mineral industry, and an international orientation, will be much better placed to meet the needs than a large number of small ill-equipped departments which find it difficult to remain viable in modem universities. Courses in mineral processing must be designed to meet the scientific and technological needs of industry and full use must be made of innovative educational techniques such as video conferencing in delivering the courses. The concept of a major international network of major mineral processing departments which is designed to make best use of scarce academic resources is important and should be considered by the International Committee of the IMPC.

Jan 1, 1993

By Martinick WG

In July 1986, Cable Sands (W.A.) Pty Ltd commenced mining for mineral sands at Minninup, approximately 16 km south of Bunbury, Western Australia.The area being mined is from the heel of the foredune to the rear of the hind-dune. The vegetation is mostly native vegetation with some old degraded pasture.The mining operation will be by suction cutter dredge, with continuous dredging, mineral separation and re-depositing of the sand.

Jan 1, 1986

By S Novak

A world-class example of sustainable development in practice, the Local Resource Development Initiative (LRDI) grew from agreements between the Ambatovy nickel mine developers and the Government of Madagascar. A program of training and community development, the LRDI aims to maximise local benefits by optimising the integration of local resources during the construction period of the mine. By local resources, we mean the local labour force as well as local goods and services. Begun in 2007, the foundation of the LRDI is to integrate local resources into the mining project and where gaps are identified, design and implement training, mentoring and other programs to fill those gaps. The principal accomplishments are: the establishment of training centres that trained over 4000 people in little over one year, 96 per cent of whom hired to work at the mine; a support program for local micro, small and medium enterprises that has led to the award of 65 contracts for goods and services with training and mentoring of over 100 local businesses; and a number of special projects that have, among other results, strengthened local agricultural development and created employment for young people. The LRDI provides unique insights into key indicators and lessons learned to strengthen the social and economic sustainability of mining projects in developing countries. The paper will discuss these in terms, among others, of: the importance to project success of upstream planning to address socio-economic issues; the role of civil society and other local partners to strengthen and expand sustainability outcomes, and to spur governments to demand that major projects promote economic and social sustainability; and the integration of mine sustainability with sustained regional social and economic development.

Jan 1, 2009