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By Merrill Steve, Dabrowsli Bartosz, Law Harrison, Taggart Diane, Christodoulou Lance

The capability to enhance flotation performance is a continuous pursuit in the mineral processing industry. Incremental improvements are being pursued by incorporating design changes into established flotation technologies. The industry, however, is demanding advanced technologies to perform better in terms of improved resource utilization while at the same time ensuring that power and water usage is reduced. To meet these demands, it is necessary to make a step change in the performance capability of flotation equipment.

Sep 30, 2022

By B. Whistler

The Alpala porphyry copper-gold deposit is a recent discovery located in the Imbabura Province of northwestern Ecuador. The drilling of seventeen diamond core holes over a 900 m by 400 m area has defined a northwesterly-trending, steeply northeast-dipping dike-stock complex of diorite to quartz diorite that exceeds 1300 m in height. This intrusive complex is hosted by a sequence of andesitic volcaniclastic rocks and lavas. The host-rocks are interpreted to be part of the Paleocene to Late Eocene Macuchi Formation (BGS-CODIGEM, 1997; Cruz, 2007). The best drill intercept to date is 1312 m at 0.67 % Cu and 0.63 g/t Au from 128 m depth in CSD-15-012, which includes 576 m at 1.03 % Cu and 1.19 g/t Au.

May 1, 2008

By Pascual Perazzo Vaschetti Gabriella

The increasing emphasis on environmental issues has crucial importance in mining projects, hence in tailings dams. Their water barrier needs a two-fold environmental assessment: the environmental impact caused by construction activities, and the environmental impact over time. Unfortunately, tailings dams’ failures have great and long-lasting environmental consequences, and as mining sites become bigger and tailings dams higher, the risk of failures may increase. Furthermore, since these dams are mostly constructed over many years, design parameters/materials may change, the engineers may change, and since cost is a driving parameter, less attention may be given to quality control and monitoring. Geomembrane water barriers mitigate such impacts.

Sep 30, 2022

By Gabriel Castillo

The global warming and the associated changes in climate variability would increase the risk to the mining industry in both magnitude and frequency. Consequently, extreme climate conditions would disturb the infrastructure, equipment and mine closure strategies in areas that have not consider this potential impact. To cope with these climate-associated risks is critical to understand the exposure and vulnerability with a local perspective. Having a clear knowledge of the current climate risks, the vulnerability of species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in the watershed where the mining operations are is essential to inform how patterns of risks and potential benefits are shifting due to climate change.

Sep 29, 2023

By James R. Kunkel

Water management at a mine site is a critical component for the design of ponds for mine facility operation and mine facility closure. A comparison of pond sizes designed using both a probabilistic and deterministic dynamic water balance model is made. In this sense, the paper point out the probabilistic design of mine-site ponds using a dynamic water management model. The two models both have the capability of using actual operational data and climate inputs to give storage requirements of the ponds Both short-term (60 days) and longterm (many years) designs incorporating a user-selected storm event and a probabilistic or deterministic analysis may be utilized for calculating storage volumes for various mine facilities. Based on these, operational decisions based on actual values or probabilities over time can be made.

Sep 14, 2009

By Marcell Silveira, Jeff Loeb

Controlling ore contacts prior to excavation is essential to ensuring material types reach the correct downstream locations, so that optimal ore recovery is achieved. This practice is especially pertinent to narrow vein or structurally controlled deposits where very small discrepancies between the assumed and actual locations of the ore contacts can translate to significant ore loss or dilution. However, whether a mine’s priority is to minimize (i) ore loss, (ii) dilution, (iii) contamination, or (iv) adhering to strict blending requirements, blast movement is a problem for every mine, even those situated in massive, gradational deposits.

Sep 1, 2017

By Joseph W. Ruetz

The paper describes the San Nicolas deposit, México. San Nicolás deposit is the most important VMS deposit discovered in Mexico to date, and a major deposit on a global scale. The discovery of San Nicolas resulted from the early recognition of VMS mineralization in a region not known for this style of mineralization, and the flexible use of appropriate exploration technology.

Apr 24, 2001

By Douglas Silver

During the past decade, Latin America has commanded an ever growing percentage of the world’s mineral exploration expenditures. Today, it controls approximately 30%. This has led to an increased number of large and small mineral discoveries over prior years for a variety of metals and the construction of many new mines. Its dominance is also seen in the larger than expected share of international mining capital investment. This has given its workers a competitive edge in global terms and an expertise that will ensure a long-term longevity to its mining industry. The best incentive for making vestment decisions is success. In this regard, Latin America’s success has compounded the incentives for further investment. Despite the large amount of foreign investment in Latin America, the wealth of these nations is not merely in its geological potential. The reason that several Latin American countries rank as global leaders in metal production is strongly influenced by their development of a strong mining culture, a culture which has been cultivated over many centuries. Good business practices provide another strong attraction to these regions. Additionally, Latin Americans have strong scientific and technical expertises. This is seen both in the investments’ size and the preference for high domestic employment. Relative to the number of domestic miners, the number of expatriates operating in Latin America is only a token few. In essence, the world markets are investing into the local geology and people.

Apr 24, 2001

By Yaming Chen, Gerry Papini

This paper presents a case study of three-dimensional groundwater modeling of a proposed open pit at a gold mine project with historic flooded underground (u/g) mine workings in British Columbia, Canada. The modelling approach for dewatering the open pit included passive dewatering by draining water under natural hydraulic gradients and active dewatering by using active dewater wells, together with residual water drains. Target water level drawdowns behind the pit wall were used to determine the number and depths of dewatering wells to meet the slope stability requirements and in estimation of pit inflow rates. Conceptualizing the u/g mine workings and assigning appropriate flow boundary conditions throughout the life of the mine posed some unique challenges.

Sep 30, 2022

By Robert Griesbach

One of the important decisions in the development of new mining concentrator projects is the electric power supply for the project. Key decision factors often include the production of power on site versus purchase of power from the grid, ownership of the power supply infrastructure and the choice of generation technology. In this sense, the paper introduce a methodology that will allow the evaluation of the various alternatives to supply electric power to remote mining and mineral processing sites in a consistent and equitable manner taking into account economic and technical considerations and providing the same degree of availability and reliability. The most employed evaluation method consists of carrying out trade-off studies between the various alternatives but care should be exercised so that the alternatives analyzed offer comparable operational results.

Sep 14, 2009

By Patrick High Smith

The paper summarizes the results from geochemical orientation and project surveys in North and South America. The orientation surveys were designed to characterize the soil gas response over buried mineralization and compare soil gas geochemistry with other geochemical exploration techniques for overburden. In addition to successful tests in orientation surveys, soil gas geochemistry has been applied in large-scale exploration programs for gold, copper, and zinc. The studies includes results from several of these surveys, including the Crandon Zn-Cu massive sulfide deposit in Wisconsin, USA, and the Ruby Star skarn Cu deposit in Arizona, USA.

Apr 24, 2001

By Ian Coltrin, Steve Merrill, Dariusz Lelinski, Sudhir Kamath

Froth flotation has been the heart of mineral beneficiation for over a century. Over the years, developments have been made in flotation cell design, size, and in many other aspects of flotation technology. Despite the overall effectiveness of these improvements, valuable mineral particles are often lost along with waste material. These particles are lost when the froth recovery process within a flotation system is not designed for variable froth conditions seen in plant operations. Both the amount of froth generated and the type of froth in a flotation cell change as concentrate is removed down a row of cells. Traditionally, froth recovery has been designed using a froth carry rate averaged over the entire row of flotation cells with a static amount of open area at the top of the cell.

Sep 30, 2022

By Mustafa Onder

The paper point out that there are two méthods in the design of the long auxiliary ventilation systems. These methods can be summarized as constant fan spacing and constant fan size. If the fans are placed at the end of the duct, leakage will increase due to the high combined pressure.Also The program called SERIP can be used to examine the effects of positioning the fans at varying distances along the duct and determine the appropriate locations.

Jul 17, 2000

By John. A. Lombardi

Membrane technology for mining applications has gone beyond producing high-quality water from well- and sea-water by pushing forward with process water treatments to recover and concentrate metals, reagents and clean, discharge-quality waters. Therefore, the main objective of this work is is presenting state-of-the-art process alternatives using membrane technology to face four treatment issues common in the copper, gold and in general all the mining industry regarding process waters and streams that offer treatment challenges to the metallurgical and process engineers.

Sep 14, 2009

By Andreas Rompel

New technologies and applications in exploration and mining are the result of R&D. As the acronym indicated, R&D is separated into Research and Development. They represent different stages in the progress of the development of a new application.

May 1, 2008

By Reinhold A. Errath

The Antamina Concentrator plant was one of the first plants in the world, where about 60 Megawatt only in Milling Power was installed. As a consecuence of the use of Gearless Mill Drives the speed of the mills is adjustable, which allows the operators react to the different ore grades correspondingly, in order to get the best results in terms of milling efficiency. In this sense, this paper describe the basic idea of a Gearless Mill Drive, the construction of it, the manufacturing facilities, the transport, the installation and the function in detail. It gave enough insights to understand why Gearless Mill Drives are so reliable and used as an adjustable speed drive, why it counts with the highest efficiency of all drive systems.But it did describe as well the overload capabilities, the reaction to the network, the reason why the maintenance of the drive system is proven as a minor issue, and finally it was self- explaining why the Gearless Mill Drive is called a working horse.

Sep 12, 2005

By Eric B. Braun

"The paper describes Rio Blanco like a virgin porphyry copper discovery, located in Perú along the Ecuador border at the north end of a belt of copper systems that includes porphyry Cu-Mo, porphyry Cu-Au and highsulfidation types.Rio Blanco is a porphyry Cu-Mo system containing low Au and As. The presence of andalusite, diaspore and pyrophyllite, intense QSP alteration and absence of potassic alteration indicate a shallow level oferosional exposure."

Apr 26, 1999

Mintek's Measurement and Control Division has been developing and supplying control systems to the Minerals Processing industry for many years. This paper will focus on the development of a third generation control system, PlantStar 2000, for mineral processing applications. Case studies of a flotation and milling circuit illustrate the success of the technology.

Jul 17, 2000

By Jan Klein

"The last decade of the 20th century saw the development of one of the last missing geophysical tools for mineral exploration: the Airborne Gravity Gradiometer. It is possible that Airborne Induced Polarization, one of the stillelusive systems, will make its debut in the next few years. In this sense, the paper point out are the most recent and important improvements in geophysical technologies for mineral exploration. Airborne techniques are followed by the systems used on the ground and in boreholes. New equipment and data processing and modeling software are referred to. Brief remarks are made about developments that can be expected in the years to come, these will be mainly focussing on deep search in rugged and conductive terrains. "

Apr 24, 2001

By Félix García

The Yanacocha Operation is an open pit gold mining operation located in mountainous terrain in Northern Perú. Given constraints imposed by the topography and the permitted boundaries, the efficient use of space is a priority for the Operation. Gold extraction from some ore types involves leaching, and the construction of heap leach facilities (HLF). The construction of HLF over a waste rock facility (WRF) is an example of a design driven by the need to use space efficiently. Liner grades that promote controlled drainage of leach solution, and drainage infrastructure are essential in HLF design. With this in mind, accounting for settlements in the waste rock and the native soils that form the WRF foundation were particularly important for this application. The facility continues to function in accordance with the design. This concept permitted important cost savings, and provided useful HLF capacity for the Yanacocha Operation.

Oct 21, 2015