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By James H. Allen

The air lift method of pumping water is discussed. A review of several large diameter hole drilling projects that used reverse circulation air lift techniques is presented. Proposals are made for reverse circulation flow rates for slow rates of bit penetration (5 fph) as well as reverse circulation flow rates for faster rates of bit penetration (10 fph). The Ingersoll- Rand air lift equations are modified for rotary drilling operations. By establishing minimum reverse circulation flow rates and utilizing the modified air lift equations, the establishment of minimum circulation equipment sizes and a more definitive requirement for improved bit body design should result.

Jan 1, 1976

By R. Wisniewski

Every underground coal mine in the United States must deploy and operate a wireless communication and tracking system. This paper addresses the reliability and availability of an installed tracking system and the communications infrastructure that supports it. A particular interest is the requirements for the systems to operate continuously without failure after a mine disaster for 96 hours, and the requirements in the MINER Act for the tracking systems to be ?calculated to be serviceable? and the communications systems ?redundancy?. These requirements imply a certain reliability and availability. This paper describes a quantitative way to assess these systems requirements, using the tools that are available and commonly used by the Reliability, Maintainability, & Availability community.

Feb 23, 2014

By Abhiram Kumar Verma, Soumya Ranjan Mallick

Generally, waste such as soil and sandstone is used in mines for road construction or haul roads. In many such mines, it is challenging to design haul road pavement to match the dumper capacity. This paper investigates overburden soil to find its utility as a pavement material. It is found that overburden soil is unsuitable pavement material without stabilization; hence, nine composite materials are developed using overburden soil and RBI. Physical, mechanical and microstructural properties of unstabilized and stabilized soil are determined. Statistical analysis is carried out to assess the effect of soil type, RBI and curing period of strength characteristics of unstabilized and stabilized soil. ANOVA tests assess the influence of RBI percentage on soil geotechnical properties, and regression relations are developed. Two-way ANOVA shows the effect of RBI and soil type on soil geotechnical properties, whereas one-way ANOVA shows that the influence of soil type is more than the RBI. The regression relation is developed for CBR, UCS, Poisson’s ratio and modulus of elasticity with a good correlation coefficient. The performance of RBI is more with the finer material and reduces with an increase in the size of soil grains. The performance of the developed composite is better than the earlier developed composite based on overburden with fly ash, lime kiln dust, lime or clinker.

Mar 19, 2024

By M. E. Volin

Reagent control for optimum concentrate yield was studied by laboratory batch flotation tests simulating the Groveland plant flotation circuit in which a rougher concentrate is cleaned twice. The reagents were a fatty acid collector, a sulphonate collector and sulphuric acid. The study included two types of flotation feed representative of the reground and deslimed tailing from the spiral concentration circuit, one when the ore mineral is predominantly specularite and the other when it is magnetite. The factorial design included three levels of fatty acid, five levels of sulphonate and five levels of H2S04, with the two types of ore in nested blocks, making up a total of 75 tests. Similarity of results and reproducibility were established in preliminary tests. The final tests were performed in random order under closely controlled conditions following the established procedure.

Jan 1, 1965

By D. W. Cooper

The AMAX of Canada Limited Kitsault mine is located approximately 150 kilometers, by air, north of Prince Rupert, British Columbia at the head end of A1 ice Arm, just east of the southern tip of the Alaskan Panhandle. It is presently only accessible by sea or air, although a road is being constructed by the company which will provide access to Terrace, a commercial centre with a population of about 15,000. The topography is typically coastal mountainous with peaks rising to 2,100 meters around the head end of the inlet. The concentrator is at an elevation of 515 meters with the mine at 630 meters. This open pit molybdenum mine was previously operated between 1968 and 1972 by British Columbia Molybdenum Limited, a subsidiary of Kennecott Copper Corporation. AMAX of Canada Limited has spent $194 million to refurbish and expand this operation.

Jan 1, 1982

By G. ALBORNOZ, S. Utili, A. AGOSTI, C. VALDERRAMA, R. PELL, N. Morales

The steepness of the slopes of an open pit mine has a substantial influence on the financial return of the mine. The paper proposes a novel design methodology where overall steeper pitwalls are employed without compromising the safety of the mine. In current design practice pitwall profiles are often planar in crosssection and the profile in between ramps especially tend to be planar and defined by a constant inter-ramp angle. Sometimes rock layers exhibiting different strengths require the inclination of the profile to vary with depth, but the inclination across each layer is usually constant. Here instead, a new geotechnical software, OptimalSlope, is employed to determine optimal pitwall profiles of depth varying inclination. OptimalSlope seeks the solution of a mathematical optimization problem where the overall steepness of the pitwall, from crest to toe, is maximized for an assigned lithology, geotechnical properties and Factor of Safety (FoS). Bench geometries (bench height, face inclination, minimum berm width) are imposed in the optimization as constraints which bind the maximum local inclination of the sought optimal profile together with any other constraints such as geological discontinuities that may influence slope failure. The obtained optimal profiles are always steeper than their planar counterparts (i.e. the planar profiles exhibiting the same FoS) up to 8 degrees depending on rock type and severity of constraints on local inclinations. The design of a copper mine is first carried out employing planar pitwalls, secondly adopting the optimal pitwall profiles determined by OptimalSlope. The adoption of optimal slope profiles leads to a 34% higher net present value and reductions of carbon footprint and energy consumption of 0.17 Mt CO2 eq and 82.5 million MJ respectively due to a 15% reduction of rockwaste volume.

Mar 2, 2022

By Wei Luo

Nickeliferous laterites were characterized by particle size analysis, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and thermal analysis. Results showed that the laterites consist mainly of nickel-substituted lizardite with cobble-like morphology and traces amounts of magnetite and phlogopite. As fluoride ions can react with silicon in the lizardite crystal structure and form metal-fluoride complexes, as well as increase the equilibrium constant of the lizardite dissolution in acid solution dramatically, the addition of minor fluoride salts (0.2wt.% NaF) gave a markedly enhanced metal extraction rate (Ni 81.7% and Co 52.3%) under the experi-mental conditions of particle size d50= 25 µm, 10% (v/v) H2SO4, reaction time 2 h, reaction temperature 90°C, liquid-to-solid ratio 3 mL g-1 and stirring at 500 rpm compared with H2SO4 alone (Ni 69.6% and Co 30.8%).

Jan 1, 2010

By John E. Caffrey

Mr. William. J. Montgomery in his book "Theory and Practice on Mine Ventilation stated "Ventilation is vitally important to underground mining for three reasons: First, it sweeps all workings with a plentiful supply of air and drives to the outside the smoke, gases, and contaminated air which would be injurious to the miners; second, it dilutes and renders harmless the explosive gases emitted from the strata, thus eliminating the dangerous conditions caused by the accumulation of these gases; third, it keeps the mine air as nearly as possible of the same composition as the outside air, thus giving to the miner the healthiest possible condition in which to work...." Specific methods to achieve the above basic reasons for mine ventilation were established in the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. Sections 303(y)(1); (y)(2), and Section 317(f)(4) of the Act, which can be broadly described as entrapment features, are controversial and debatable in the minds of many mining engineers in their intent and method for affecting, 303(y)(1) in certain cases prohibits the use of belt haulage entries as an intake for face ventilation, This is to say that air traveling in a belt entry will be placed into the returns and not used for face ventilation, 303(y)(2) limits the velocity of the air on trolley haulage entries. The regulations, as published in the Federal Register, have set this limit at 250 feet per minute unless a higher velocity is approved by the District Manager.

Jan 1, 1972

By Xinghai Lei, Nan Wang, Xiangyang Jin, Yuqi Ren, Yang Li

The upward mining method, as an effective mining method, is widely employed in close-multiple coal seams to extend the service life of coal mines and improve the recovery rate of residual coal resources. However, the upward mining feasibility of the upper coal seam is related to the height of caved zone of interlayer strata after lower coal seam extraction. Therefore, it is extremely important to determine the height of the caved zone after the lower coal seam. The No. 9 coal seam (upper coal seam) and the No. 12- 1 coal seam (lower coal seam) in the Qianjiaying coal mine are selected as the research object. The characteristics of the interlayer strata structure field, fracture field, and subsidence field are studied using UDEC numerical modeling, in which the height of the caved zone is gotten after the No. 12- 1 coal seam extraction. Furthermore, the height of the caved zone is verified by onsite detection of GPR and BTVI. In the numerical modeling, the height of the caved zone is 19.6 m. And the height of caved zone is 14.7 m and 15.4–21.2 m, respectively, by using the onsite detection of GPR and BTVI. The heights of the caved zone onsite detection results are consistent with the numerical modeling result. The No. 9 coal seam is always located above the caved zone after the No. 12- 1 coal seam extraction. Consequently, the upward mining of the No. 9 coal seam is feasible.

Jun 28, 2023

By Ashish Ranjan Kumar, Barbara Arnold, Luis Sanchez Gonzalez

The health and safety of miners is critical in the industry. Prolonged exposure to dust-laden air results in irreversible ailments like pneumoconiosis that have a severe impact on their lives. Operations use various personal protective devices (PPEs) to alleviate their exposure to respirable dust. Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) is one such device that uses high- efficiency filters and positive pressure masks to shield miners from airborne contaminants. Used in the medical and other industries, these respirators efficiently protected healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, the mining industry has shown a growing interest in adopting this PPE to ensure safe working conditions for the miners. We present an introduction to the PAPRs and discuss their dust capture efficacy in this manuscript.

Feb 1, 2025

By J. A. González-Anaya

This laboratory work presents a study of the effect of ultrafine grinding on the gold recovery of a highly refractory gold concentrate. The particle size of the concentrate was P80 = 46 µm and the main species present were quartz (28.58%), dolomite (25.63%), pyrite (20.93%), arsenopyrite (15.39%) and 112 g/t gold. After optimizing hydrated lime and lead nitrate additions, standard cyanidation with 1% NaCN, pH = 12.3, 25% S/L permits to recover only 9.4% of the gold. Different particle sizes were submitted to cyanidation. When the concentrate was ground to ultrafine sizes (P80= 4.6 µm), the gold recovery for the same cyanidation conditions increased to 67%, with cyanide consumption of 66.7 kg NaCN/t. Additional tests were performed in order to reduce the cyanide consumption. The reduction of the cyanide concentration in the leaching solution from 1 to 0.5% and the addition of 100 g Pb(NO3)2/t allowed the reduction of the cyanide consumption to 27.6 kg NaCN/t (58% reduction), while maintaining the same gold recovery of 67%. The remaining gold could be present as very fine inclusions or in solid solution in the matrix.

Jan 1, 2011

By H. Jiang, Y. Luo

The study develops an automated, high-efficiency drilling control system to reduce respirable dust and increase energy efficiency in underground coal mines. It uses specific energy to evaluate efficiency and proposes a comprehensive drilling control algorithm based on laboratory tests. The algorithm optimizes drilling parameters to maintain high efficiency, reduce dust generation, and improve safety.

Feb 12, 2022

By Mirjana Boskovic

LKAB’s Kiirunavaara Mine is a sublevel caving iron-ore mine located above the polar circle in northern Sweden. The mine has been proclaimed seismically active since 2008 after a magnitude 3 seismic event, according to Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN). At that time the Kiruna Mine did not have mine-wide seismic system. Since then, the Kiruna Mine experienced several damaging seismic events of which the largest one on the May 18, 2020. The magnitude, based on the moment tensor inversion results on data from the SNSN as well as seismic stations in Finland and Norway, is estimated to 4.2 ± 0.2 moment magnitude. The seismic event on the May 18, 2020 was located in the middle of the one of the productions areas and caused the major damage in the mine, damaging several kilometres of drifts on six mining levels, some of them beyond the practical repair. These damages affected four of ten production areas on several levels, some more some less. Luckily, no person got injured from the seismic event and the very long aftershock series. An important part in the whole process after the seismic event was information flow and decision-making process. It was very important to keep workers and community informed as that contributed transparency of decision-making and decreased the speculations. Resuming the production in the damaged areas in the safe manner, very soon become main focus for the mine management. It was obvious that not only rehabilitation of the areas is needed to resume the production. It was A MUST to understand the factors behind the seismic event and its mechanism to be able to avoid same situation and prevent seismic event of similar size. Mine engineers had to think outside the box to find the solutions to ‘rescue’ every drift that they could to be able to make good enough base for continued mining of the area. The paper describes actions taken in a very complex process of recovering the area that we from the beginning thought need to be abandon. Seismological analyses of the event on May 18, 2020 and past activity in the area, damage mapping, detailed studies of structures and geology, numerical modelling as well as engineering judgement were used as base for all our decisions how to proceed in attempt to restore mining of the area heavily damaged by 4.2 moment magnitude seismic event, in a safe way.

Apr 26, 2022

By S. Natansohn

A prevalent technique for the recovery of silver from wastes generated in silver-tungsten electrical contact fabrication is electrowinning. Such scrap is placed in a permeable plastic basket which constitutes the anode compartment and this basket is suspended in a larger cell in which the cathode is mounted. A silver nitrate solution is used as the electrolyte and, upon application of an electric field, the silver migrates to the cathode where it deposits out. At times, there is tungsten migration to the cathode compartment and consequent co-deposition with the silver. This W contamination, which may amount to several thousand ppm, necessitates additional purification of the deposited Ag and its removal would therefore be advantageous. The elimination of the W impurity would also extend the operating period of the cell with corresponding increase in the Ag output and savings in labor costs.

Jan 1, 1982

By Ruichen Ren, Xu Han, Caixia Li, Zengchuan Yue

In this paper, the size-density distribution of coarse middling coking coal (CMCC) with different grinding fineness and flotation concentrates was investigated. Then, the flotation behaviors and liberation characteristics of different size-density fractions in ground CMCC were analyzed, and the different size-density fractions were divided into five categories: mostbeneficial, secondary-beneficial, poorly liberated, insignificant-pollution, and serious-pollution. Based on the content of particles with different liberation characteristics, an evaluation index of the liberation characteristic of ground CMCC, namely, the liberation perfection index (LPI), was proposed. The results indicated that grinding changed the size-density composition of CMCC, which affected the flotation performance. Insufficient grinding and overgrinding were not beneficial to flotation. Insufficient grinding caused a higher content of poorly liberated particles and a lower content of most-beneficial particles. Overgrinding increased the content of serious-pollution particles and reduced the content of most-beneficial particles. The size order of the LPI values of different ground CMCC was consistent with the flotation efficiency, and the LPI values of the other two similar samples were overall positively correlated with their flotation performance, suggesting that the method is universal.

Feb 14, 2023

By R. N. Gow

EH-pH diagrams are useful tools in understanding how mineral surfaces react in solution and particularly how aqueous conditions can be changed to enhance mineral leaching processes. However, successful application of these diagrams requires several things be kept in mind to prevent what others have termed ?gross errors? in their calculation and use. The aqueous Cu-S system is used as the basis for explaining the mass-balanced method of calculating EH-pH diagrams with the thermodynamic equilibrium software, STABCAL. This includes a breakdown of the Gibbs? Phase Rule and how it is employed in STABCAL to modify the diagrams. This methodology was then applied to the aqueous Cu-As-S system and resulting diagrams are compared against examples of those generated using the predominant-ion method. The resulting mass-balanced diagram for enargite (Cu3AsS4) is noted to compare well with spectroelectrochemical measurements using Raman spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry.

Feb 23, 2014

By Kendall Y. Onstott

The paper presents the results of a plant test using WEMCO 1 + 1 enclosed flotation machines for inert gas (nitrogen) flotation of by-product molybdenite from copper sulfide concentrate. Copper depressant consumption in the rougher flotation stage was reduced by 68% as reagent consuming oxygen was removed from the flotation air. Unlike other nitrogen flotation systems used in the industry, nitrogen is recovered above the flotation cells and from froth in tails and concentrate streams and recycled, resulting in minimal nitrogen makeup requirement.

Jan 1, 1984

By Immo H. Redeker

The Kings Mountain area of North Carolina is the lithium pegmatite center of the U.S., if not of the whole world. We have two spodumene and by-product mineral producing companies, Lithium Corp. of America, and Foote Mineral Company. We also have Kings Mountain Mica and Kings Mountain Silica Companies producing mica. feldspar, quartz and clay from weathered pegmatites in that area. Figure 1 gives the location of the spodumene pegmatite area in North Carolina. The two spodumene producers mine typical pegmatite ore in open pits after removing amphibolite or mica schist overburden which is sold to aggregate producers. The ore reserves are discussed elsewhere in this session. They are in the order of plus 50 million tons but not unlimited. 1.2 The major minerals found and concentrated from the North Carolina spodumene pegmatite ores are tabulated on Table 1.

Jan 1, 1977

By Saurav Kumar, Akshay Kumar, Vinayaka R. Kiragi, M. K. Banerjee, Amar Patnaik, Vinod Kumar

Today’s industrial technology offers to optimize and reutilize the resources available in terms of scum that remains after hot rolling in steel rerolling mills in Rajasthan, India. Vast reserves of low-grade coal exist and tons of mill scale are produced everyday after hot rolling in steel rerolling mills in Rajasthan, India. The present research work aimed to optimize the various parameters of solid-state reduction of mill scale using low-grade coal from Rajasthan, India. This study investigates the effect of reduction temperature (850–950 °C in steps of 50 °C), reduction time (60 to 180 min, in step of 60 min), mill scale size (800– 300 μm), and mill scale to coal ratio (1:1, 1:2 and 1:3) on achievable metallic iron percentage and its metallization. A higher percentage of iron content is obtained at a lower particle size of 300 μm. The structural analysis is carried out on 300 μm mill scales using XRD analysis, which shows the percentage of iron is approximately 63%, and metallization above 80% can be obtained under the reduction temperature at 900 °C for 180 min, for 1:3 ratio (mill scale to coal ratio). The chemical composition of the mill scale is obtained using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and particle sizes as well as distribution of mill scale are determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The elements present in the mill scale are also verified using EDS, which indicates the presence of a major portion of Fe, followed by Fe2O3, Si, and C, respectively.

Aug 14, 2020

By Liangguo Kang

Coal, as one of the vital sources of energy in China, has raised widespread concerns regarding its safety issues amidst the country’s economic growth driven by coal. To address this concern, this study employed the Kuznets curve, multiple linear regression, and data envelopment analysis models to investigate the impact of Chinese coal economic development on coal mine deaths from 1992 to 2021. The findings revealed a clear correlation between the Chinese coal economy and coal mine deaths. Specifically, per capita coal output, the death rate per million coal tons, and the death rate per hundred thousand persons exhibited positive, negative, and negative correlations, respectively, with the growth of coal income over the past three decades. Moreover, when the coal workers and coal output factors remained unchanged, the income of coal demonstrated a negative correlation with future changes in coal mine deaths. Notably, with three decades of coal economy development, substantial improvements in coal mine safety have been observed in China. Consequently, this research provides valuable insights for formulating safety measures and policies in coal mines across different economic levels, as well as a useful framework for assessing safety development in the coal industry.

Jan 20, 2024