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By Augustus Locke

THE technical sessions at the Regional Meeting of the A.I.M.E. in San Francisco are to be de- voted LO changes, current or predictable, which may be expected to alter today's practices in mining and metallurgical engineering. Our present condition may be summarized as follows: Capacity to produce is excessive for domestic needs in molybdenum, copper, iron, and oil; sufficient in lead, zinc, and potash; deficient in aluminum, manganese, tungsten, chromium, and tin. Gold and silver are complicated by their use as money. Or, to look at it in another way, the "growth curles" of production, as C. K. Leith emphasizes, characteristically rise slowly at the beginning, show a second stage of rapid growth, and a third stage of leveling off. The third stage is already reached here in coal. copper, iron, lead, and zinc. But still in the second slage are oil, molybdenum, potash, and others.

Jan 1, 1939

By Pieter de Waal

The use of valuable minerals is a necessity to maintain a modern society. Not only the iron, aluminium, coal and oil that are used in large quantities, but also the uranium, copper, vanadium, tungsten, antimony and many others play an essential role in the bigger picture of our modern civilisation. Minerals occur in a form and in places determined by a long history starting at the dawn of creation. Over billions of years the elements have combined in wondrous combinations and structures. They have been broken up by massive explosions, movements in the earth's crust and erosion by wind and water. They have been restructured and recreated in even more configurations by the application of heat and pressure, leached by and exposed to new chemical compounds. The result is that most valuable minerals are found in impure form and mixed up with other, less useful waste material. 2. Mineral Beneficiation The processes used for the purification and enhancement of an ore, to satisfy the needs of downstream applications, are collectively referred to as mineral beneficiation. Mineral Beneficiation starts in the mine where only that portion of the ore, that can be economically processed, is selectively extracted. It may also include ore blending, to ensure a more consistent feed to the following stage of valuable mineral recovery. The next stage in mineral beneficiation is the liberation of the valuable minerals from the gangue. This is achieved by blasting, crushing, milling and grinding down to an adequately fine grain size to facilitate good separation. Separation can be achieved by a variety of different techniques. ?Screening coarse from fine particles is an easy method if the valuable mineral is dominant in a certain screen fraction. ?Magnetic separators can differentiate minerals on the basis of their difference in magnetic susceptibility. ? Electrostatic separators differentiate on the basis of electrical conductivity. ? The differences in density are exploited in spirals and jigs. ? Particular surface properties provide a separation technique in flotation. ?The selective sorption properties of a collector medium are another option.

Jan 1, 2007

By I. S. Parrish

One of the most common errors uncovered while performing a reserve, or resource, audit is not in the geological modeling or grade problems due to poor sampling, prepartion or assaying. The error most commonly found is in tonnage or, more specifically, in the tonnage factor - that factor applied to volume to derive tonnage. Tonnage factors In the metric system, the tonnage factor is the density, or specific gravity. Specific gravity (Sp.g.) is defined by Dana (1947): • "The specific gravity of a mineral is the ratio of its density to that of water at 4° C (39.2° F). • "Density is the mass of the unit volume or weight of the body divided by the weight of an equal volume of water." When Sp.g. is multiplied by the metric volume it yields metric tonnes. In the English system, the tonnage factor is usually expressed in cubic feet per short ton (cu ft/st). When the volume in cubic feet is divided by cu ft/st, the resulting figure is in English short tons. Table 1 gives the cu ft/st factors equivalent to specific gravities from 1.6 Sp.g. to 5.8 Sp.g. The table is based on the following equation: cu ft/st = 0.9072 divided by Sp.g. times 0.02832 The blase attitude that most geologists have toward tonnage factors is echoed in the prevailing definitions of Reserves and Ore, as provided by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (S.C Form S-18), Canadian National Policy 2A and the SME Proposal for Reporting Terminology (SME February 1991). In each case, it is stated that "quantity" (SEC, SME), or "tonnage" (Can.2A), "is computed from dimensions revealed in...." etc. Unfortunately, "dimensions" do not directly yield tonnage. Dimensions must be factored by density to derive tonnage.

Jan 1, 1993

By C. A. Landolt

Inco pioneered the use of tonnage oxygen in non ferrous metallurgy when it commissioned the first industrial oxygen f1ash smelting process for the treatment of copper concentrates in the ear 1y fifties. This techno logica1 innovation was followed by other applications of technical oxygen. Inco is currently implementjng a Sulfur Dioxide Abatement Program designed to reduce SO2 emissions from the smelter by 60% in 1994. The new flowsheet includes new equipment for the oxygen flash smelting of Cu-Ni concentrates and for flash conversion of chalcocite. Oxygen smelting and converting technology will lead to a substantial decrease in use of fossil fuels and to generation of high strength S02 off gases suitable for efficient fixation in a new acid plant.

Jan 1, 1992

By C. A. Landolt

Inco pioneered the use of tonnage oxygen in non ferrous metallurgy when it commissioned the first .industrial oxygen flash smelting process for the treatment of copper concentrates in the early fifties. This technological innovation was followed by other applications of technical oxygen. Inco is currently implementing a Sulfur Dioxide Abatement Program designed to reduce S02 emissions from the smelter by 60% in 1994. The new flowsheet includes new equipment for the oxygen flash smelting of Cu-Ni concentrates and for flash conversion of chalcocite. Oxygen smelting and converting technology will lead to a substantial decrease in use of fossil fuels and to generation of high strength S02 off gases suitable for efficient fixation in a new acid plant.

Jan 1, 1992

"Air Products approached LAC Minerals in 1987 to initiate trials with pure oxygen in the leach circuit at several LAC facilities in Canada. This paper gives an overview of oxygen use and covers specific operating data from the Doyon and Terrains Aurifères mills near Val D'Or in northwestern Quebec. LAC also uses oxygen at the Macassa mill in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.In addition to the LAC facilities, oxygen is currently in use for test purposes at the Holt McDermott mine in Kirkland Lake, Ontario and the Camflo mine near Val D'Or.There are two requirements for oxygen in the cyanide leach mill. Firstly, oxygen is required in the familiar gold dissolution reaction as follows:(1) 4 AU (s) + 8 NaCN (aq) + 02 (aq)+ 2H 20(aq) - 4NaAu(CN) 2(aq)+ 4Na OH(aq)Of the reagents on the left side of the equation, the availability of gold is fixed by the ore in question. Obviously, water is available in excess, 1eaving cyanide and oxygen as the limiting constituents in the process. Most mills operate with an excess of cyanide, which is fairly closely monitored. Dissolved oxygen levels, however, are not normally watched very closely and find their own level based on the temperature, the availability of compressed air and the ability of the ore to consume oxygen.Typical D.O. levels are in the 3-8 ppm range, however levels less than 1 ppm are not uncommon for refractory ores.With pure oxygen, dissolved oxygen levels as high as 30 ppm can be achieved. (Figure #1). This greatly accelerates the kinetics of the leach reaction and may also shift the reaction further towards completion thus increasing gold dissolution slightly."

Jan 1, 1990

By David F. Machuca-Mory

Modelling the geometry of a vein is a crucial step in resources estimation. The resulting models are used as mineralization domain boundaries and have a direct impact on the tonnage of estimated resources. Deterministic models are often built using time consuming wireframing techniques usually based on hand interpretation of the drillhole intercepts. Another approach consists in coding the drillhole samples by a function of their distance to the veins contacts. The coding is subsequently used for modelling the vein contacts away from drillholes. This is a more efficient approach and is able to provide a measure of tonnage uncertainty. The use of location-dependent variograms improves the modelling by incorporating local changes in the anisotropy of the vein structure. This combined approach results in more realistic vein models, particularly when the geometry of the vein has been are altered by folding, shearing and other structural processes. The approach is illustrated on a realistic case study.

Oct 1, 2009

From the mid-1970s ZC Mines at Broken Hill had a policy to increase ore production rates at progressively lower head grades. In the mid-1980s the mine suffered crippling losses at a time of low metal prices. An important contributory factor was the inherent geological distribution of metal grades in the seven defined ore lenses. Grades are bimodal, and perhaps, trimodal, in each ore lens. There is a tonnage deficiency in the critical cut-off grade zone of 7-10% Pb+Zn. Lowering the cut-off grade introduced siliceous and pyrrhotitic material which resulted in significantly poorer metallurgical performance. This example shows that the mine geologist needs to know the grade distribution of the orebody and to convey clearly the downstream implications of changes in the head grade.

Jan 1, 1990

By GEORGE L. CHRISTIAN

T HE Tonopah Extension assay office is a two- story, concrete structure on a solid foundation of andesite, situated about 100 yd. from the company's mill, so that it will not be affected by the stamps or the tube-mills; also it will not be affected by under- ground blasting. On the second floor are the mine superintendent's office and drafting and blueprint rooms. On the ground floor are the assayer's office,' mixing room, furnace room, crusher room, chemical laboratory, parting room, store room, and change and shower room for the mine superintendent, assayers, and engineers. The crusher room is outside of the main building, and has four concrete walls, thus eliminating the jar of the crusher; it is so situated that the least possible amount of dust spreads through the main building. An 8 by 10-in. jaw crusher, which crushes to ¼ in., was made by a local foundry. Attached to the top is a small galvanized-iron hopper covered with a ¼ in. screen, on to which the sample is dumped. The fines-pass through the screen into the hopper, while the oversize is dumped into the crusher. The crushed sample and fines from the screen drop down to a set .of splits suspended from an iron rod below the crusher jaws. The small sample is caught below in a small pulp pan. The rejects drop from the splits through a 2-in. pipe on to a bucket conveyor, which dumps into a galvanized-iron hopper in an upper corner of the room. The rejects drop through a 2-in. pipe to a reject bin outside the build- ing. This bin is constructed high enough for a truck to be loaded from it by means of a chute door on the side.

Jan 1, 1921

By Kurt A. M. Westerlund

The basic function of primary gas handling downstream non-ferrous pyro-metallurgical processes is cooling hot sticky gases to treatable temperature levels (e.g. entering ESP). That means managing efficient the critical gaseous components from a molten via a sticky to a solid phase. The article outlines the modem gas cooling methods combined with efficient heat recovery. Examples of the alternative use of recovered steam energy are outlined; as e.g. drying of concentrate and power generation. The heat transfer impact of the insulating dust is called fouling and circumstances causing fouling are described. Modem cooling surface design and cleaning techniques to keep fouling in reasonable limits are described. Leakage- and false air ingress into the gas handling lines often limits smelting capacity. The objective is generally to minimize the infiltration of air but it still takes place at open interfaces (e.g. at reactor hood, feed port). Leakage air at furnace roofs for example can be reduced to a minimum by adopting the pressure gas sealing used at present In-Bath-Lance furnaces. Modernization and optimization methods to de-bottleneck existing waste heat boiler gas cooling capacity by highly efficient surface cleaning systems and false air avoiding (e.g. bundle roof boxes, dust discharge) are detailed described.

Jan 1, 1999

By F. S. Peabody

ANYTHING that may be said about "too much coal" must seem rather incongruous just at this time when two-thirds of the mines in the United States have been idle for nearly four months and a temporary coal shortage looms as more and more of a possibility. It is the purpose of this article, however, to deal primarily with the fundamental ills of the bituminous-coal industry, which, when summed up, can be expressed in one word-overdevelopment. During recent years the bituminous-coal industry in the United States has been seldom, almost never, in a state of normal business health with production run-ning evenly, prices steady and the market absorbing the output from week to week. There has been either a condition of feverish activity or apathetic sluggish-ness. We have had, for example, the intense strain on production during the war years with heatless days and lightless nights, followed by the slump late in 1918 which lasted through the greater part of 1919 when coal was a drug on the market. Then came the panicky demand of 1920. Competitive buying forced prices up to the highest levels in history. This demand in turn fell off suddenly in November, 1920, and the market remained apparently paralyzed all through 1921. During the latter year, lack of buying forced intermit-tent suspension of mining in all fields and prices averaged less than actual cost of production.

Jan 8, 1922

By Ralph H. Sweetser

OF SPECIAL importance in the design and construction of an iron blast-furnace plant are tile raw materials to be employed. Obviously the iron must come from some ore of that metal, but the many kinds available lead to important differences in plant arrangement, and in the design of furnaces and accessory equipment. For instance, the bulk of the gangue in the ore is subject to wide variation as is that of the ash in the fuel. A gradual increase in the bulk of raw material necessary to produce a ton of pig iron has been noted, but this has been more than offset, so far as costs of operation are concerned, by improvements in the machinery used for handling large quantities of ore. coal limestone, and slag. The mechanization of coal and iron-ore mining. the building of big ore boats and limestone carriers, of ore docks for fast loading and unloading, and the general use of heavy railroad equipment have all contributed to greatly reducing the number of man- hours required to mine, transport, and manufacture the raw materials into a ton of pig iron. This looks like a big saving and it is. If it were not for these big labor saving machines it would be impossible to produce the tonnage of iron and steel that is made each year in this country. On the other hand, the total capital investment necessary to bring down the man-hours per ton of pig iron to a 2.3 hours average at the blast furnace and to a total of only 12 man-hours from ore to metal (see Table 1) is so great that even the present high price of pig iron is probably not far above the true cost of manufacture when all the fixed charges are properly included.

Jan 1, 1939

By Peter Tegart

The discovery of gold in the Toodoggone River area is credited to Charles McClair who mined placer deposits in 1925, reportedly valued at $17,500. After he and his partner went missing in 1927, efforts to relocate their workings resulted in the formation of Two Brothers Valley Gold Mines Ltd. in 1933, in which the legendary Grant McConachie (first president of CP Air) played an active role. This was the age when the prospector first utilized the airplane to reconnoitre remote areas. What greeted the observer from the air was an area rich in orange and yellow colours characteristic of gossans formed by the oxidation of sulphides. However, Samuel Black, a Hudson Bay Company fur trader, had also noted in his diary as early as 1824, the unusual and many gossanous colours in the headwaters of the Finlay River. These gossans, coupled with white limestone bluffs and the presence of placer gold, attracted the first reconnaissance of the area by Cominco in 1929. Cominco was ever active in remote areas at this time. They staked and worked several base-metal showings hosted by limestone at the margins of intrusive stocks. These early workers also obtained erratic high gold assays from chalcedony float samples found in creeks draining into the Toodoggone River. However, because the samples gave inconsistent assays, no concerted effort was made to locate their source. Except for the occasional horse-supported prospecting party of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the area did not receive much attention until 1968. Work until this time focused on the base metal lead-zinc showings which contained attractive silver credits. Gold was not an attraction because of the set price established by the US government. The late 1960s saw the northward expansion of porphyry copper exploration into the Toodoggone. A program of gossan soil sampling (gossans which had attracted the early workers) was carried out by Kennco Explorations (Western) Ltd. in 1966-1967. They analysed for base metals in the field, using a cold extraction method. The Kemess copper- gold prospect was staked as a result of anomalous copper values from this early geochemical program. In 1968, Kennco continued the program of silt traversing and field geochemical testing. The samples were further subjected to multielement analysis consisting of copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, cobalt, nickel, and silver at Kennco's North Vancouver laboratory. Several anomalous creeks, high in combinations of copper, molybdenum, and silver, were outlined. Some initial soil grids were also established. The fall of 1969 saw the return of Kennco prospector Gordon Davies and geologist Bob Stevenson to check out a well-defined molybdenum, scattered copper and silver anomaly in soils from a grid on the Chappelle claims. The subsequent analysis of several selected quartz felsenmeer floats yielded one assay which ran in the order of 0.25 kg/t (8 oz per st) gold and 2.2 kg/t (70 oz per st) silver. Subsequent trenching on the Chappelle claims exposed the source of float in a 4- m (134) wide vein of high grade gold-silver mineralization. These results led quickly to the realization that the district had precious metal potential. Subsequent exploration in the period 1969-1974 by Kennco resulted in the discovery of most of the gold and silver occurrences on the Chappelle and Lawyers properties. Several other gold and silver occurrences were found in this district by Cordilleran, Cominco, and Sumitomo, working the district during this period. Conwest optioned the Chappelle in 1973 and explored underground by adit entry as part of a one-year program. In 1974, Du Pont of Canada Exploration Ltd. optioned the Chappelle claims and in March 1980, using reserves developed on the A vein, placed the Baker mine into production at a rate of 90.7 Vd (100 stpd). The Amethyst zone on the Lawyers property, 8 km (5 miles) north of Chappelle, was found in 1973 by Kennco using continued, persistent followup prospecting of silver silt geochemical anomalies. A silt anomaly in the order of 3.4 ppm silver occurred in a stream flowing 300 m (984 ft)

Jan 1, 1985

By A. B. Young

IT is the he object of this paper to describe a Cottrell treater that was placed in operation, in April, 1919, at the Tooele plant of the International Smelting Co., for the purpose of recovering solids from the gases from the McDougall roasting furnaces. Fundamentally, the treater is simply a flue containing rows of vertical plates, forming the grounded electrode, alternated with rows of small horizontal pipes, forming the negative electrode, with proper provision underneath for taking away collected dust. There are advantages in construction over the more cumbersome types, both the vertical-tube and the vertical-box, particularly in the elimination of heavy supporting columns and massive foundations, giving a much lower first cost. There are no right-angle turns to interfere with gas distribution; consequently there is greater efficiency, or, in other words, a greater volume of gas per minute can be effectively treated. Another advantage of the horizontal installation over the vertical is that the principle of the selective precipitation of the various components of the dust and fume as they pass along the electric field may be utilized. Since the treater has been placed in operation, the results have been quite satisfactory and, in many ways, particularly in regard to the volume of gas that may be treated, have greatly exceeded expectations.

Jan 8, 1920

By Ehsan Alavi Gharahbagh

Tool and cutterhead wear is a crucial issue in soft ground tunneling, especially because tool inspection, maintenance, and replacement are done under difficult conditions, and often under pressurized faces or under ?hyperbaric interventions?. Overall, tool inspection and changing is a time consuming and costly step, which needs to be quantified and the related costs accounted for in any construction contract for scheduling and costing of the tunnels at design stage or bid preparation. However, lack of a universally accepted index or measure for soil abrasivity in the geotechnical reports has made it difficult, if not impossible, to define cutter wear for this purpose. Soil abrasion and its impact on cutting tools for tunneling machines under dry or wet conditions have recently been under spot light due to construction claims in several of the recent tunneling projects. The objective of this paper is to examine soil?s physical, mechanical and tribological properties related to the interface of the soil and excavation tools and discuss ways to measure soil abrasivity in a quantitative and repeatable manner. The paper will discuss the efforts that are underway to develop a new soil abrasivity index and the fabrication of a new testing device for this purpose.

Jan 1, 2010

By W. A. Haley

As far back as 1939 state laws have required reclamation of mined lands. Reclamation has been the topic of many discussions and presentations, especially since the late 1960's. In the past ten years many states have added legislation concerning the reclamation of coal-mined lands. In the near future, it seems certain that some federal regulations will be passed that will set minimum guidelines for the states to regulate. Besides the requirement of returning the land to the approximate original contour, future regulations will more than likely demand replacing topsoil from one to five feet thick. As regulations become more stringent, costs will rise accordingly. Since no one has developed a machine that can do all reclamation work by itself, it is necessary to review in detail the tools available and to select the most economical means.

Jan 1, 1976

By Y. N. Zhang

Friction Stir Welding (F SW) is a novel "green" manufacturing technique due to its energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. This solid-state joining process involves a rotating tool consisting of a shoulder and/or a probe. The shoulder applies a downward pressure to the work-piece surface, constrains the plasticized material around the probe, generates heat through the friction and causes plastic deformation in a relatively thin layer under the bottom surface of the shoulder. The rotating probe mainly drags along, plasticizes, and mixes the adjacent material in the stir zone, creating a joint without fusion. Friction Stir Processing (FSP), a variant of FSW, has been developed to manufacture composites, locally eliminate casting defects, refine microstructure and/or improve the associated mechanical and physical properties including strength, ductility, fatigue, creep, formability and corrosion resistance. However, major challenges such as tool design and wear currently limit the use of F SW/P for manufacturing applications, particularly for high melting temperature or high strength alloys. In this review, the FSW/P tools are briefly summarized in terms of the tool types, shapes, dimensions, materials and wear behaviors.

Jan 1, 2011

By M. Thérien, M. Rémillard

"Data from two industrial plants are treated by mass balance package BILMAT. The first application concerned a base metals/precious metals (PM) producer and the second, implementation of a hydrocyclone for the recovery of iron chips in the granite industry. Also LOTUS 123 software can easily be adapted for laboratory test mass balances using an IBM-PC computer. INTRODUCTIONThe present paper deals with two different BILMAT program applications. The first application concerns a copper-zinc-gol d-sil Yer producer based in North-western Quebec and the second, concerns the iriplementation of a hydrocyclone for the recovery of iron chips in Quebec granite company.Afterwards, we deal with some LOTUS 123 software applications for laboratory test mass balances using an IBM-PC.1. Base metal and P.M. producerNoranda Inc, Mattagami division, which operates mines in North Western Quebec, produces copper and zinc concentrates from a sulphide ore. Small amounts of gold (0,34 g/t) and silver (20 g/tl are present. At the time of the study, only 30% of the silver content was recovered in the copper concentrate. The main objective of this study is, to evaluate the metallurgical behaviour of silver in the flotation circuits, to increase its recovery in the copper concentrate and therefore to improve its final economic value. It is then worthwhile to identify the silver bearing minerals and to determine the critical flotation stages where they are lost. The methodology proposed is based on the coupling of a mineralogical study and a detailed mass balance ca1cu1ation in the flotation circuit performed using the BILMAT mass balance package (1, 2, 3).The results are discussed with respect to the distribution of silver in the circuit. The recoveries obtained at the various separation stages for the minerals present in the ore are also discussed."

Jan 1, 1987

By Gray N. B

The need to improve existing metallurgical processes and to develop new processes to meet the economic challenges that lie ahead requires the application of the tools of process analysis viz. mathematical models, physical models, pilot plants, laboratory measurements and plant tests. Examples of the application of these techniques to processes are described in this paper. Several of these techniques, combined with basic knowledge, are necessary to make improvements and for existing processes this always involves plant measurements. Also because metallurgical processes include extraction, refining, alloying, casting, mechanical working and heat treatment, an interdisciplinary approach to research and development is essential. This paper argues that metallurgical engineering is a discipline that is uniquely able to encompass the broad spectrum of chemical- and physical-metallurgy processes and is therefore essential to the health of the metallurgical industry.Regrettably many metallurgical engineering departments are not offering courses on process analysis, control, optimization, etc so necessary to meet modern industrial challenges.

Jan 1, 1985

By T. O. Hagan

Analyses of accident records show that a better understanding of very basic strata control principles and practices, by production personnel, will improve worker safety. Workers, lack of knowledge, with respect to aspects of strata control, increases their exposure to such strata control risks. The primary objective of the Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee (SIMRAC) project 02 02 07 was to develop tools for the transfer of strata control knowledge. Four such tools were developed, three of which focused on illiterate underground mine team members who are not yet able to take advantage of the Mining Qualifications Authority (MQA) learning process (see project outcomes 2, 3 and 4 below). The tools were designed to equip these workers with sufficient knowledge and ability to work safely underground until such time as they can take advantage of the MQA system. Project outcomes: 1 A four-minute video using animation to illustrate the causes and prevention of falls of roof in South African collieries. 2 Software to demonstrate the capability of reconstructing, interactively, accident scenes and actions that have taken place underground in stopes. 3 A strata control bridging course for illiterate mine team workers. 4 Small-scale wooden models that will be used to design life-size mock-up facilities to assist with the above mentioned bridging course. 5 Workshops and presentations to demonstrate the outcomes 1to 4 above.

Jan 1, 2005