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By A. S. Kastrinos

There are many concepts of preventative maintenance. The basic objective of all maintenance organization, however, is the efficient (accomplishment and control of all) inspection, repair, overhaul, material and preventative maintenance functions necessary to maintain facilities and equipment in a condition that will meet operating requirements at a level consistent with low costs and high availability. To formulate a preventative maintenance program requires sound judgment and the ability to apply in a practical manner a system that meets Plant operation requirements, based upon organization, experience, conditions, design and historical data. A maintenance program must be divided into to categories consisting of: 1. Scheduled tasks to be accomplished at planned intervals. The objective of these tasks is to maintain reliability and prevent as much as possible abnormal failures. 2. Non-scheduled tasks that result from periodic reports and which can be scheduled to fit in conveniently with other routine work. The non-scheduled work items may include long-range preparation for lenghty shutdowns requiring Engineering and Shop services.

Jan 1, 1975

By M. Liu

In-situ soil washing using surfactants shows great potential to remove hydrophobic organics from subsurface environment. Lab scale soil washing experiment were performed using Sodium Dodecylsulfate (SDS), an anionic surfactant, and anthracene, a highly hydrophobic compound. The results of this research show that solubility of anthracene increases linearly with an increase in SDS concentration above the critical micelle concentration. Furthermore, SDS can be effective in removing anthracene from contaminated sand.

Jan 1, 1992

By C. Anastasiadis

The wettability of sandstone was investigated using the technique of dielectric spectroscopy in the frequency interval 1kHz-1MHz. The natural wetness of the material was modified to get two different sets of samples, one with sea-water wetness and the other with crude oil wetness. Measurements showed that the electric responses of water-wet and crude oil-wet samples were markedly different beside the fact that the dielectric response of both groups of samples obeys a general fractional power law. The dispersivity, of the complex permittivity component that expresses the material loss with respect to the electric field was found to be the most suitable parameter to check the wettability of the samples.

Jan 1, 2005

By Sean Gallagher, Thomas G. Bobick, Richard L. Unger

This paper describes research by the Bureau of Mines on alternative materials-handling strategies for reducing the costs and incidence of back injuries in low-seam coal mines. Strategies recommended for redesigning materials-handling tasks include elimination of tasks, mechanization of tasks, and matching lifting tasks to the physical capabilities of underground miners. The report also discusses other methods that can be used by management to reduce the costs associated with back injuries. More detail can be found in Bureau of Mines Information Circular 9235 (Gallagher et al. 1990).

Jan 1, 1992

By Ernest Peters, Fiona M. Doyle

The leaching and bulk decomposition of sulfide minerals is of enormous commercial importance in several areas of the minerals industry. These include: direct leaching of ores or concentrates for the recovery of the contained metal values; decomposition of sulfides to recover associated values such as encapsulated gold; and the potentially hazardous oxidation of sulfides in waste disposal facilities. A significant challenge to successful future developments in these areas is to improve our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of the chemical, electrochemical, and bacterially-mediated interactions between sulfides and aqueous solutions. The paper summarizes current understanding of these mechanisms, and discusses promising new directions for research.

Jan 1, 1989

By H. B. Charmbury

In the United States and in Pennsylvania in particular the coal mine drainage problem is of continuing and growing interest to the coal mining industry, the state government, the federal government and the public at large. The 1965 amendments to Pennsylvania's Clean Streams Law prohibit the discharge of acid mine drainage into the streams of the Commonwealth after January 1, 1967. Because of this new legislation, the coal mining industry and state government are extremely aware of the necessity for new techniques for treatment and prevention of the flow of acid mine drainage from the active mines of the Commonwealth in order to keep the coal mining industry in business in Pennsylvania. Approximately one-third of the total volume of mine drainage presently polluting the streams of the Commonwealth originates from "active" coal operations and two-thirds comes from "abandoned" mine discharges. As early as 1963 it became evident that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the coal industry in Pennsylvania would have to take active steps to abate the mine drainage pollution of Pennsylvania's streams and rivers. This became quite clear during the deliberations in Harrisburg which climaxed a twenty year struggle for effective strip mining legislation. The bituminous strip mining law enacted that year made it unlawful to have any acid discharge from active stripping operations.

Jan 1, 1968

By Q. Xu

The adsorption behavior of gold in ammoniacal solutions on to activated carbon has been studied. The gold loading capacity of the activated carbon used in the system and the recovery efficiency by the adsorption were examined. The parameters affecting the adsorption of gold on to activated carbon included temperature, agitation speed, concentration of 'cation and anion as well as that of ammonia. It was found that the maximum gold loading on activated carbon used was about 10 kg of gold per ton of carbon. The recovery of gold by the adsorption from ammoniacal solutions was dependent upon the initial gold concentration in the solution. A recovery of 98% of gold was obtained on to the activated carbon under experimental conditions after 120 hour adsorption. It was also found that the initial adsorption rate was relatively fast compared to the whole period of the adsorption. The apparent activation energy for the adsorption was measured to be 15.8 kJ/mol. It was believed that the kinetics of gold adsorption on activated carbon was controlled by pore diffusion.

Jan 1, 1995

By Wayne W. Murdy

Since 1993, Newmont Mining has been growing through the development 'q of three major foreign mining operations with a fourth under construction. The first project, Yanacocha in Peru, began operating in October 1993. This occurred at a time when political and business risk in that country was considered high. In 1995, Newmont began operating the Muruntau joint venture in Uzbekistan. It is the first mining project of its kind in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). In early 1996, Newmont started operating the Minahasa Mine in Indonesia. In early 1997, Newmont began construction of a $1.9-billion project in Indonesia. The company is also completing a feasibility study with its partner for the development of a gold operation in Mexico. All of these projects have been considered "risky" by most standards. Newmont has been successful in all of them through risk mitigation programs. These programs include using strong and successful in-country partners, concentrating on developing a strong national workforce with minimal expatriate employees, using World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and International Finance Corp. (IFC) financing and building and maintaining strong ties with host governments.

Jan 1, 1997

By Michael Jatczak, Brett Robinson

The South Bay Ocean Outfall tunnel is located at the U.S./Mexico Border and is one link in a system designed to treat and dispose of raw sewage entering the Tijuana River Valley from Mexico. The 11 finished diameter tunnel extends 19,000’west from the bottom of a 200 deep, 36 diameter drop shaft. At the western terminus of the tunnel, a Riser shaft connects the tunnel to conveyance and diffuser pipes on the seabed. The tunnel runs through the San Diego Formation, consisting of clay, silt, sand, gravels, cobbles, and boulders. A Mitsubishi Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) Tunnel Boring Machine equipped with a large variety of monitoring and control devices was used. This paper will provide an overview of the Project’s construction, with special emphasis on the value of the electronic data acquisition system.

Jan 1, 1999

By Jon A. Hummer, Aleksandar D. Bugarski, Shawn Vanderslice, Teresa Barone

A study was conducted to examine the potential of diesel emissions control strategies based on retrofitting existing power packages with exhaust aftertreatment devices and repowering with advanced power packages. The retrofit systems, a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and diesel particulate filter (DPF), were evaluated individually using a US EPA tier 2 (ter 2) engine operated under four steady-state conditions and one transient cycle. The DOC effectively curtailed emissions of CO, and to some extent organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), and aerosol number concentration. The DPF system offered substantially higher reductions in OC and EC mass and aerosol number concentrations. Both, the DOC and DPF achieved reductions in the aforementioned emissions without adversely affecting emissions of NO2 and nano-sized aerosols. The strategy of repowering with an advanced system was examined using a US EPA tier 4 final (tier 4f) engine equipped with a cooled exhaust gas recirculation system and diesel exhaust fluid-based selective catalytic reduction system, but not with a DPF system. The tier 4f engine contributed substantially less than the tier 2 engine to the EC and OC mass, aerosol number, and CO, NO, and NO2 concentrations. The tier 4f engine was very effective in reducing aerosol mass, NO, and NO2 concentrations, but it was not equally effective in reducing aerosol number concentrations. The implementation of viable exhaust after treatment systems and advanced diesel power packages could be instrumental to the underground mining industry to secure a clean, economical, and dependable source of power for mobile equipment.

By M. Wasel

The Gross Rosebel gold deposits are located in theGuiana Shield of northcentral Suriname in South America. The property lies 80 km (50 miles) south of the capital city of Paramaribo. Gross Rosebel covers 170 km2 (65 sq miles) in an area of small hills covered primarily with secondary tropical rain forest, separated by discontinuous savannah (Fig. 1). The concession is accessible from Paramaribo by a 120-km (75-mile) paved and all-weather gravel road. Surficial gold was discovered in 1880 by local artisanal miners. This was followed by small-scale mechanized mining from 1885 to 1939. Placer Development carried out the first systematic exploration program from 1974 to 1977. In May 1992, Golden Star Resources optioned the property. Initial shallow reconnaissance diamond drilling of the extensive surface geochemical anomalies intersected sporadic gold mineralization with no apparent continuity between drill sections. Successive deep augering, trenching and systematic grid drilling, based on information from surface mapping, allowed the development of a preliminary geological model. Further drilling of specific structural-lithologic targets and more complete synthesis of geological data from the trenching and deep auger sampling added to the geological model and defined the multiple controls of gold mineralization. Carefully planned infill drilling on a tighter grid spacing resulted in progressive definition of reserves within six discrete gold deposits. Reserves based on $11.25/g ($350/oz) gold now stand at 35.5 Mt (39.1 million st) of 1.8 g/t (0.053 oz/st) gold, or 62.2 t (2 million oz) of gold.

Jan 1, 1998

By S. Nickson, M. Grenon

Oriented borehole data provide the means to characterize a rock mass. In this paper, the geomechanical caving potential of a hard rock mine project is investigated. In particular, the influence of random joints to the resulting block size distributions is addressed. The implications of this approach in preliminary investigations on the choice of mining methods are discussed with reference to one site.

Jan 1, 2003

By Jon C. Jenkins

In order to plan the most efficient mine installation, a company should take advantage of all available information and tools. One of the first factors of a coal reserve that needs to be determined as accurately as possible is the quality of coal the mine will have access to during the life of the installation. With the aid of many types of well logs and computor analysis, we are investigating several methods of log correlation to determine such data as moisture, ash, sulphur, and BTU on an in place basis. It may be possible to determine this data more accurately in this manner than by using diamond drill cores for analysis and thus allow for a more profitable mine installation. The production of an underground mine is based on many factors, two of these being roof control and line water, where present either in the roof or coal seam. Using many of the same logs obtained from reserve and active mine areas, we have attempted to determine roof and floor characteristics such as strength, lithology, and moisture properties. Using data obtained from this program, we will make comments on possible length of bolt to be used, possible mining width, and pillar size as they would pertain to these reserves and active mine areas.

Jan 1, 1969

By L. Frost

The establishment of a retreat system of longwall mining in this submarine coal field has been under study for many years and, although in special cases there have been limited local applications of this method of mining, there has been no attempt until quite recently to establish a uniform system of longwall retreating' in this area (see Figure 1) Where retreat walls were established, it was strictly as a result of physical, rather than economic conditions. In some of the operations- of the Corporation, where the coal was liable to spontaneous combustion- or the area subject to bumps as in No. 2 Mine of the Cumberland Railway and Coal Company in Springhills the recovery of the coal on a retreat system was more or less a necessity.

Jan 1, 1964

By K. T. Cunningham

The Oakfield, New York Hine of the United States Gypsum Company is a shallow, room and pillar mine developed in the Camillus Formation of Silurian Age on the up-dip edge of the northern Appalachian Basin. The gypsum comes to subcrop beneath a variety of glacial materials and is subject to solution activity by groundwater. A geologic environment unfavorable to mining activity is thus created. Since 1978 seismic studies have been used to supplement core drilling to determine a conservative boundary between normal and questionable mining environments. A single channel seismograph, originally in use, is now replaced by a twelve-channel unit and is used to determine bulk material velocity which is the basis for defining the mining limit.

Jan 1, 1987

By John A. Herbst, Kuang Y. Lee

Coarse particle size measurement is essential for the automatic control of a size reduction process like crushing or SAG milling in order to achieve optimal process performance. However, the on-line size measurement of coarse material is not easily obtained due to the problems of material handling and sample statistics. A technique based on advanced image analysis and quantitative stereology has been successfully developed and tested in a pilot scale setting. The chord length distribution of coarse particles on a moving conveyor was measured with an image analyzer and then transformed to the mesh size distribution with a stereological model and a special numerical method. Some test results as well as the technique's industrial suitability and limitations of this method are also discussed.

Jan 1, 1992

By V. K. Kakaria

As you know most of the gold and silver is produced by one of the following processes: (1) Agitated Leaching - Carbon adsorption or Merrill-Crowe (2) Heap Leaching - Carbon adsorption or Merrill-Crowe The figure 1 shows a typical flowsheet for recovery of gold and silver using Agitated or Pachuca Leaching Operation. The ore is crushed and ground and then leached in cyanide tanks solution using either Pachucas with air agitation or tanks with mechanical agitation. The soluble metal values are separated from the pulp by counter-current washing. The precious metals from cyanide solution are either recovered by zinc dust (Merrill-Crowe Process) or by loading on carbon and stripping with hot caustic cyanide solution. Gold and silver are electrowon on steel wool cathodes.

Jan 1, 1981

By C. Duke

The water treatment industry has historically been involved with reducing or inhibiting the inherant scale forming or fouling tendencies of natural waters associated with large industrial cooling water systems. Fouling is an extremely complex phenomenon. From a fundamental point of view, it may be characterized as a combined momentum, heat, and mass transfer problem. Chemical reaction kinetics is involved, as well as the solubility characteristics of salts in water and corrosion technology. It is a routine practice to over size pumps, piping and heat exchangers to compensate for fouling.

Jan 1, 1983

In phosphate flotation, more than 90% of the finer fraction (-35, + 150 mesh) is recovered as opposed to 70% of the coarser material (-16, + 35 mesh). On the other hand, coarser fraction is higher in phosphate content than the finer feed. Consequently, improvement in the coarse recovery is highly desired. It was determined on bench scale that emulsification of the collector (fuel oil and fatty acid mixture) can lead to enhanced recovery of coarse particles. Flotation of phosphate with emulsified collector resulted in improved recovery and grade also on the plant scale.

Jan 1, 1992

By James S. Browning

The principal uses of fine ground mica are as filler in wallboard joint cement, as a filler and surface coating for roofing, as an ingredient in paints, and in oil well drilling mud. The mineral has other uses in the manufacture of rubber, wallpaper, plastics, welding rods, electric insulation, house insulation, and textiles, and as an annealing agent in metal treatment. In recent years, more than 999 percent of the domestic mica produced has been scrap and flake mica (mica which does not meet specifications for sheet mica and is used for producing fine ground mica). There has been a continued increase in mica production for, several years, the 1963 production of scrap and flake mica totaling 117,251 tons.

Jan 1, 1966