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By A. W. Davis

"The Red Rose mine is in the Rocher Deboule mountains about 8 miles east of Skeena Crossing and a like distance south of the town of Hazelton; the most northerly settlement on the Prince Rupert line of the Canadian National railway and 177 miles northeast by rail from Prince Rupert. The mine workings are on the north side of Balsam or Red Rose creek; a tributary of Juniper creek that drains via Kitseguecla river into the Skeena near Skeena Crossing. A truck road 11 miles long extends from Skeen a Crossing (elevation 650 feet) to the Red Rose mill (elevation 4; 100 feet). The mine workings lie between 5; 600 and 6; 300 feet above sea-level. Mine and mill are connected by a 1-mile aerial tramway and a tractor trail.The Red Rose claims were staked about 1910 by prospectors attracted to the district by the construction and near completion of the railway between Prince Rupert and Jasper. For a number of years interest centred in prospecting a sheared zone exposed in a ravine between elevations of 5,425 and 5,825 feet. Several adits were driven and some high gold assays were obtained in vein quartz in the sheared zone, but this work did not develop sufficient ore and the property finally closed down. In the early twenties of this century tungsten minerals were discovered in the northern extension of the vein, but nothing was done to test this deposit. Finally, in 1940, spurred by the wartime demand for tungsten, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada drilled the tungsten-bearing vein, and although results were none too encouraging, underground work was begun in June 1941. The latter work disclosed substantial amounts of ore. A small mill, subsequently enlarged, began operation early in January 1942 and by the autumn of 1943 some 1,194,000 pounds of tungsten concentrate had been recovered. Mining ceased in November 1943 because of orders from the Metals Controller that no more shipments would be permitted."

Jan 1, 1954

By P. Mottahed, J. Ran

Mining practice and research have shown that the jointed roof in stratified rock behaves like a voussoir beam structure with strength greater than that determined by the continuous beam theory. Previous studies have demonstrated the voussoir beam mechanism and developed methods to estimate the crushing and buckling strength of voussoir beams. However, research on voussoir beams with multiple mid joints has not been suffICient and problems such as the voussoir beam support and applications of the voussoir beam mechanism to the mining environment have not been addressed. In this paper, mechanism of voussoir beams containing multiple mid joints and truss support are studied and applications of the voussoir beam mechanism to underground mine openings are discussed based on the numerical and experimental results.

Jan 1, 1995

By R. D. Brown

Higher metal prices have resulted not only in increased exploration and production, but also increased activity in the purchase of mining properties and mines. This article discusses some of the basic income tax considerations to be taken into account on the disposal of an interest in a mining claim or an active mining operation. It notes the importance ofan appropriate allocation of the purchase price amongst the various categories of assets, and discusses the tax implications to both vendor and purchaser of the transfer of the comm on types ofassets involved in mining operations. In the space available, the article can only outline the basic tax considerations, and point to areas where both vendor and purchaser need to be o

Jan 1, 1980

By Seunghoon Lee

The increase in the number of higher and larger buildings is expected to require the buildings' outer wall maintenance process, which includes cleaning, painting and monitoring, still depends on manpower. In this study, we proposed the robotic building maintenance system and aimed to reduce the jerk effect through the motion control of the system, improve the performance of the maintenance task, and ensure longer life and safety by improving the stability of the building structure and robot system. Through the results of the motion control and field-test with the proposed system, in specific, horizontal sliding module (HSM) showed that the jerk oriented by impact force was significantly reduced, feasibility of the proposed method was verified, and the robotic challenges were explored.

Aug 1, 2013

By R. Butar-Butar, J. Mosher, G. Banini, J. Hollow, A. Villanueva

The effect of High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR), as a preceding stage to a conventional ball mill circuit at PT Freeport Indonesia’s C1/C2 concentrators, has been studied in terms of downstream grinding efficiency and circuit performance. When milling the product from the HPGR, mill capacity increased by 21% for the same product grind size, when compared to processing similar ore from a conventional crushing circuit. This achievement is a result of several reasons, among them: reduction in feed size (F80), fines generation beyond the proportional reduction in F80, reduction in ore hardness induced by HPGR comminution mechanism, optimization of the recycle system of the HPGR and ball string optimization in the ball mill circuit given the new feed to the mill.

Jan 1, 2012

By Jason A. McLennan

Conditional bias is an infamous problem with estimation methods including kriging. Changing estimation parameters will mitigate, but not remove, conditional bias. The conditional bias of kriging is well understood; however, there is widespread confusion in the literature and among practicing geostatisticians regarding the conditional bias of geostatistical simulation. There is no conditional bias of simulation when the simulation results are used correctly. The correct use of simulation for recoverable reserves estimation is to (1) generate multiple realizations conditional to all available data at a small scale, (2) linearly average all realizations to the chosen block size and (3) calculate the probability of each block being ore and the ore grade of each block. The ?probability of ore? and the ?ore grade? are conditionally nonbiased.

May 1, 2002

By Chen Feng

Compared to widespread successful deployment of robotic manipulators for repetitive and hazardous tasks in related industries such as manufacturing, the construction industry has achieved relatively limited benefits from robotics and soft automation. Unlike manufacturing, where robotic solutions benefit from the structured layout of the environment (e.g., factory assembly line), construction robots face unique challenges that arise from the rugged, dynamic, and unstructured environment of the work site, as well as the uncertainty and evolving sequence of occurring on-site events. This challenges any intended construction robots to not only replicate basic human motion, but also be capable of sensing and adapting to environmental changes, and making decisions based on the evolving state of the environment. Building upon recent advancements in robotic mapping, computer vision, and object recognition, the authors propose to introduce autonomous behavior at the basic task level for on-site construction robots to address these challenges in a flexible and extensible manner. This paper reports the outcome of the first phase of this research - a structured methodology for improved design and development of basic task automations - and focuses on algorithms developed for mobile robot navigation and relative pose estimation. The algorithms are implemented on a prototype mobile robotic platform, and evaluated in several experimental scenarios.

Aug 1, 2013

By M. Hawker, M. Kreuh

The mining and metallurgy industry is known to be of cyclical nature associated with price volatility. As such, some years are quite lucrative and other years require mining companies to tighten their belts. The field is a mix of junior, mid-tier, and major mining companies. One thing that is common to all of them is the time required and the cost to develop a flowsheet in accordance with best practices. Although a long list of factors can impact flowsheet development, this paper will include the impacts of: experienced metallurgical engineers and laboratories, representative samples for high quality and valuable testwork results, and following engineering development stages. The paper also provides typical time frames to complete selected engineering flowsheet development steps.

Jan 1, 2014

By V. Pouyafar

Semi-Solid metal alloys, as used in SSM processing, have a special microstructure of globular solid particles suspended in a liquid matrix, which makes them behave differently in forming processes. The sensitivity of semi-solid slurries to temperature variations and their history and rate dependant behavior, make process design and control difficult. Precise selection of the process parameters is necessary in part production. Therefore, a numerical analysis and simulation of the process can be a valuable tool in process design. In this work we proposed a structural dependent model to account for the thixotropic behavior of semi-solid metals. The parameters of the model were then determined using rheometery tests. The results show a good agreement between the model and the experiments.

Oct 1, 2011

By Angus W. Davis

The case of the P. G. E. railway is a peculiar one. Traversing, as it does, to a large extent, a mineralized country there are as yet no producing mines along its route although I am convinced that mines will be developed in the region tributary to the railway. The Fitzimmons group of claims, a copper property near Mons station, 37 miles from Squamish is now (unless recently relinquished) under bond to the Granby Company. On Cadwallader creek, in the upper Bridge river country, certain gold properties, referred to later, are being developed. Prospectors are fairly active in the Pemberton meadows area. There are also a large number in the Bridge river, Gun creek, and Whitewater districts. East of Marguerite station some development work is being prosecuted on some copper claims located there. In addition here and there throughout the entire route of the railway prospecting is being undertaken. At Hat creek, 15 miles from Pavilion station there is an enormous deposit of lignite. It is by no means certain that this coal can be profitably mined and hauled to the railway, but as a cheap fuel it offers possibilities in the recovery of by-products by destructive distillation. Logical procedure would ? indicate the expenditure of considerable money on development and, if results justify, the construction of a spur from the main line to the deposit.

Jan 1, 1925

By M. Hamamoto, M. Furuta, S. Tanaka

The Tamano smelter and refinery has expanded its production from 228kt/y to 260kt/y since 2006. It was not a big jump, but efficient and economical improvements were executed. These were not only de-bottlenecking and modernization of the smelting plant, including the acid plant, but also additional processes were commissioned, e.g. slag cleaning furnace and steam dryer. On the other hand, a conversion to permanent cathode process in the #2 tank house made the biggest impact on production efficiency for the refinery plant. In order to overcome the drastic change of copper business, although each scale is not so big, continuous improvements are very important to survive. This paper mainly describes the recent improvements of the smelting plant.

Jan 1, 2007

By K Komori

Naoshima Smelter and Refinery has treated shredder residue and incinerator fly ash in Japan since 2003. As a highlight, a new incinerating and melting furnace, as well as fly ash washing treatment plant were newly constructed for pre-treatment of shredder residue and fly ash respectively, and the pre-treated materials are ultimately treated in the existing Mitsubishi continuous copper smelting and converting process line. Since wastes such as shredder residue tend to vary in size and in shape, and contain some chlorine, the installation of a new pre-treatment line was required. The combination of the new pre-treatment line with the existing Mitsubishi Continuous Copper Process line has created a highly efficient and environmentally friendly system for recovering and recycling of valuable metals that previously used to be sent to a landfill. This paper reviews the approach that Naoshima took to establish its current recycling business strategy.

Jan 1, 2007

By M. L. F. Gameiro

The aim of this study was to check the feasibility of non-dispersive solvent extraction to recover copper from ammoniacal solutions using hollow fibres as contactors. Data of mass transfer using the B3-diketone LIX 54 as extractant was obtained. The influence of tube and shell hydrodynamics on the extraction rate of copper was studied. The overall mass transfer coefficient of copper was calculated from the experimental data by performing steady state material balance. Simultaneous extraction and stripping experiments were carried out using different volume ratios of feed phase to stripping phase. The results obtained showed that practically all the copper content was removed from the ammoniacal feed solutions. The recovery of copper reached nearly 100% in several extraction-stripping experiments.

Jan 1, 2007

By E. Paransky, M. Rigaud, G. Paschek, S. Palco

Some of the negative impacts of carbon addition on the strength of castables are yet to be overcome in order to fulfill its potential benefits for oxidation resistance. This paper reports the results of recent studies conducted at CIREP on the effects of different types of carbon additives on the thermo-mechanical properties of magnesia-based castables. Experimental techniques included measurements of the hot modulus of rupture (HMOR), hot modulus of elasticity (HMOE), as well as the wedge-splitting test (WST). The comparison of evolving microstructures was carried out employing scanning electron microscopy with microanalysis attachment (SEM/EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). HMOR values of 12 MPa at 1300°C have been reached in MgO-Si02-C castables containing up to 7% carbon.

Jan 1, 2004

By Richard Hurteau

Design and validation of an integrated guidance system for articulated ground vehicles is investigated. The development of an autonomous industrial vehicle must take into the account the specific geometry of these vehicles; they can be composed of a tractor with 1 or 2 trailers or of articulated type like LHD. Moreover the tractor-trailers type vehicles can have on-axle hitch configuration or positive/negative off axle configuration. The path-tracking of a tractor-trailer vehicle in restricted space is presented and discussed in this paper. Recent results obtained in simulation and validated by experimentation are also presented. These studies can lead to better ways of maneuvering an articulated vehicle in a restricted space or automatically executing of docking and parking maneuvers

May 1, 2002

By H. Dundar, C. Dzomeku

An extensive testwork was performed around the HPGR plant at GoldFields Ghana Limited Tarkwa Gold Mine. The HPGR was used to prepare the feed for heap leaching. The circuit was configured in such a way that the edge material from the HPGR discharge was recycled for further crushing while the product from the centre reported to the heap leach section. The set-up of the Polysius HPGR provided an opportunity to study the effect of different design and operating variables. This paper will discuss the results from the tests performed to assess the effect of rolls’ speed and applied pressure on the capacity and the grinding efficiency of the HPGR. Applying different pressure values appeared to have an influence on the amount of edge material recycled.

Jan 1, 2012

By W. A. Kracht

The McGill Bubble Size Analyzer, with the original image-capturing device (digital video camera), has a proven record for measuring bubble size distributions that are relatively narrow, such as in mechanical cells with frother. However, some problems arise when dealing with bubble size distributions characterized by a bi-modal shape and wide range of sizes such as found in some flotation columns. To measure wide bubble size distributions it is necessary to increase both the resolution to image the small bubbles and the viewing area to include the large bubbles. This can be done using a digital still camera: digital still cameras can have higher resolution than the digital video cameras currently used and with the proper lens the viewing area may be increased without resolution loss. The digital still camera approach was used to measure bubble size distributions in flotation columns at different operations in Chile. A comparison with typical bubble size distributions generated with mechanical cells is presented.

Jan 1, 2007

By J. W. Matousek

Since the late 1800s, copper-nickel ores have been mined and smelted in the Sudbury area. The Canadian Copper Company, the Copper Cliff ancestor of Inco Limited, commenced operations with a blast furnace smelter in 1888. Coal-fired reverberatory furnaces were added in 1911 and multihearth roasters in 1914. The blast and reverberatory furnaces smelted, respectively, coppernickel ores and ore fines until 1930, when a milling process and plant began operating to concentrate and separate the minerals of these two metals. Two reasons for this delay were: (1) the availability of high grade ores suitable for direct smelting; and (2) the difficulties in making the copper-nickel separation. The Mond Nickel Company, however, practiced flotation at its Coniston Smelter site from 1914 to 1930. A bulk concentrate containing six per cent copper and five per cent nickel was recovered from ore of 1.6 per cent each of copper and nickel. Gravity (table) and magnetic concentrates were also produced. Inco Limited (then The International Nickel Company) began laboratory-scale flotation tests on its ores in 1918. This work led, ultimately (in 1930), to the construction of the 7500 tonne-per-day Copper Cliff Mill, designed to recover separate copper and nickel concentrates. Its capacity was expanded to 11000 tpd in 1936, to 18 000 in 1940, and to 27 000 in 1942. Since 1971 it has operated to process only the bulk flotation products from other mills to yield individual nickel and copper concentrates.

Jan 1, 1999

By D. McConchie

The use of Bauxsol? (physically and chemically modified alumina refinery residues) to treat acid rock drainage (ARD), and sulphidic waste rock and tailings, provides new options for managing some intractable environmental problems at both derelict and active mine sites. Treatment of ARD waters using the Bauxsol technology shows that the effectiveness of raw Bauxsol material can be enhanced by including modest amounts of selected industrial minerals or common chemical additives. The type and amount of additive required and the amount of the blend needed to treat the water depends on the initial composition of the water and the target water quality; for some ARD waters, optimum treatment may require one or more changes in the type or amount of additive used. Maximum treatment efficiency can be achieved only when a balance is maintained between the rate of trace metal binding and the rate of change in water pH; adding treatment reagents faster than can be accommodated by the reaction kinetics will not result in more rapid water treatment. This paper presents the results for treating several ARD waters to illustrate the importance of blend selection and treatment procedure. Although treating ARD water is often necessary, this strategy treats the symptoms rather than the cause. The best permanent solution is to treat the sulphidic waste rock or tailings such that they do not continue to oxidise and produce acidic metal-rich leachates; sulphide oxidation needs to be stopped or slowed to a rate that can be accommodated by normal environmental processes. Capping lined impoundments is not a solution because all caps and linings will inevitably fail some time in the future creating a nasty surprise for some future generation. Adding lime is also less than ideal because the lime leaches from the treated material; treatment often appears to be effective for a few years and then fails. Bauxsol technology offers effective alternatives to conventional liming and capping procedures and Bauxsol blend application rates and procedures can be planned to ensure that no acidic or metal-rich water can ever escape from the site. Bauxsol can be physically mixed with the sulphidic mine wastes or it can used to form subsurface permeable reactive barriers, or both. Bauxsol treated waste rock and tailings can be immediately and effectively revegetated. In this paper we present leachate quality and plant growth rate data for several sulphidic waste rock and tailings deposits treated using the new technology.

May 1, 2003

By D. L. Johnston

"Function and ApplicationsWater-only cyclones, (WOC) are a dynamic mineral separator which cause minerals to separate in a water medium by virtue of difference in specific gravity. Figure 1 shows diagramatic plan and sectional views of a water-only cyclone.A slurry of mineral matter and water is fed through the inlet opening under gravitational or pump pressure. The combined effect of centrifugal action and conical shape is to concentrate the heaviest fraction of mineral on the periphery and bottom of the cyclone. This layer of higher specific gravity particles increases in thickness and density between the cyclone inlet and apex. The action in the bed of higher gravity particles formed in the flattened portion of the cone surrounding the tip of the vortex finder deter;nines the specific gravity of separation or cut-point. Mineral particles of lower specific gravity flow with the bulk of the water, out the vortex finder. Mineral particles of higher specific gravity flow with little water out the apex. A more technically e:mct description of the functioning of the water-only cyclone can be found in previous publications noted in the references.The water-only cyclone was invented and refined by J. Vis man, formerly of the Canadian Mines Branch staff, between 1958 and 1965. The first industrial application noted in the literature was when it was introduced as a cleaner for fine coal in 1962. Since 1970 the water-only cyclone has become a common separation apparatus in many Canadian and foreign coal processing plants. The only other mineral industry application known to the author is in separation of gold bearing heavy minerals from sand<'>. The potential does exist for other applications and this area deserves to be investigated more thoroughly than it has been."

Jan 1, 1989