Search Documents

United Engineering Trustees, Inc. W. D. B. MOTTER, JR., '44 A. L. QUENEAU, '45 ALBERT ROBERTS, '43, President The Engineering Foundation GEORGE D. BARRON, '44 F. F. COLCORD. '46 A. L. QUENEAU, '45, Chairman

Jan 1, 1943

United Engineering Trustees, Inc. W. D. B. HOTTER, JR., '44 A. L. QUENEAU, '45 ALBERT ROBERTS, '43 The Engineering Foundation GEORGE D. BARRON, '44 F. F. COLCORD, '46 A. L. QUENEAU, '45

Jan 1, 1942

United Engineering Trustees, Inc. GEORGE D. BARRON WILLIAM H. BASSETT R. M. ROOSEVELT The Engineering Foundation GEORGE D. BARRON H. C. BELLINGER E. DEGOLYER Engineering Societies Library Board ROBERT PEELE PHILIP W. HENRY H. K. MASTERS A. B. PARSONS, Ex-officio R. H. SWEETSER

Jan 1, 1932

By C. M. Smith

HOWARD N. EAVENSON, acting for the last time as president of the Institute, presided at the annual business meeting on Tuesday afternoon at 4 o'clock. He spoke briefly of his visits with Local Sections last fall, and read a scholarly address on "Mineral Fuels and Civilization," scheduled for early publication in these columns. Karl Eilers presented the Treasurer's report, showing last year's income to be $134,967.44, compared with expenses of $133.266.51. Comparable figures for 1933 were $121,689.90 and $115,462.60. The Institute's peak income was in 1923 about $208,000. Newell G. Alford read the report of the Membership Committee showing 750 new members elected and placed on the rolls in 1934, compared with 328 in 1933. Losses by resignation last year were 81, compared with 262 in 1933; and 691 were suspended for non-payment of dues, compared with 747 the year before. Total membership, including 579 Student Associates, was 7742 at the end of 1934. Applications for membership have been coming in freely the last few months.

Jan 1, 1935

By A. Cecala, J. Noll, J. Hummer

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has observed that many control rooms and operator compartments in the U.S. mining industry do not have filtration systems capable of maintaining low dust concentrations in these areas. In this study at a mineral processing plant, to reduce respirable dust concentrations in a control room that had no cleaning system for intake air, a filtration and pressurization system originally designed for enclosed cabs was modified and installed. This system was composed of two filtering units: one to filter outside air and one to filter and recirculate the air inside the control room. Eighty-seven percent of submicrometer particles were reduced by the system under static conditions. This means that greater than 87 percent of respirable dust particles should be reduced as the particle-size distribution of respirable dust particles is greater than that of submicrometer particles, and filtration systems usually are more efficient in capturing the larger particles. A positive pressure near 0.02 inches of water gauge was produced, which is an important component of an effective system and minimizes the entry of particles, such as dust, into the room. The intake airflow was around 118 cfm, greater than the airflow suggested by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) for acceptable indoor air quality. After one year, the loading of the filter caused the airflow to decrease to 80 cfm, which still produces acceptable indoor air quality. Due to the loading of the filters, the reduction efficiency for submicrometer particles under static conditions increased to 94 percent from 87 percent.

Jan 1, 2015

By A. Cecala, J. Noll, J. Hummer

"NIOSH has observed that many control rooms and operator compartments in the US mining industry do not have filtration systems capable of maintaining low dust concentrations in these areas. In this study at a mineral processing plant, to reduce respirable dust concentrations in a control room which had no cleaning system for intake air, a filtration/pressurization system originally designed for enclosed cabs was modified and installed. Eighty-seven percent of submicron particles were reduced by the system at static conditions, meaning that greater than eighty-seven percent of respirable dust particles should be reduced. The particle size distribution for respirable dust particles are greater than for submicron particles, and filtration systems usually are more efficient in capturing the larger particles. A positive pressure near 0.02 inches of water gauge was produced which is an important component for an effective system and minimizes particles (e.g. dust) from entering into the room. The intake airflow was around 118 cfm, which is greater than the airflow suggested by ASHRAE for acceptable indoor air quality. INTRODUCTION Chronic overexposure to respirable silica dust (particle diameter < 10 microns) leads to a progressive lung disease known as silicosis. Workers who develop silicosis have an increased incidence of lung cancer and pulmonary disorders. In June 1997, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (1) found sufficient evidence to declare that inhaled crystalline silica in the form of quartz and cristobalite is carcinogenic. Mining is one of the leading industries for occupational exposure to silica dust (2-7). Control rooms located in dusty areas in some mines are of particular concern (8). Many mineral processing operations utilize operator’s compartments and/or control rooms to house workers who are performing particular job functions. Most industrial processing mills have rooms where a worker looks out over the facility and has direct control over the product flow throughout the entire building. In addition, primary crusher operators are often located in a compartment from which they are able to view the primary crushing function. Their job is to control when trucks dump into the primary jaw crusher and the rate of feed of the ore from the hopper into the crusher. Many of these control rooms and operator booths do not have filtration systems capable of cleaning air entering the control room or booth, which can result in elevated concentrations of dust in the room or booth. To reduce the dust concentrations in these rooms, it would make sense to clean the entering air with filtration/pressurization units similar to those proven to provide a clean environment in enclosed cabs."

Jan 1, 2016

By Marshall Charles Riddell, John Carlon

local news

Jan 12, 1997

By Roxanne Scott

Outline ? Overview of Community Investment in the Mining Sector ? Emerging Good Practice: ?Strategic Integrated Community Investment? ? Assessing Local Context: ? Institutional Assessment ? Partnership Assessment Approaches to Community Investment Isolation: No proactive engagement in community development Ad hoc philanthropy: small infrastructure, sponsorships, donations Strategic philanthropy: Community proposes options for development Company decides what to do and carries it out, e.g. building schools, health posts, roads Strategic integrated community investment: ? Aligned with government/community development goals and priorities ? Communities and government involved in decisions and execution ? Focused on training and capacity building ? Partnerships ? Continuation in absence of company support Measured returns on investment

May 1, 2010

By A. I. Collins, D. Danninger

Newmont has installed advanced control and online optimization on the dry grinding circuit and both roasters on its Carlin Trend refractory ore treatment plant. Subsequently, Newmont has developed a master plan for institutionalizing advanced control and optimization on all its processing units. Newmont is committed to a program of applying advanced control and optimization from crushing of ore to pouring of gold. This paper describes Newmont&apos;s experience with implementing advanced control and optimization and the benefits received. In addition, identification of advanced control and optimization opportunities and their economic justification is discussed.

Jan 1, 2005

Recognizing the fact that the problems of the committee named by the Board to prepare the "official ticket" for officers and Directors of the Institute are various and difficult; and desiring to assist this committee by setting forth some of the principles that should guide the committee and some of the qualifications that should be required of candidates, the following instructions are formulated and the Secretary is directed to publish them in MINING AND METALLURGY concurrently with the publication of the names of each newly appointed Nominating Committee and to send a copy to each member of the, Committee.

Jan 1, 1946

Recognizing the fact that the problems of the committee named by the Board to prepare the "official ticket" for officers and Directors of the Institute are various and difficult; and desiring to assist this committee by setting forth some of the principles that should guide the committee and some of the qualifications that should be required of candidates, the following instructions are formulated and the Secretary is directed to publish them in MINING AND METALLURGY concurrently with the publication of the names of each newly appointed Nominating Committee and to send a copy to each member of the Committee.

Jan 1, 1946

By R Lastra

Applied mineralogy involves conducting investigations on ores, minerals and materials to solve problems encountered in mining, metallurgy, processing, industrial minerals, environment, health and other fields. The investigations are performed to determine the mineral behaviours during processing by using every mineral and ore characterisation technique and appropriate instruments. As the field is young, new techniques and instruments are still being developed. This paper attempts to convey the scope of the field by:describing the capabilities of the respective research instruments for determining mineral characteristics, summarising investigations of gold as an example of applied mineralogy studies of precious metals, andpresenting a case history where applied mineralogists worked closely with mineral processing engineers on a base metal ore and mill products to help the engineers optimise their processes for maximum recoveries.

Jan 1, 2008

By k. Lebecki, S. Trzcionka

The prototype and test results of the instrument for quick determination of incombustible content in deposited dust as a protection against coal dust explosion propagation are presented. Presently existing methods do not permit to obtain quick information about incombustible content, needed for the proper protection of workings. As the operating principle for the e instrument the dependence of reflection of infrared radiation intensity on incombustible content in the sample is chosen. The construction is based on the modern electronics. The measurement will be done at the sampling site. The range of the instrument is 0-100% of incombustible, direct reading, autonomous supply, weight no more than 0.5 kg, and is intrinsically safe according to EN Standards. During the Conference the instrument will be commercialized.

Jan 1, 2003

By John E. Willson, Ben L. Seegmiller

A portable electronic instrument was designed and constructed to detect unknown stress magnitudes in rocks. The principle used to detect stress is based on the propagation velocity method. This method allows the stress in a rock subjected to a load of unknown magnitude to be determined, provided that the wave velocity-stress relationship for similar rock is known. This is accomplished by measuring the travel time of longitudinal mechanical waves passing between two points a set distance apart in a rock. The velocity of the wave is calculated and the stress determined from the wave velocity-stress relationship. If the sending and receiving transducer spacing is constant, a time vs. stress relationship rather than the velocity-stress relationship may be used. The method is nondestructive and tests can be made without drilling or otherwise disturbing the rocks. The first studies undertaken in the United States to determine stress in rocks using propagation velocity techniques were reported by Obert1,2 in 1939 and 1940. The Soviet Union first reported using propagation methods to study rock pressures in 1951.8 Success of the method led to the development of a pulse-type ultrasonic seismoscope4 in 1953. Using this instrument, Ivanov and Betaneli5,6 in 1963 succeeded in devising and testing under field conditions a method of investigating coal pillar stresses. In 1967 Osipova7 reported results of similar studies in the Nakhichevan salt mines. In France, Tincelin8 has used the propagation velocity method to study the stress distribution in iron ore pillars. Uhlmann9 has investigated stresses in salt and potash pillars in Germany, using velocity techniques. Determination of uniaxial stress by propagation velocity methods is limited to rocks which have readily detectable wave velocity-stress variations. The present stress detection instrument is restricted in application to rocks which have a velocity change under stress of at least 300 fps. Examples of rocks which meet this requirement are sandstones, coal, and possibly some limestones. Testing of this instrument was limited to a laboratory study and the results may or may not be indicative of what would be found in a field test. A program of field experiments to study the feasibility of using this instrument to determine mine pillar and tunnel stresses is in progress. Instrument Design The instrument has two main components: A probe and a control-display unit. The probe is a hand-held device to which two identical rodlike transducers are rigidly mounted. Coaxial cable connects the probe to the control-display unit which is mounted in an enclosed carrying case measuring 7 % x 9 x 13 in. The instrument is designed so it may be carried and operated by one man. Weight of the probe and enclosed control-display unit is approximately 20.1b. The probe consists of two transducers identical in construction. One transducer is used to convert electronic pulses to mechanical waves and transmit these waves into a rock. The other detects the transmitted waves in the rock and converts them back into electronic signals. The basic element in both transducers is a piezoelectric crystal. The crystal is a disk made of lead titanate zirconate and has a natural resonant frequency of 400 kHz ±1% in the thickness mode. A schematic of one of the two identical transducing elements is shown in [Fig. 1.] A spacing of 6 in. between sending and receiving transducers has been found to be most satisfactory. The control-display unit consists of a pulse generator and a 1-in. oscilloscope. Various electronic devices are used for the power supply, amplification, and calibration. The amplitude of the square wave from the pulse generator can be continuously varied between 0 and +20 vdc. Pulse width can be set at 1, 2, 3, or 4 µsec. The repetition rate of the pulse can have the following values: 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 750, and 1000 Hz. The oscilloscope delay system allows the travel time of the longitudinal wave passing through a rock to be measured to an accuracy ±0.1 µsec in the range from 0 to 995 µsec. Fig. 2 is a schematic of the various electronic sections in the control-display unit. Laboratory Testing The first step in using the instrument is to develop a velocity-stress or a time-stress curve for the par-

Jan 1, 1972

By Pierre-Alexandre Abeel, Charles Dowding, Justin Lueker

When blasting is eliminated as a cause of cosmetic cracking, often someone will ask, “If blasting didn’t cause the crack, then what did?” This paper describes detection by remotely operated instrumentation of the new cosmetic crack that was climatologically-induced. The measurement was obtained as a part of the development of Autonomous Crack Measurement (ACM) instruments to measure micro-inch response of cracks to both long-term, climatological, and dynamic, blast vibration effects. The crack occurred in the wall of a structure that was monitored for over 29 months and as such represents one of the longest periods of ACM observation.

Jan 1, 2015

By Finlayson J. F

The advantages of rapid and accurate analyses are becoming appreciated in many industries today and have resulted in a great increase in the number of samples received by their laboratories. This has caused some firms to consider the installation of one or more of the instruments available for analytical chemistry. In this country there are relatively few people with experience of instrumental methods and it is difficult for a firm considering the installation of such equipment to assess the advantages which instruments may give them, and to decide which instruments, if any, will be of most use to them. The object of this paper is to give a brief survey of instrumental methods in the field of inorganic analysis. Instrumental methods of analysis have numerous advantages when used correctly. They enable extremely rapid analyses to be made in many cases, e.g., analysis of refined lead by purely chemical means takes about two days whereas spectographically the analysis can be completed in approximately one and a half hours. The accuracy ofinstrumental methods, generally between 1 and 5%, is higher than most chemical methods for small percentages of impurities. Furthermore, if the instrument can be calibrated against absolute standards the errors are usually random and not biased to one side of the correct result. The sensitivity is high, enabling in many cases the detection and determination of smaller percentages than can be detected chemically. This high sensitivity enables and, in some cases, requires the use of very small samples, and results in considerable savings in reagents, allowing the analysis of considerably more samples without undue loss...

Jan 1, 1951

By G. C. Kachel

During the past two years, there has been an increasing acceptance of process automation among ferrous, non-ferrous and non-metallic rock processing operations in an attempt to keep total unit costs in line in a market situation where labor and material costs are rising almost daily. Previous technical papers (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) have described, in considerable detail, instrumentation and automatic control devices that have been successfully applied in a wide variety of crushing and grinding facilities. While many of the basic control philosophies that evolved almost ten years ago remain essentially unchanged, new components and devices have been developed during the past two years that permit these philosophies to be better implemented in operating plants. Some of these devices and their application will be discussed with particular emphasis placed in describing the basic control philosophy employed as well as some of the hardware or components comprising typical crushing and grinding circuit control systems. Before any instrumentation or automatic control system can be successfully devised for a specific facility, there must be a clear understanding and agreement by supplier and user as to the control system objective. In the case of a crusher feed rate control system, the objective is generally to maximize thru-put of a given finished product size. While this is often the case in a grinding circuit automatic control system, the reasons may be entirely different. Taconite processors whose end product is to be pelletized, generally attempt to control their grind within narrow limits to optimize balling action. Other milling operations are more concerned with obtaining metallurgical liberation and can, in many cases, tolerate wider swings in finished grind.

Jan 1, 1969

By Charles H. Wells

This paper presents a review of the state of the art in coal preparation plant instrumentation and a discussion of automation practice that could be applied based on current mineral beneficiation experience and demonstrated foreign technology in coal washing plants. Specific e-mules of applications of remotely controlled slurry values, pneumatic and electronic field transmitters, computers for control and data logging, and on-line analytical instrumentation are given. A program, to demonstrate this technology is described.

Jan 1, 1980

By Swapan Ghosh, Amitava Sengupta, Proloy Das

Ferro-alloys are very important ingredients used for making of quality steel with desired composition. In view of high demand in various types of ferro-alloys, it has become necessary to produce the same efficiently, safely and cost-effectively with consistent quality maintaining the anti-pollution norms. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to adopt latest process/equipment with the state-of-the-art instrumentation and automation system. A Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) based automation system with suitable Human Machine Interface(HMI) terminals along with intelligent field mounted sensing/control devices allows to monitor and control the complete plant effectively with optimum deployment of man-power. In association with this, use of process optimization controllers enables to achieve specialised functionalities of the submerged arc furnaces like material management, lining management, electrode management, power management, overall production management etc.

Jan 1, 2007

By J. Scrimgeour

"The word ""instrumentation"" has expanded from its original meaning, which in engineering perhaps referred to measuring apparatus alone. In its broadest form, it now includes sensors, display instrumentation, standard pack-aged controllers and, most recently, the use of stored program computers for on-line process control. The paper traces the evolution, in tutorial form, of the successive application of mechanization, measurement instrumentation, automatic control, central operating systems, programmed control, process computer control, direct digital control and, finally, hierarchies of computers used for process control and corporate management as a fully integrated business system. In the field of industrial minerals, the cement industry has seen the most widespread acceptance of these techniques. Computer control has been accepted as the way of life for the blending of chemical materials and for on-line control of the cement kiln. Accordingly, the cement application is selected for further presentation in the paper. This illustrates the trend progressing from control of single loops on process variables toward the objective of total control of the product quality. The economic justification for instrumentation, centralized control, automatic control and computer control is .discussed with reference to savings in fuel, maintenance, operating labour, depreciation, power and product quality improvements."

Jan 1, 1967