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By Byron S. Kutscher

This report summarizes the program to develop and construct an improved light-scattering dust monitor (ILSDM). This improved light-scattering dust monitor, which operates on the forward light scattering principle, provides instantaneous measurements of airborne dust concentrations in units of mg/m. The program was divided into two phases. Phase I involved the design of the ILSDM which was reviewed by the Bureau of Mines. Phase II included the fabrication of a prototype ILSDM based upon the design developed during Phase I. After completion, the ILSDM was delivered and demonstrated at the Bureau of Mines. A description of the final ILSDM design, operating instructions, maintenance instructions and recommendations for additional work are also included in this report.

Jan 1, 1980

By Bo Forsman

METAFORA is a simulation model for determination and evaluation of strategies for operating loader/truck systems in mining. A specific version of METAFORA was used to evaluate the haulage system at Solider Mineral's Aitik mine in northern Sweden, one of the largest open pit mines in Europe with a production of about 11.5 Mtpy (about 34000 tpd) of copper are. A production level of 34065 tpd was estimated by simulation runs with METAFORA. Using METAFORA's dispatch rules (Fixed Dispatch, Maximize Trucks, and Maximize Loaders), the truck/shovel system in the Aitik mine was simulated for evaluating alternative dispatch control strategies. The Maximize Trucks rule gave about the same total production (ore + waste) as the Fixed Dispatch rule but a 9% higher ore production. The Maximize Loaders rule gave the lowest production. The marginal truck capacity decreases with increasing number of trucks serving the same loader due to increasing waiting times. In Aitik mine the low crusher capacity results in long dumping times. If the dumping time at the crusher could be halved, the ore production would increase by 14%. The paper indicates that the use of software like METAFORA can result in a substantial reduction of time, effort and cost in shovel/truck system design and evaluation.

Jan 1, 1992

By R. J. Colony

MINING geology does not lend itself - very readily to a review embracing "improvements in methods," as perhaps do shop practices or laboratory procedures. The "methods" used in mining geology are simply the application of geology to mining; winning the ore, the handling of material, mechanical appliances, all belong strictly to mining proper, and have no place in a review of geology as applied to mining. A comprehensive review would necessarily cover a .very broad field, which could be subdivided into many -parts. Only a few of these can be discussed here. .Those that have been suggested to the chairman indude :

Jan 1, 1930

By J. G. George

A brief review of the silver industry is presented to set the stage for the analysis of the distribution of silver production by source from various types of mines in Canada and of the changing relationship between the total output of silver and the total output of base metals. The decline in the average grade of the Canadian mines is also discussed and a trend for the future is proposed. The report then examines in broader aspects the world primary silver production and concludes, in the section on outlook, that the effective supply in primary silver will grow at a rate significantly lower than the growth rate expected for base metals. A cumulative deficit of some 900 million ounces is projected for the period 1975-1980 and a further deficit of some 1,100 million ounces if projected for the 1980-to-1985 period.

Jan 1, 1977

By B. G. Russell

A wide range of minerals is found within the Republic of South Africa, many of which are exploited to a greater extent than in similar deposits found elsewhere. It is often asked whether this is atributed to the high grade of the ores encountered in this country, or whether such factors as fiscal and Infrastructural incentives create an economic climate that has en bled the mining industry to successfully extract and market minerals at a profit. This paper views South Africa's mineral resources in a regional and global context In an attempt to place the country's geological wealth in perspective. It represents the author's own Views, and not necessarily those of the Department of Mine al and Energy Affairs.

Jan 1, 1986

By Timothy A. Clancy

To help reduce the Nation's dependence on imported chromite, the Bureau of Mines is conducting research on the use of dolomites as an alternate material. Dolomite is a plentiful domestic resource and offers certain advantages as a refractory raw material. A review of the literature has indicated that there are many sources of high-purity dolomite in this country and that European nations use a greater proportion of dolomite refractories, primarily in steelmaking, than the United States, The Bureau of Mines characterized 14 domestic dolomites as to chemistry, density, mineralogy, microstructure, and thermal behavior, to develop baseline data on their suitability as refractory raw materials.

Jan 1, 1983

By AIME AIME

EDWIN W. KEMMERER, professor of international finance at Princeton, in a speech before a banking conference at Urbana, Ill., on Nov. 26, stated that the increase in the store of gold held by the United States is not so alarming as it appears on the surface. Excerpts from his address, as reported by The New York Times, follow: "It is significant . . . that the value of gold as expressed in its purchasing power in the United States during the last half-dozen years has been higher than at any other equivalent period since our records began 140 years ago. Our so-called 59-cent dollar today buys about 25 per cent more goods at wholesale than did our old dollar in the prosperous year 1926, and an ounce of gold will now buy considerably more than twice what it did then. This present high value of gold is one reason for its recent large production.

Jan 1, 1941

Mercury has been used by mankind since prehistoric times. It has been, and is now, widely used in industry and medicine and has unique properties which make direct substitution difficult or impossible. At present its principal uses are for electrical apparatus, control instruments, electrolytic soda preparation, mildew-proofing paints, pesticides, and medical and dental preparations. Deposits of mercury are less common than those of other base and precious metals, but some of the deposits are very large and have been ample to meet the world's past demands. The price of mercury has had many sharp fluctuations, but in general, the limited number of producers has resulted in a more stable price structure than that of many other commodities. The United States has been one of the main producers of mercury, and from 1850 to 1961 produced 3,247,704 flasks. Yearly production since World War II has varied from 4,535 to 38,067 flasks. An estimate of domestic resources of mercury producible at various price ranges was prepared for each mercury mine by combining specific knowledge of mercury mineralization with estimates of potential, based on geologic information and past production history. The sum of the individual estimates for each price range is shown in a table. A parallel estimate of nationwide production potential was made from a study of past price and production relationships. These were analyzed by plotting yearly production figures against the previous year's price, expressed in dollars of constant purchasing power. An equation was fitted to the data by mathematical means and was used to extend the curve into areas of higher than historic prices. Potential production rates at various price levels were taken from this graph. The estimated yearly production rates were used to make an estimate of total potential based on the premise that production rates and reserves have a proportionate relationship. The rate of developing mercury reserves during the period from January 1944 to January 1962 is considered, and it is shown that if this rate can be continued, the mercury resources of the United States, at a constant dollar price of $500 per flask, are adequate to support a production of 60,000 flasks per year for 30 or more years. This publication contains a history and description of the mercury industry in every State which has had production and individual descriptions of all mercury properties which have reported significant production. Accompanying tables give the important facts about all known mercury occurrences.

Jan 1, 1965

Mercury has been used by mankind since prehistoric times. It has been, and is now, widely used in industry and medicine and has unique properties which make direct substitution difficult or impossible. At present its principal uses are for electrical apparatus, control instruments, electrolytic soda preparation, mildew-proofing paints, pesticides, and medical and dental preparations. Deposits of mercury are less common than those of other base and precious metals, but some of the deposits are very large and have been ample to meet the world's past demands. The price of mercury has had many sharp fluctuations, but in general, the limited number of producers has resulted in a more stable price structure than that of many other commodities. The United States has been one of the main producers of mercury, and from 1850 to 1961 produced 3,247,704 flasks. Yearly production since World War I1 has varied from 4,535 to 38,067 flasks. An estimate of domestic resources of mercury producible at various price ranges was prepared for each mercury mine by combining specific knowledge of mercury mineralization with estimates of potential, based on geologic information and past production history. The sum of the individual estimates for each price range is shown in a table. A parallel estimate of nationwide production potential was made from a study of past price and production relationships. These were analyzed by plotting yearly production figures against the previous year's price, expressed in dollars of constant purchasing power. An equation was fitted to the data by mathematical means and was used to extend the curve into areas of higher than historic prices. Potential production rates at various price levels were taken from this graph. The estimated yearly production rates were used to make an estimate of total potential based on the premise that production rates and reserves have a proportionate relationship. The rate of developing mercury reserves during the period from January 1944 to January 1962 is considered, and it is shown that if this rate can be continued, the mercury resources of the United States, at a constant dollar price of $500 per flask, are adequate to support a production of 60,000 flasks per year for 30 or more years. This publication contains a history and description of the mercury industry in every State which has had production and individual descriptions of all mercury properties which have reported significant production. Accompanying tables give the important facts about all known mercury occurrences.

Jan 1, 1965

By P González, J Videla, E Córdova, I Gottreux

Currently, underground mining of deeper massive deposits with lower grades, harder rock conditions in high strength environments, entails difficulties in caving, fragmentation and seismicity of the orebody.So far, the use of preconditioning (PC) with hydraulic fracturing (HF) has shown positive results in terms of seismic response and caving performance, while PC combined with explosives aims to weaken the rock mass, causing an additional effect on fragmentation.In particular, mines commonly referred to as ‘supercaves’, operated by caving methods, have the need to integrate mine to plant processes, where rock fragmentation appears as a key tool. In fact, it implies making mining and comminution processes more efficient to the plant and for mines, it justifies the search of innovative solutions in drilling and blasting techniques to precondition the rock mass. The following paper aims to show the feasibility of numerical blast modelling to weaken the rock mass using explosives, mainly through sensitivity analysis applied to designs to minimise bias and uncertainty in the results. It is shown how the presence of structures, their geometry and in situ stresses influence or interfere with the PC method being used.From the work, it is concluded that better knowledge on the application of explosives weakening allows specialists to strengthen numerical models associated with every design and therefore previously validate their applicability, helping to understand complex phenomena such as the propagation of mechanical waves in non-elastic heterogeneous media. In this sense, it is understood that while there are studies (Sanchidrián, Segarra and López, 2006) showing that the transfer of energy in the rock mass could be even greater in a confined environment, the more competent rock mass and higher in situ stresses interfere mostly on the effectiveness of a technique using explosives.CITATION:Gottreux, I, Córdova, E, González, P and Videla, J, 2016. Preconditioning modelling and explosives effectiveness in block caving, in Proceedings Seventh International Conference and Exhibition on Mass Mining (MassMin 2016), pp 683–688 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

May 9, 2016

By George F. Kunz

Jan 1, 1902

By Peter Grandone

"INTRODUCTION The injection of water into partly depleted-oil-bearing formations as a means of supplying additional energy to flow oil wells now is recognized by the petroleum industry as an effective method of increasing the recovery of oil. The benefits to be derived from water-flooding oil sands were discovered accidentally more than 4o years ago, when oil producers in the Pennsylvania and western New York fields observed suustantial increases, in oil-production rates when water leaked past corroded casings of old wells into producing sands. This observation prompted some operators purposely to perforate or slit the casings opposite the producing formation in some of their wells to permit water to enter the formation. However, as many operators viewed the practice with skepticism and considered it to be in violation of oil-conservation principles,- systematic water-flooding was not initiated until the Pennsylvania legislature, in 1921, enacted a law authorizing water-flooding of oil sands in that State.Although water-flooding has been practiced in a haphazard manner for more than 25 years in Chautauqua and Montgomery Counties, Kansas, planned or systematic water-flooding in that State had its inception in 1935, when the legislature, following the example of Pennsylvania, also passed a lava/ authorizing water-flooding. The early operations and, to some extent, those still, practiced in the Chautauqua-Montgomery area consisted in raising or perforating the casing to allow water from upper strata to gravitate into underlying oil-producing formations. The extent to which this type of water-flooding affected petroleum production in the old stripper area of eastern Kansas is not known, but it is known to have increased oil production ap¬preciably from many leases.Following enactment of the law permitting water-flooding in Kansas, three operators inaugurated, in that same year, three organized flooding projects in three different counties of the southeastern part of the State. The first organized project on record was that of the York State Oil Co. in the Seeley pool, Greenwood County. On this project, the injection was started on May 15, 1935, into the Bartlesville sandstone at a top depth of 1940 feet."

Jul 1, 1944

By D. K. MACKAY

The production of oil and gas in Arkansas is confined to two distinct and widely separated regions of the state; namely: (1) South Arkansas in the Gulf coastal plain, where 49 fields-many containing two or more reservoirs or pools-yield oil, condensate and gas from beds in the Cretaceous and Jurassic, and (2) Northwest Arkansas, a part of the Arkansas Valley, where only dry gas is produced in 21 fields from sandstones of Pennsylvanian age. Exploration during the year 1945 centered largely in these two producing regions, but some of the geophysical surveys were made and wildcat drilling was done a considerable distance outside these regions.

Jan 1, 1946

By CHARLES M. A. STINE

THE value of chemical research has been so thor¬oughly demonstrated in the last few decades that the general public has become "research-conscious" to an extent which allows the advertising agent and publicity man to make use of research as a selling point in his advertising campaigns. We thus see the advertisements of concerns in the most varied industries stressing the research which is back of their products. The reason for this "research-consciousness" of the general public. is primarily that the products of research have increasingly engaged public attention and have. revolutionized our daily life. When we. reverse the flight of .time and imagine ourselves-in the century previous to our own, we find that we are .without the automobile, the radio, the improved telephone and electric light, refrigerated transportation, the airplane, X-rays, and many other things now taken for granted. A generation ago we find gloomy prophets foretelling the certain over-population .of the world within a few decades and an insufficiency of food due to lack of the fixed nitrogen which is now so plentifully ours.

Jan 1, 1930

By K. E. Barnes

"The “Jameson Cell” flotation cell was developed at Mount Isa Mines in the late 1980’s to address deficiencies in our flotation column installations. Early base metal installations had a variable record. The test work and trials showed they made an improvement metallurgically when operated correctly, but performance of the early installations was hindered by a range of operational and maintenance issues. The installations needed to be more robust, and we needed a better understanding of how to successfully integrate the cells into the plant flow sheet.During the 1990’s, Jameson Cells had great success in coal fines flotation and organic removal in SXEW applications, and became the standard in these applications in Australia. These installations improved the cell design and materials of construction and the cell flow sheet design, to make it low wear with self-regulating control, producing good performance with little operator input.These improvements have enabled a fresh look at the use of Jameson Cells in base metals. Recent new installations have shown significant benefits in “hybrid” circuits, that combine the best features of both Jameson Cells and conventional flotation cells, achieving better overall circuit performance in a smaller footprint than either technology could do by itself.Case studies of successful base metal applications are discussed, using size-by-size mineralogical performance to explain the improved circuit performance. The new methods of flow sheet test work design are also described."

Jan 1, 2006

By John Vynne

Too often, a mine’s operations, including drilling, blasting, loading, hauling, crushing, processing, etc., are considered independent steps, rather then a continuous process. In fact, these are interdependent operations with each step in the process having an impact on subsequent operations. If the effectiveness of the drilling and blasting operations can be improved, they will impact the entire mining process. Some of the resulting improvements include: level benches on grade; fragmentation and diggability with the result being reduced loading times; haul cycles improvements; and the crushing and milling operations will be more efficient and less energy consumed. Thunderbird refers to this as “Drill to Mill” information cycle or process. This paper focuses on two of the technological enhancements Thunderbird has added to its drill monitors that allow the mines to impact the “Drill to Mill” concept. These enhancements are: incorporating global positioning satellites into drill monitors; and radio off-loading of data. Thunderbird is part of the Integrated Mining Systems (IMS) alliance. IMS offers the mining industry the most comprehensive line of monitoring and navigation products available today for mobile mine equipment. In addition to Thunderbird’s drill monitors and GPS systems, the product line includes: Fleet Management Systems for trucks and loaders; dragline and shovel monitors; GPS based navigation systems for shovels, dozers and other mobile equipment; and surveying systems. IMS uses common communication systems, operating systems, and hardware components in order to provide a truly Integrated Mining System.

Jan 1, 2000

By TSUYEE PEI

I FEEL greatly honored and appreciate this opportunity to be able to say a few words about that rather perplexing subject, silver. The constant decline in the price of this metal has now reached the stage where it is of much concern and the cause of serious discussion among the leading financiers, economists, and statesmen of the world. Further- more, it is significant that this subject is so important that almost every day one can read articles pertaining to it in the newspapers and trade publications. Being essentially a banker, and not an economist, I do not claim to be an authority on the silver question. These remarks are merely some of my observations in, regard to the many puzzles which-I came across in my recent studies of this very important question.

Jan 1, 1931

By Cyril S., Smith

WE cannot but marvel at the fact that fire is necessary for almost every operation. It takes the sands of the earth and melts them-now into glass, now into silver, minium or other lead or some substance useful to the artist or physician. By fire, minerals are disintegrated and copper produced; in fire is iron born and by fire is it subdued; by fire, gold is purified; by fire, stones are burned for the binding together of the walls of houses.... Fire is the immeasurable, uncontrollable element, concerning which it is hard to say whether it consumes more or produces more." Thus wrote Pliny in his "Natural History," that great collection of fact and error which constitutes the principal contemporary description of Roman technology and which until the seventeenth century was the authority most often quoted and requoted by those who wrote on metals, as on many other subjects.

Jan 1, 1940

Coagulation-Neutralisation Technology to Treat Wastewater from Lead-Zinc Concentrator

Sep 13, 2010

By AIME AIME

THE American Engineering Council, which is the working body of The Federated American Engineering Societies, held its first meeting in Washington, Nov. 18 and 19, 1920. The Federated American Engineering Societies was formed in Washington in June and is composed of engineering and technical societies, national, state, local and regional. These Member Societies elect delegates to the American Engineering Council, which is the administrative body of the Federated. The meeting was called to order by Richard L. Humphrey, Chairman of the Joint Conference Com¬mittee, and the program (which is printed below) was carried out without substantial change by E. S. Carman, who was elected temporary chairman. Under the Constitution, the Council appoints an Executive Board, the members of which are chosen according to the proportional membership of the vari¬ous Member Societies in their respective districts. Under this plan, with the present membership, 'the national societies will have 14 members and the local societies 6 members on the Executive Board.

Jan 1, 1920