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By K. Swedburg, M. Samuels

"The New Afton concentrator was commissioned in June 2012, reaching the design milling rate in September 2012. By late 2013, through a campaign of optimization and de-bottlenecking, it was recognized that the installed plant was capable of greatly exceeding the design throughput of 11,700 tpd. Because the value of the metal contained (by increasing the plant feed rate) exceeded the offsetting losses of copper and gold recovery (as the operation moved to a coarser grind), the concentrator feed rate was strategically increased with support of New Gold, while the operations team was given a mandate to evaluate, and then implement, flow sheet options that could re-establish the original design criterion grind target and achieve the corresponding improved recovery. Broadly, the two options implemented were the addition of a tertiary grinding stage consisting of Metso Vertimill® prior to rougher flotation (in order to address the grinding required at increasing throughput by increasing the power), and the addition of three Woodgrove Staged Flotation Reactors (SFR) added to the cleaner circuit after regrind of the rougher concentrate (to address the increased mineral loading to the cleaner circuit). Through test work, it was anticipated that the SFRs would be capable of achieving final concentrate grade in a single pass without the integration of recirculating loads, a strategy sometimes referred to pre-cleaning. This paper describes the expectations generated for the Woodgrove SFR unit operation through pilot plant testing on site, and compares those results with the performance of the expanded circuit that exceeded the original design criterion of P80 160 µm, which was commissioned in the second quarter of 2015.INTRODUCTIONThe New Afton concentrator, located near Kamloops, BC Canada, commenced operation in June 2012. The mill achieved the design throughput of 11,000 tonnes per day average during the month of September 2012 and, following various operational optimization efforts (O’Hara et al, 2015), achieved the design p80 grind size of 160 µm at the design milling rate in July 2013.During August 2013, trials were carried out to determine the throughput rate limits of the mill circuits and to evaluate mill metallurgical performance at higher rates. Milling rates up to 15,500 dmt per 24 hours were achieved during this trial, demonstrating potential capability for sustained milling rates exceeding the nominal design capacity. As was expected, the higher milling rates resulted in a coarsening of the grinding circuit product size, and resulted in marginally lower recoveries in the rougher flotation circuit. Despite the lower recoveries, the higher milling rates resulted in higher metal production and the financial analysis favored running at rates of at least 13,000 tonnes per operating day, with the higher cash flow in the near term offsetting the value of metal production loss at the end of the mine life (due to the short term increase in the rate of reserve depletion). Milling rates were sustained above 13,000 tonnes per day through the second half of 2013, and increased above 14,000 tonnes per day by mid-2014 (Figure 1)."

Jan 1, 2016

"Mineral separation by exploiting the differences in mineral or metal specific gravities (sg) has been used since antiquity. In the modern era, this is most commonly seen in the recovery of gold by the use of centrifugal concentrators and the separation of coal (low sg) from waste rock (high sg) using heavy media cyclones and jigs. Other metals, notably oxides of tin and tungsten, are successfully recovered using some combination of jigs, spirals and shaking tables. However, many conventional gravity separation systems are limited to fairly coarse (>1 mm) to medium (>100 micron) particle separations due to the limitations of the gravitational separation forces in conventional equipment.Many of the high specific gravity minerals of interest are friable (e.g. cassiterite, wolframite, etc.) and excessive fines are generated in the grinding/comminution circuits which cannot be recovered with conventional equipment and may be lost directly to the tailings stream. Recent developments in centrifugal gravity separation equipment specifically designed for fine or ultra-fine particle separation and recovery have resulted in heavy mineral particle recoveries as fine as 10-20 microns. Ongoing research work has also identified the benefit of closed-circuit, multi-stage gravity recovery circuits using some combination of centrifugal concentrators and conventional equipment (tables, spirals, flotation, etc.) which can substantially increase overall plant recovery and final concentrate grade.This paper will provide details of the evolution of non-fluidized bed gravity concentrators for high sg mineral recoveries, correlate laboratory scale development work with plant results to confirm scale-up, and show how recent flowsheet developments have contributed to significantly improved plant performance.IntroductionGravity concentration is one of the oldest and most cost effective metal and/or mineral recovery systems, ranging from the classic hand panning of alluvial gold, through to the large scale production of a wide range of metals and minerals, including gold, silver, PGMs, black sands, coal and iron oxides. Conventional gravity recovery systems, comprised of some combination of sluices, spirals, jigs and shaking tables have limited application in fine particle (i.e. <100 microns) recovery, or where there are limited differences in particle specific gravities (sg), e.g. the separation of high sg, high value metal oxides (e.g. those of tin, tantalum or tungsten), from medium sg, lower value metal sulfides such as pyrite and pyrrhotite. These unit operations tend to have limited capacity, and while double and triple turn spirals and multi-deck tables have been developed, extensive floor space is often required in order to process the tonnages incorporated in the modern mineral processing plant."

Jan 1, 2017

By J. Stiksma, K. Buban, J. Oftsie, R. Kalanchey, S. Sadykov, E. McConaghy

The Kazakhmys zinc refinery in Balkhash, Kazakhstan, which employs the Dynatec Zinc Pressure Leach Process, officially launched autoclave operations on December 27, 2003. The Kazakhmys plant is the world&apos;s first greenfields zinc refinery based on Dynatec&apos;s two-stage pressure leach technology. Production of zinc was realized on February 9, 2004, when the first cathode was stripped. Currently the plant start-up is ongoing, with progression to two-stage zinc pressure leach operation and ramp-up to full design capacity continuing through 2004.

Jan 1, 2004

By Roy Lindsay, Paul O'Hara, Gary Halverson

"The New Britannia Minesite is located in Snow Lake, Manitoba, 420 miles north of Winnipeg (figure 1). The mine previously operated from 1949 to 1958 extracting some 5.39 million tons of ore at a 0.150 opt gold grade. From 1959 to 1986 the property was held by Nor-Acme and Hudson Bay Exploration and Development and in 1987 High River Resources Ltd. Optioned the property, dewatered the mine and conducted a diamond drill program between the 1 780 and 2400 levels. In 1988 two companies, Nor-Acme Mines Ltd. and High River Gold Mines Ltd., negotiated an option agreement with INCO Gold whereby !NCO assumed management control of all site exploration work. During this period, a bulk sample of 10,000 tons was extracted from the 1780 level with no further exploration recorded after its removal. Both Hudson Bay Exploration and Development and INCO Gold conducted feasibility studies on reactivating the property but at a calculated capital cost of Cdn $70 to $80 million found the rate of return on their investment unacceptable.In 1991 !NCO Gold merged its interest with the assets of TVX Gold Inc. and in February 1994 TVX Gold Inc. and High River Gold Mines Ltd. entered into a joint venture partnership to develop the Snow Lake property, naming TVX Gold Inc. the operator. Upon completion of a feasibility study in April 1994 by Bharti Engineering Associates Inc., a decision was made to reopen the Britannia Mine at an established project cost of US $33 million.Project construction commenced in July 1994 with the hoist house excavation. The first concrete for the hoist house level footings was poured on August 4, 1994 and the project was completed on October 1, 1995 at a cost of US $36 million. The first gold pour took place November 4, 1995.This paper not only presents the metallurgical aspects of the operation but also describes the novel approach used to complete the design and construction of the site facilities."

Jan 1, 1996

By G. Bartolacci, G. Couture, Levasseur. B., A. Lockhart, D. Nathan

"Pulp and froth zone characterization in a flotation circuit to improve transport of valuable minerals remains a challenge. Even though some significant breakthroughs have been made in the development of collectors in terms of selectivity, the control of gangue drainage is still the main bottleneck to achieve the production of a clean concentrate.Over the last decade, COREM’s team has been working on technologies to improve the selectivity of flotation circuits by tuning their hydrodynamic conditions using online instruments such as the bubble viewer, Jg sensor and gas hold-up. As part of its research program, COREM also developed the half-life column that establishes the relationship between the collection zone (bubble-particle attachment) and the cleaning zone (foam) of a flotation machine. In recent years, COREM has continued the development of the prototypes to make them more robust and improve the accuracy of their measurements.Recently, these hydrodynamic instruments were installed in an industrial process at Raglan Mine in order to diagnose and control the impact of hydrodynamic parameters versus the recovery and the quality of the Ni concentrate produced. Sampling campaigns of hydrodynamic parameters demonstrated that froth height could be optimized in order to increase recovery and quality of the concentrate at the same time. The specific effect of the froth height impacts both the pulp and the froth zones. Along with the impact on the drainage of the concentrate, it was observed that froth height also contributes to enhance the collection of particles in the pulp leading to an increase in metallic units.IntroductionOnce the particles of the minerals of interest are attached to the air bubbles injected in the pulp, the flotation process is driven by air dispersion parameters and froth properties. The pulp is usually responsible for the collision between air bubbles and hydrophobic particles of interest while the froth zone aims to upgrade the selectivity of the particles floated through drainage of the unwanted hydrophilic particles. Over the last four decades, flotation hydrodynamics has been extensively studied. Superficial gas velocity (Jg), gas hold-up (eg), Sauter mean bubble diameter measurements (d32) and bubble surface area flux (Sb) are among the most assessed parameters in flotation plants worldwide either to quantify the gas dispersion parameters or to optimize them (Fournier et al., 2015). McGill University has developed several sensors able to measure these parameters at industrial scale (Tavera et al., 1996; Finch et al., 1999; Chen et al. 2001)."

Jan 1, 2017

By Goutam H. Shahani

Today, the mining and mineral sectors are being impacted by highly fluctuating supply ? demand, extreme price volatility and tremendous market uncertainty on a world-wide basis. This pattern is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In particular, large consumers of tonnage quantities of industrial gases (oxygen, nitrogen) all have to make informed investment decisions in this uncertain economic environment. Plant owners ? operators need to carefully examine their current and future industrial gas needs in order to develop the most cost-effective industrial gas plant configuration. This can be done by partnering with an experienced engineering company that offers a complete technology portfolio for producing industrial gases. Ideally, the mineral and engineering companies have to work together as a single team to identify the most efficient and economic plant design. This includes an in-depth assessment of capital and operating costs, in order to deliver an optimal solution, taking plant reliability and process safety into account. It is important to consider all the industrial gas needs at a given manufacturing complex, in conjunction with available utilities and infrastructure to develop the best possible long term solution. Oxygen (O2) requirements include: oxygen enriched and oxy-fuel combustion, smelting and hydrometallurgical operations. Nitrogen (N2) is used for annealing. All of these industrial gas requirements have to be examined at a given site over a long term horizon in a holistic manner. Cryogenic air separation was first practiced at a commercial scale in 1902. Since then, the technology has been constantly refined to reduce cost; and improve reliability and flexibility. Today, using advanced engineering techniques, including proprietary process simulation, and modern fabrication techniques, it is possible to build air separation plants that are both low cost and high quality at the same time. It is important to work with an engineering company that owns a complete portfolio of industrial gas technologies, functional engineering capabilities and a variety of plant solutions. Such a partnership can quickly identify a ?sweet spot? for a given situation. By drawing on experience gained from hundreds of projects, it is possible to quickly optimize a given requirement. In situations where a customer wants a complete solution it may be appropriate to provide an air separation plant on a turn-key basis. This will enable the mining and mineral processor to focus on their core business. By using global procurement and construction capabilities it is possible reduce cost and improve project execution, thereby making industrial gas plant procurement simpler and cheaper for the mining and mineral sector.

Nov 1, 2011

By Kosuke Hosoda, Shuji Owada, Hiroyuki Tokuichi, Hirobumi Ohta, Chiharu Tokoro, Moto-o Sato, Katsushi Okumura, Hiroto Ogawa, Hideaki Umezawa

The Japanese government enforced the "Small Domestic Appliances (SDAs) Recycling Law" in 2013. The law targets metals such as Ta, Nd, Dy, Co, and W to be recycled. Considerable amounts of these minor rare metals are mounted on printed circuit boards (PCBs) of the SDAs and/or e-scrap (electric and electronic scraps). Although precious metals and copper can be recovered from the e-scrap in non-ferrous metals smelters, most of the minor rare metals report to the slag in these smelters in non-recoverable forms. These metals are often used in particular types of devices, and therefore it is possible to concentrate them by separating such devices before feeding to the smelters. In previous work we developed technology for "Device Separation" to concentrate several minor rare metals, but some problems remained, such as how to remove the PCBs from e-scrap bodies, and how to detach devices from PCBs after their removal from escrap bodies. This paper proposes a two-stage crushing process in which, firstly, PCBs are removed from the e-scrap body with various crushers, and secondly, devices are detached from the PCBs involving the application of elevated temperatures. It was found that in the first stage, crushers with physically flexible rotating media such as chains, which provide high collision probability with the sample and consume relatively low energy, can quite effectively separate the PCBs from the e-scrap bodies non-destructively. In the second stage, heating was found to be remarkably effective in helping to detach mounted devices from PCBs, also non-destructively. This paper will also discuss the detailed mechanism of the heating effect on the detachment of devices from PCBs.

Jan 1, 2014

By J. Ran

There are challenges in mining deep tabular ore deposits using the open stoping method, particularly mining remnant panels towards the end of mine life. The remnant panels have experienced stress concentration and are in the failing or post failure state causing drilling and loading difficulties, ground movement, induced seismicity and ground instability problems. As more mines are going deep, without effective ground control management, the mine production will be interrupted and equipment damage and personnel injury are likely to occur. Mining at Falconbridge Lockerby Mine located in the Sudbury Basin was concentrated in the deep zone from late 1990s to 2004. The remnant panels situated approximately from 1800m to 1920m below surface were mined in 2004 before the mine closure. These panels were in the central section of the orebody along strike. The orebody was relatively narrow ranging from 5m to 15m and steep dipping at 70o to 80o. Because of the retreat mining sequence and the mining depth, stress concentration, wall closure and seismicity had caused a number of mining difficulties. Managing these challenges was critical in achieving the mine production target without compromising personnel safety and excavation stability. A comprehensive ground control management approach was adopted to mine the remnant panels at depth. The measures taken included ground movement monitoring, understanding the movement pattern of the footwall rock and selecting appropriate support systems, analyzing seismic monitoring data and defining re-entry protocol, brow support design and restricting access. This paper presents these ground control measures and the experience gained in successfully mining the deep remnant panels at Lockerby Mine.

Apr 1, 2005

By Marc C. Bétournay

A mine production locomotive, the world?s first applied industrial fuelcell vehicle, has been designed and tested in the context of a number of proof-of-concept projects supported by the Fuelcell Propulsion Institute, an international consortium of stakeholders dedicated to facilitate the commercialization of fuelcell vehicles. The locomotive?s simple electric-powered motor and controller system was ideal to study a number of requirements related to fuelcell power application: hydrogen power plant operation, underground hydrogen use, risk and regulatory requirements, production performance versus the conventional battery-powered locomotive version under measured duty cycles and production requirements, power plant design improvements for other fuelcell vehicles, and cost-benefit aspects. This article will focus on the design and testing aspects of this project which has led to successful performance demonstrations of the vehicle under surface and underground conditions at two mines. It will also present information on the creation of a safe, reliable and efficient power plant which fulfilled its design objectives, including longer productivity time for a given vehicle fill-up.

May 1, 2003

By Donald Leroux, Ralph Dahlke, Dave Scott, Finch. James A., Cesar O. Gomez

"The efficiency of the flotation process depends on how effectively air is dispersed into small bubbles. Bubble surface area flux - the surface area of bubbles per unit time per unit cross-section area of a cell - is emerging as the parameter to characterize gas dispersion. One of the approaches proposed to measure bubble surface area flux in industrial cells is based on the measurement of two variables: gas velocity and gas holdup, using separate sensors. Plant testing of the gas velocity sensor gave evidence of a series of operational problems which may be necessary to correct before attempting to characterize gas dispersion. Problems such as uneven air distribution within a cell and along a bank, faulty air and slurry valves detected during attempts to redistribute air, and poor control of pulp level and gas flow became evident. Detection of these problems from gas velocity measurements is illustrated.INTRODUCTIONBubble surface area flux is considered a key variable in the optimization of flotation circuit performance (Gorain et al., 1997; 1998). The Mineral Processing Group at McGill University has devised and developed a method for estimating bubble surface area flux in industrial flotation cells (Finch et al., 1999). The method is based on measuring gas holdup and superficial gas velocity using two separate sensors and applying drift flux analysis to estimate bubble size (Dobby et al., 1988; Banisi and Finch, 1994). With bubble size and superficial gas velocity known bubble surface area flux can be calculated.This method was selected by Noranda to characterize gas dispersion in cells as part of a program to model and optimize flotation circuit performance. However, initial testing at Brunswick Mine with the gas velocity sensor provided some unexpected results indicating operational problems and equipment malfunctions that needed to be addressed before systematic measurement of gas dispersion could be initiated.The subject of this communication is to illustrate the detection of these problems from gas velocity measurements. The line 3 Zn Cleaner circuit comprising four stages of Denver DR cells was the main subject of analysis, including the effect of correcting these problems on the metallurgical performance of the Zn 3rd cleaner bank of ten DRl 00 cells."

Jan 1, 2001

By Peter Radziszewski

"Typical mining operating costs can be divided between extraction (30 % to 70 %), comminution (30 % to 50 %) and separation (5% to 20% ). Cornminition process costs, representing an important contribution to mining operating costs, can themselves be divided roughly between energy (50 %) and linerkharge wear (50 %). Developing the ability of predicting mill wear will allow a more accurate estimation of wear costs. However, total media wear in a given ball mill grinding process is a product of three recognized wear mechanisms those being abrasion, corrosion and impact. Further, the contribution to total media wear of each of these wear mechanisms has not been well established. In this paper, a overview of abrasive, corrosive and impact wear mechanisms is made from which an empirical wear prediction procedure is proposed. Further, future directions in wear prediction research is outlined. INTRODUCTIONTypical mining operating costs can be divided between extraction (30 % to 70 %), comminution (30 % to 50 %) and separation (5 % to 20 %). Comminition process costs, representing an important contribution to mining operating costs, can themselves be divided roughly between energy (50 %) and lined-charge wear (50 %). With respect to wear, world wide steel consumption as grinding media is estimated at over 600 000 tomes per annum (Malghan, 1982). As such, developing the ability of predicting mill wear will allow a more accurate estimation of wear costs.Charge media wear prediction is actually estimated using the Bond abrasion test. From Bond abrasion index tests, it is possible to determine a wear rate using the following function:"

Jan 1, 2000

The common theme of these four objectives is declaration. Declaration tells the compiler that an entity exists and also provides the name and nature of the entity. Since everything you create has to be declared, you must know how to declare correctly and be able to make appropriate use of all the declaration tools available to you. This objective recognizes the importance of declaration by requiring you to know everything about Java declarations Write code that declares, constructs, and initializes arrays of any base type using any of the permitted forms both for declaration and for initialization. This objective addresses your understanding of all aspects of arrays. Arrays are the simplest possible data collection and are supported by all modern programming languages. However, Java?s arrays are different from those in other languages, especially C and C++, because they are actually exotic objects. This objective recognizes the importance of being able to make use of all the functionality of arrays. You will be expected to know how to declare, construct, and initialize arrays.

May 1, 2011

By P. Talonen

Since the last Iron Control in Hydrometallurgy Symposium in Montreal in 1996, the Kokkola zinc plant has increased its capacity from 175,000 t/y to 280,000 t/y by installing an atmospheric concentrate leaching process, which has also affected iron control in the leaching circuit. Major changes have been made at the jarosite residue pond; a subterranean plastic wall reinforced with bentonite and cement has been built around the pond. A new water collecting system that is used for groundwater level control in the pond area was installed. With these two investments in the pond area, it is now possible to prevent any seepage flow from the pond into the surrounding environment. Water pumped from the residue pond is treated in the water treatment plant. This paper describes the behavior of iron in Kokkola&apos;s current leaching processes. The treatment of the jarosite, the improvements to the residue pond and the water treatment process are also described.

Jan 1, 2006

By Frank Cappuccitti, James A. Finch, Stéphanie Gélinas

"A colorimetric technique, originally developed for methyl iso butyl carbinol (MIBC) based on the Komarowsky reaction, has been extended to a wide range of common mineral flotation frothers. The procedure, which is briefly described, is shown suited to on-site determinations in a campaign at Kennecott Utah Copper Copperton Concentrator (Rio Tinto). Some observations are described, including: frother (MIBC) concentration evolution down a bank, frother distribution between pulp and froth phases, and loss of frother over time due to adsorption on certain minerals. A possible interference with a fuel oil addition was overcome. MIBC in recycle water was also measured.The ability to monitor frother easily will help interpret gas dispersion behaviour and should permit further optimization of flotation cell hydrodynamics and chemistry. The capability to directly measure should help optimize the type, amount and location of frother addition, and to assess frother recycled with reclaim process water.INTRODUCTIONOwing to the lack of analytical methods, the task of determining frother concentration in plant flotation circuits is not routinely performed. Industrial sites seldom outsource analyses that are both costly and inconvenient, due to the necessity of shipping freeze-dried samples to remote testing facilities. A more direct colorimetric method has recently been demonstrated for the laboratory characterization of common industrial frothers (Gélinas and Finch, 2004). The approach, based on the Komarowsky reaction (Penniman et al., 1936; Coles et al., 1942; Duke, 1947), was previously described by Parkhomovski et al. (1976) for methyl iso butyl carbinol (MIBC). The reaction involves the interaction of the OH group of a higher alcohol, concentrated sulphuric acid, and salicylaldehyde, to yield coloured solutions with intensities that can be analyzed by UV-visible spectrophotometry."

Jan 1, 2005

By J. Nalaskowski

A study of the interfacial properties of the basal plane and the edge surfaces of talc is described in this paper. The isoelectric point measured at the two different crystallographic planes by the streaming potential method was found to be similar and exists at about pH 3.0. In the case of the edge surface the zeta potential increases at higher pH values which can be attributed to the hydration of magnesium ions at the edge surface. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) colloidal probe technique was used to measure interaction forces. For such experiments a 20 um talc particle was attached to the AFM cantilever and forces between the edge of the talc particle and two different crystallographic planes of talc were measured at various pH values. These measurements, while being qualitative due to the poorly characterized contact area, show differences between the properties of the base plane and edge of the talc and correspond to the results from streaming potential measurements. Finally, the differences in the hydration of the basal plane and the edge of talc are revealed from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The basal plane of the talc is much less hydrated than the edge, as can be seen from the water density distribution functions, which correlate quite well with the contact angle measurements at the basal plane surface and the edge surface of the talc sample.

Jan 1, 2006

By J. A. Finch, A. R. Laplante, R. Espinosa-Gomez

"The Niobec concentrator rejects up to /5% of the Nb as slimes (-10u.m). The recovery of Nb from these slimes by column flotation is being studied. An essential condition for selective flotation is slimes dispersion. A particle size analyzer, the Sedigraph 5000D, was used to monitor dispersion in plant waters with combinations of organic and inorganic dispersants and flotation reagents. Flotation reagents were particularly detrimental to dispersion with sodium silicate. The best dispersion conditions were selected for column flotation tests. These tests revealed that reagent combination had a pronounced effect on froth stability. Careful frother selection achieved good froth stability under conditions of good dispersion. Plant water increased the required dispersant concentration causing mineral depression.IntroductionSlimes (-10 u.m) rejected at Niobec contain up to 15070 of the over-all Nb content . Recovery of Nb from these slimes would significantly increase over-all recovery. A suggested recovery route involves two phases: (1) carbonate flotation (to remove most of the carbonates) depressing silicates and pyrochlore (as currently done at Niobec); and (2) selective (direct) pyrochlore flotation from the silicates. Phase 2 has been addressed and several routes to achieve selective flotation are available. Phase I was attempted with the selective reagent scheme used at Niobec but a considerable amount of pyrochlore floated with the carbonates due to poor slimes dispersion."

Jan 1, 1987

By K. D. Hester

This paper will review the metallurgical aspects of the completed expansion program at Quirke, and the current rehabilitation and refurbishing program at Panel. During the Quirke program, completed at the end of 1977, the plant capacity was increased from a nominal 4,500 to 7,000 short tons per milling day. The expansion of crushing, grinding, neutral thickening and filtering, leaching, partial neutralization, sand-slime separation, sand washing, C.C.D., clarification, ion exchange, mine water treatment, and tailings neutralization and pumping will be considered. The application of Enviro-Clear thickeners in the mine water treatment circuit and in the C.C.D. will be briefly reviewed. An automatic grinding and classification circuit for limestone will also be covered. The refurbishing program underway at Panel will be discussed. The Quirke and Panel plants will be contrasted and compared. In particular, reference will be made to environmental considerations. The innovative system for producing yellow cake at Panel, LAMIX, will be considered as well as the proposed treatment system for Panel tailings.

Jan 1, 1979

By Rees J. Llewellyn

Improved product development, assessment methods and evaluation studies of materials for oil sands applications have traditionally focused on low and high stress abrasion and slurry erosion resistance mechanisms, because they were considered to be the predominant wear modes prevailing in oil sands mining, transportation and bitumen recovery. More recently with the very successful introduction of oil sands hydraulic transportation systems, there has been increasing use of crusher systems in which materials of construction are also required to have good toughness and gouging abrasion properties to withstand impact and the severe indentation and ploughing forces that are involved. To assess material property requirements for mitigating this additional wear mechanism, jaw crusher gouging abrasion tests using a modified ASTM G81 procedure, have been carried out on a range of wear materials of interest for oil sands mining service. The method involves a comparison of the wear losses that occur for reference and selected test plates when a controlled amount of standard feed rock is comminuted in a laboratory jaw crusher. Among the classes of material evaluated have been Q&T plate steels, austenitic manganese steel, chromium and chromium molybdenum white irons as plain castings and in laminated forms and also chromium carbide and tungsten carbide overlaid wear plates.

May 1, 2004

By Hamid Butt

Information Technology ??Advanced Information Technology is dramatically changing information flow within organizations. This enables employees to have information at their fingertips to make informed and prompt decisions. ??Real-time information allows timely analysis, which dramatically reduces cycle times, making organizations faster and more flexible. Business Challenges ??Continual growth of mining and Mine mobile fleet.??Increasing maintenance costs. ??Difficult to identify and troubleshoot equipment problems while equipment is operating. ??New equipment is increasing in complexity and cost. Therefore, each failure results in a greater impact to production and cost. ??Troubleshooting practice is reactive. ??Protect and optimize the use of mining assets to realize maximum business value. ??Maintenance and Operating information is not easily accessible ?no near real-time system that provides complete information.

May 1, 2006

By P. G. Rueffel

"Natural deposits of sodium sulphate are the result of normal geological processes. They are world-wide in occurrence and are found in depressions in arid and semi-arid regions. Primarily, the sodium sulphate deposits of the prairies are post-glacial and differ from rock salt deposits, which originated from connate water (fossil sea-water). Sodium sulphate on the Canadian prairies occurs as brine or in beds of intermittent and/or permanent crystals. Most beds are contaminated with various amounts of silt, sand and decayed organic matter. Soluble impurities such as chlorides, carbonates and bicarbonates of sodium and sulphates of magnesium and calcium are leached out from the soil of the surrounding run-off area of the deposits.In this paper, the origin of sodium sulphate, and the physical and chemical aspects related to the development of the Ingebrigt Lake deposit are dealt with. The problems of garnering raw material, and of refining and de-hydration are discussed, with emphasis on the Ingebrigt Lake plant. The utilization of the ""Total Power Concept"" in a sodium sulphate plant is described. The principal uses of sodium sulphate are also discussed."

Jan 1, 1968