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By B D. Saffron

In 1983, open cut coal mining operations were suspended at the Tent Mountain coalmine, located in Alberta, Canada in an area called Crowsnest Pass. Montem Resources (‘Montem’), an Australian mining company, purchased the asset in 2016. They conducted several drilling campaigns and undertook environmental monitoring with the intent to restart operations. In 2020, Montem completed a Definitive Feasibility Study, which indicated a mine life of more than 14 years.

Aug 2, 2023

By G D. Matthews, M E. Haylett, S Khosrowshahi, A Weeks

Effective domaining is fundamental to geostatistical modelling for grade control. Through analysis of lithological, structural and alteration logging data, effective groupings (domains) can be identified and employed for estimation or simulation purposes.The poor definition of domains can adversely affect the grade control model resulting in a misinterpretation of the optimal ore-waste boundary and ultimately reduces the quality of recovered ore. The implementation of an appropriate domaining strategy is therefore expected to improve recovery and reconciliation.A thorough understanding of the geology of the deposit and adequate sample data is required for selecting domains. For new deposits, a resource drill database and resource model may be the only information available. Where extension to a previous operation is taking place, historic grade control, mapping and exposed geology may be used to improve domain selection. Preconceptions about domains, should they exist, need to be re-evaluated and tested to ensure they are fit for the purposes of grade control.While mining progresses, the domain model is re-evaluated to ensure that the previous interpretation is still suitable for the present configuration and geology. The grade control process, being iterative, lends itself to regular review and continuous improvement as further data is collected during the grade control cycle. Regular updates to the geology model, mapping, geostatistical data analysis and review of variography will provide indications of a changing domaining environment.Narrow vein gold deposits, which may have several factors influencing mineralisation, present considerable domaining challenges. By scrutinising the data, sample populations can be grouped into domains, which not only improve ore recovery, but help assist in the development of a mine geology model.CITATION:Matthews, G D, Haylett, M E, Weeks, A and Khosrowshahi, S, 2014. Effective domain selection for grade control in narrow vein gold deposits, in Proceedings Ninth International Mining Geology Conference 2014 , pp 191–196 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Aug 18, 2014

By H Bao, M Nehring, M Kizil, P Knights

The mining sector, a notably energy-intensive industry worldwide, is a major consumer of fossil fuels, leading to significant carbon emissions globally. The move towards electrification, coupled with advancements in battery technology, has redirected focus from traditional diesel-powered solutions to battery-powered alternatives. This paper introduces a novel mining haulage system, termed the Battery Trolley system, and examines its theoretical foundations, configurations, and operational processes. It offers a comprehensive analysis of the system’s characteristics and limitations. Through a hypothetical road simulation, the study analyses various battery mining trucks, calculating energy consumption based on force parameters and tailoring battery sizes to contemporary materials and technology. When assessing various battery truck alternatives—considering aspects such as battery size, effective payload, duty cycle, energy efficiency, productivity, and single-shift production—a range of performance outcomes and characters become apparent within the mining context. The findings indicate that Battery Trolley configurations, requiring smaller battery capacities, entail lesser compromises on effective payload. Consequently, these configurations achieve a higher duty cycle, reduced energy consumption per tonne, heightened productivity, and enhanced singleshift production capabilities compared to Battery-only alternatives. The comparative analysis of Battery Trolley with stationary charging (BT-S) and Battery Trolley – dynamic charging (BT-D) underlines that battery Trolley systems are capable of overcoming the challenges associated with battery size, thus successfully fulfilling the production demands of large truck applications in mining. This positions Battery Trolley systems as a more advantageous option for the decarbonisation of mining fleets, underscoring their potential in contributing to the sector’s sustainable evolution.

Sep 1, 2024

By T Brown

Australia is now committed to the most significant period of infrastructure investment since the 1960s and the current climate of project finance and public private partnership (PPP) model uncertainty means it is imperative that the affordability and certainty in delivery of infrastructure projects is maximised.In light of the current and forecast levels of infrastructure investment it is worth drawing comparison with a similar period of Australian expansion when the nation’s first railways were constructed. Similarly to over a century ago, we are following a trend in rapid development and are already reaping the inefficiencies that could be avoided with broader technical planning and improved client coordination.The original rail networks were developed by the individual states before they combined to form a Federation of states in 1901. As a result of the adoption of different gauges by 1917 a passenger wanting to travel by train from Brisbane to Perth had to change trains six times.Similarly in 2011, there is little parity between Australian states on the quality requirements (performance specifications) for road tunnels. Differences between states start most significantly with the size of the specified traffic envelopes, thus the size of tunnel required. Where ambiguity and differences exist in project documentation, performance specifi cations (PS) and broad technical requirements for road tunnel projects, any associated risk in interpretation ultimately ends up being incorporated in the bidder’s (constructor’s) final sell price.Whilst not nearly as inconvenient as having to change train at each state border, and largely unnoticed by the general tax paying motorist, this paper examines examples of apparent minor differences in Australia’s recently constructed road tunnels to highlight the differences in road tunnel specifications.The paper identifies how these small differences manifest themselves in major price penalties between projects and further, highlights the need for further specification review, refinement and standardisation across road tunnel jurisdictions to increase road tunnel affordability.

Mar 8, 2011

By G J. Lyman

Sampling of grain for mycotoxins is challenging in that some mycotoxins, such as Ochratoxin A (OTA), have very low permitted levels and the kernels carrying the mycotoxin may be highly localised within the bulk of the grain as ‘hot spots’. Sampling for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be fraught with similar problems, especially if the contamination is adventitious and random. Incremental sampling under these circumstances can be shown to lead to a high variance in the sampling result.A new design of sampler for grain and other free-flowing particulates has been developed that is effective in practically eliminating the sampling variance due to distributional heterogeneity (DH).This paper introduces the design and argues that the sampler should be free of sampling variance due to DH.CITATION:Lyman, G J, 2017. A new sampler for grain and other free-flowing particulates, in Proceedings Eighth World Conference on Sampling and Blending , pp 277–280 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

May 9, 2017

By A G. Guinea

Every person in an organisation has what could be called ‘a different take’ on what it means to be a safety leader. The directors will tell you they are ultimately responsible for everyone’s safety and that they can be imprisoned as a consequence of a workplace fatality. Managers, take more of a focused approach and would explain that they are totally responsible for the safety of their teams. And then there are front-line leaders. Those that not only have the responsibility (like directors and managers) but they also have the accountability, and the ability, to influence how safely their teams work. But it is not just physical safety that leaders should be concerned with.

May 5, 2022

By T Nassis, P Louw, M R. Fry, T du Toit

Business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) are established IT technologies that are used extensively in the business environment. This paper discusses the use of these technologies in production environments and beneficiation plants.Assmang’s Khumani mine is an iron ore operation located in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Assmang Limited is jointly owned by African Rainbow Minerals Limited and Assore Limited. This paper presents a case study of a BI solution applied to this plant, which is used by metallurgists, supervisors and all levels of operations and management to extract and analyse data to control and optimise the operation of the plant.The main advantage of adopting an established BI solution is the ease with which production personnel can extract and analyse data. The data is easily presented in familiar spreadsheets and no IT staff or specific training is required to achieve this.The solution adopted at Khumani mine uses a data mart with a multidimensional model (called an online analytical processing (OLAP) cube) acting as the main repository and source of data. The OLAP cube simplifies the access and analysis of plant data.The OLAP cube stores data in a specifically-designed way, which allows extraction and analysis to be performed quickly. It is designed to hold large amounts of data on a long-term basis, which could be for the life of the plant. It also performs automatic aggregations over many dimensions on a background process.A major benefit in adopting such a BI solution is that it allows common BA methods to be applied. This is due to both the efficient long-term storage of data and the availability of standard BA tools. BA tools are now able to perform data mining, predictive analytics, forecasting and other machine-learning algorithms. This paper presents the possible use of such advanced data analysis methods in a beneficiation plant.CITATION:Fry, M R, Nassis, T, Louw, P and du Toit, T, 2015. The use of common business intelligence and analytics tools in the operation and optimisation of iron ore process plants, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2015, pp 129–138 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Jul 13, 2015

By D Caffrey

To demonstrate the advantages of using electronic delay detonators over pyrotechnic detonators, a trial using the DNES Dynatronic System was conducted at the KCGM Mount Charlotte operation in 1998. The trial clearly demonstrated that accurate control over the firing delay time between blastholes can lead to fragmentation improvement and ground vibration energy control which are two important issues for the Mt Charlotte underground operation. Excellent fragmentation was achieved by employing a 12 ms delay sequence. Detailed fragmentation analysis has shown a 10 to 20 per cent passing increase for the rock fragment size from 0.1 to 0.4 m compared with the pyrotechnic detonator firing. There was no increase in ground vibration level on the surface with the electronic detonator firing even though the electronic detonator firing had a much shorter blast duration than the pyrotechnic detonator firing. In fact, our energy calculation has clearly shown that much less energy had been propagated to the surface from the blast using electronic detonator firing.

Jan 1, 1999

By J Howard

Following discovery in October 2004, commencement of development in February 2007 and first ore production in mid 2007, the Trident gold deposit, located in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, has now been successfully mined for over three years. Three years of operational history has enabled the performance of the Trident underground mine to be reconciled against the mine plan and strategy proposed for the original feasibility study.The Trident deposit, initially based on two lode systems known as the Eastern Zone and Western Zone, has been continuously drilled, interpreted and re-interpreted over the period and as a result the addition of the Athena, Apollo and Artemis lode systems as well as numerous smaller scale lodes has been realised. The first three years has seen the Trident underground mine quickly move up to its 1 Mtpa design production rate. The mine plan and strategy used in the initial feasibility study and subsequently implemented, required sufficient flexibility to enable modification and optimisation to mine plans as ore zones were further defined. The ability to modify the mining plans has enabled Avoca to achieve its mining targets at Trident. With over 250 000 ounces gold produced to January 2010, the company is well positioned to achieve its ten year vision associated with the Higginsville Gold Project.This paper offers an account of operational experiences whilst providing comparison to assumptions and methodologies used in the original feasibility study. The paper is a sequel to a paper presented at the Tenth Underground Operators’ Conference held in Launceston, Tasmania titled Development Strategy of the Trident Underground Gold Mine.

Mar 21, 2011

By H Kurth, L Balzan

The potential for bulk diversion was identified and quickly implemented following the development of bulk sensing technologies applied to conveyed flows. In the early 1980s real time analysis of ash in coal was intended to improve the understanding and control of quality variability. By the end of the 1980s approximately 5% of coal analysers installed were being utilised for bulk sorting; diverting flows to create stockpiles to improve blending flexibility and boiler feed consistency, diverting waste material, or bypassing the beneficiation process when the coal met product quality criteria. In the 1990s bulk sensing and sorting utilising natural gamma detection was applied to conveyed waste in gold-uranium mineralisation and allowed ore to be recovered and processed that would otherwise have been discarded. Further applications developed in the iron ore sector where product quality ore could be diverted to bypass beneficiation and save significant unnecessary processing costs and improve recovery by avoiding process inefficiency losses. Plant capacity was freed up to be utilised by material that required processing. Similar benefits became evident in the phosphate industry and in base metals where multi-elemental analysis using Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis provides ideal opportunities to representatively measure 30 second conveyed increments at high accuracies. This has been successfully adopted in copper, nickel, platinum and lead-zinc to improve waste removal after primary crushing to eliminate unnecessary expense and improve plant efficiency. The benefits include increased output from existing operating capacity, significant reductions in consumable costs and generation of fewer detrimental waste streams. The paper outlines the technologies and discusses case studies covering the above commodities, demonstrating the immense value that representative real time measurement of conveyed flows can create. Measurement data concurrently provides multiple benefits in operational performance besides sorting, through ore reconciliation, ore blending, feedforward control and metal accounting, adding further value.

Nov 10, 2020

By A Turner, P Hills, D Johnson

Underground mining for gold began in Beaconsfield in 1877 and development of the Tasmania Mine saw the sinking of multiple shafts, including the Hart Shaft over the ensuing 35 years. The mine closed in 1914 at a depth of 455 m due to prevailing economics, eventually reopening in 1999. The modern mine closed in 2012 after extending the mine from a historical depth of 455 m to the exhaustion of the modern Ore Reserve at a depth of 1210 m. West Tamar Council took over the lease for the immediate area around the Hart Shaft as an extension of the adjacent museum. The Hart Shaft and above ground structures became a significant drawcard for visitors. Tasmania was affected by sustained wet weather during May, June and July of 2016 which caused severe flooding and significant Statewide damage. This uncharacteristically intense wet weather caused saturation of the ground surrounding the Hart Shaft. Eventual shaft failure was first identified in August 2016. The failure of the shaft occurred at approximately 50 m below surface and resulted in a plug of material completely blocking the shaft. Significant surface subsidence affecting the surface infrastructure ensued. Due to the unstable nature of the surrounding material, it was determined that addressing the failure above the blockage would not provide a permanent solution to prevent the continued flow of material into the shaft. Many options to stabilise the shaft were considered, however it was assessed that a concrete plug in the shaft in competent ground at a depth of 100 m below surface and well below the blockage, would provide the only long-term solution. Man-entry was considered unsafe. The solution to access ultimately entailed filling the entire shaft with granular fill up to 100 m depth to act as formwork for a concrete plug. The rising mains at 400 mm and 250 mm diameter, which remained in place in the shaft, provided the avenue for placing the fill and ultimately, the concrete plug. Once the plug was in place the remainder of the shaft up to the underside of the blockage and over the top of the blockage to the surface was successfully filled with a combination of more granular fill and flowable cement stabilised sand. The Hart Shaft and surrounding above ground infrastructure was successfully stabilised and re-opened to tourist access. CITATION:Johnson, D, Turner, A and Hills, P, 2018. Stabilising and filling the Beaconsfield Hart Shaft, in Proceedings The Fourth Australasian Ground Control in Mining Conference (AusRock), pp 42–57 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 30, 2018

By B Delaney

For worker safety, mining companies are required to stop production and inspect hoist ropes. Visual inspection is generally done daily and EM inspection occurs every three to four months. During visual inspection, rope speed is generally reduced so an inspector can look for problems. In EM testing the LMA and LF traces are printed on a paper strip chart and a skilled operator interprets these traces. Mining companies only find large defects during visual inspection and are sometimes concerned about the content of EM trace information. This paper will present research outcomes that show how muck can be hoisted while performing a complete visual rope inspection at full speed. Other research results will show that digital signal processing can increase the amount of information available to the EM rope inspector. The research was funded by Inco, C-CORE, three AMIRA International sponsors and six sponsors from the Canadian Deep Mining Research Consortium (DMRC). The research will be commercialised in 2005.

Jan 1, 2005

By L McCallum, G Dale, B Silverwood, T Roscoe, A Costin

The introduction of Progressive Closure and Rehabilitation Plans (PCRPs) in Queensland from 2019 places greater importance on planning and implementation of mine rehabilitation activities. The progress and outcomes of progressive rehabilitation activities is monitored and reported upon to demonstrate success in achieving progress towards the approved post-mining landform, and to inform corrective action where required. The requirements of PCRPs place additional emphasis on mine sites to quantify the risks of successfully achieving planned outcomes. This is particularly challenging given mined-land rehabilitation is a complex process involving decisions on multiple inter-acting management interventions, climatic conditions and spatially variable site characteristics.

Aug 2, 2023

By J-P Franzidis

The Floatability Characterisation Test Rig (FCTR) is a self-contained, highly instrumented, mobile pilot plant. It was developed as part of the AMIRA P9 project, primarily to determine ore floatability characteristics and to develop and validate flotation plant modelling, scale-up and simulation methodologies. This paper describes the use of the FCTR in validating the AMIRA P9 flotation model and modelling methodology. In 2001 the FCTR was installed and operated in parallel with WMCÆs (now BHP BillitonÆs) Kambalda Nickel Operation. The FCTR was operated using four different circuit configurations of increasing complexity. Metallurgical surveys, cell characterisation measurements and batch flotation tests were performed around each circuit. This allowed the calibration of a number of flotation models using a combination of data from one, two, three or four circuit configurations. The calibrated flotation models were then validated using predictive validation. To do this, data around a further five FCTR circuit configurations were collected (three of which are presented in this paper). The performance of each of the five circuit configurations was predicted using JKSimFloat V6.1 and the parameters from the various calibrated flotation models. The predicted performance was compared to the experimentally determined performance of each circuit. The validation of the AMIRA P9 model was shown to be largely successful except in the case where the reagent addition (depressant) to the validation circuit was different to that in the calibration circuits. The results also provided information regarding the required complexity of the calibration circuit and how many calibration circuits are required to obtain an accurate prediction of circuit performance. These results have increased the confidence in the AMIRA P9 flotation modelling methodology and have provided important information on what data must be collected to allow the accurate prediction of plant performance using the floatability component modelling approach.

Jan 1, 2007

By E Nettleton, A Melkumyan

A probabilistic system for autonomous tracking of excavated ore in mining would be highly valuable. Currently, mine sites can have a vast array of sensors; examples include excavator load cells, bucket volume estimators and haul truck strut pressures which can be used to gather information about the excavated ore at different locations. These sensors can be utilised efficiently to increase the accuracy of mine estimates by introducing a real-time ore tracking system. This requires the introduction of a probabilistic ore tracking framework to consistently fuse information from any sensor input. Current modelling practices are manually intensive, deterministic (no recognition of the quality of data) and generally not a complete end-to-end system. This paper will provide a novel method for tracking extensive ore properties (mass, volume) and intensive ore properties such as chemical composition (eg Fe per cent, SiO2 per cent, Al2O3 per cent). This method is proved to ensure that correct correlations between states are conserved as material is transferred, combined and/or separated at different locations with any configuration of sensor inputs. This ensures that consistency of estimates is maintained and other benefits such as real-time probabilistic reconciliation can be implemented. A method for combining material of different mass and chemical compositions is also developed to enable accurate and efficient operation of the system. Representative experiments on a small-scale and a larger field trial which mimic the mining processes of excavation, haul and unload to ROM Stockpile will be used to verify the approach.

Sep 26, 2011

By R Zhang, J Xu, X Lv, C Bai, S Zhang

This paper studies the grinding behaviour of vanadium-titanium magnetite concentrate in a ball mill. The grinding kinetics, surface morphology, lattice distortion, wettability and moisture capacity were analysed. Grinding kinetics equation was established based on population balances model with the size distribution data from a laser diffraction technique. The SEM photos of the ground concentrate showed that the surface gets rough with increasing grind time. Agglomeration of fine particles was enhanced when the grinding time reached 30 minutes. X-ray diffraction results showed that a loss in crystalline occurred with increasing the grinding time. The peaks of the X-ray diffraction patterns are significantly broadened with increasing grinding time. Wettability, characterised by contact angle between the material and water, improved due to the fact that the surface roughness increased with increasing grinding time. Moisture capacity of concentrate ascends abruptly in the first three minutes and then changed slowly with increasing grinding time. The water transfer coefficient in the particles increased rapidly in the first six minutes and then decreased quickly until grinding time reached 12 minutes.CITATION:Zhang, R, Lv, X, Bai, C, Xu, J and Zhang, S, 2013. Wet grinding of ?vanadium-titanium magnetite concentrate in a ball mill, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2013 , pp 511-518 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Aug 12, 2013

By C W. Davis

Every diesel engine emits approximately 100 million nano diesel particles (nDP) per cubic centimetre of raw exhaust. Each nDP has a diameter of between 50 and 70 nano metres or 1/100th the size of red blood cells (diameter of between 6 and 8 microns). When inhaled, some nDP pass through the lungs and penetrate all body tissue [1]. Europe and North America have recognised and are addressing the long term health problems posed by nano diesel particulate matter (nDPM) across their societies [2.3]. Australia has been slow to recognise the issue, at both a societal and mining industry level. There are chronic health effects for every underground miner and serious legal issues for mining companies with increasingly stringent Occupational Health and Safety legislation being implemented at a state level across Australia. This paper will review progress within Australian society and more particularly the underground hard rock mining industry, particularly in Western Australia (WA).

Mar 15, 2021

By M de Freitas Silva

One of the main steps during the decision-making process of long-term mine planning is the definition of the optimal sequence of extraction, which usually is synonymous with maximising the discounted cash flow of the project subjected to several constraints arising from aspects of technical, physical, and economic limits.Open pit mine production scheduling (OPMPS) comprises several intricacies related to its size and uncertainty of input parameters. Due to its complexity and prohibitive size, traditional mine planning usually relies on heuristic or metaheuristic methodologies which are able to provide good solutions in a reasonable amount of time. However, most of the uncertainty that surrounds the mining complex is ignored leading to non-realistic results.In this paper, a new heuristic approach is explored in order to solve a stochastic version of the OPMPS problem accounting for geological uncertainty in terms of metal content, multiple processing streams, and stockpiling option. The methodology involves generating an initial solution by solving a series of subproblems and this initial solution is improved using a network flow based algorithm.The algorithm was applied to a relatively large gold deposit with more than 119 thousands blocks. Results have shown that the methodology is promising to deal with large-size mine instances in reasonable time.CITATION:de Freitas Silva, M, 2014. Solving a large stochastic integer programming model for production scheduling at a gold mine with multiple processing streams and uncertain geology, in Proceedings Orebody Modelling and Strategic Mine Planning Symposium 2014 , pp 389–396 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Nov 24, 2014

By S Slouka

Airborne rock dust poses serious long-term health complications to workers in the underground mining and civil environment where rock excavation is utilised. During drilling, airborne rock particles are immediately released into the breathable environment where additionally, the settled dust can be reintroduced into the air further down in production. The purpose of this study is to build a characterisation suite of dust particles such that underground operations can implement more appropriate dust suppression and mitigation techniques in accordance to pick wear. Therefore, concrete is cut to create a preliminary dust characterisation baseline, where future cutting tests will be performed on limestone and sandstone rocks.In this study, three conical pick wears (new, moderately worn, and fully worn picks) are used to generate dust from a concrete block and characteristics are statistically compared between the dusts. Airborne respirable particles are collected during cutting and deposited fine material, orparticles left on the surface of the block, are collected after cutting. The dusts are then analysed through standardised methods, field emission scanning electron microscope image capture with image analyses, and laser diffraction methods. Findings reveal that the worn pick generated thehighest concentration of respirable dust, all picks generated dust containing quartz, the three picks generally generated respirable dusts with similar particle shapes (in terms of roundness, roughness, and aspect ratio), and the worn pick generated the largest deposited fine material particles.

Oct 12, 2022

By P Standish

Qualitative risk assessment methods are not well suited to considering complex systems and potential interactions of new technology. As part of supporting tier one mining organisations and international industry groups, the author and colleagues have innovated processes to help provide better solutions to sites/companies considering a move to implementing proximity detection and collision avoidance systems. The process identifies required operating states for the system. By applying a combination of research and team-based analyses, a rigorous identification of credible failure modes which could cause these states to be lost, is identified. Finally, required business inputs, expressed in practical terms are distilled from regulator, industry, organisation and site in a way which clearly addresses the failure modes and so retain the required operating states. These business inputs identify improvements for site arrangements (EMESRT levels 1 to 7) before identifying functional requirements for technological collision avoidance solutions (levels 8 for advisory and 9 for autonomous). The paper presents a case study synthesised from multiple sites analyses and will provide guidance on where to find additional resources to assist in making the best possible transition to better equipment and road network solutions.

Jun 22, 2022