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By J. Fuchs

This paper describes the mechanized narrow vein cut-and-fill approach used for the Deep Copper orebody at Falconbridge Limited's Strathcona Mine. Strategies for achieving high productivity while maintaining ground stability at depth and controlling dilution are discussed, including the use of mini-electrohydraulic drilling equipment, containerized truck haulage, consolidated rockfill placement techniques, and a miners' incentive system.

Jan 1, 1992

By E. H. Kurt

INTRODUCTION The simplest way to drill a hole into rock is to strike a steel chisel or drill bit with a hammer. Early miners used this elementary hand technique so successfully in "single jacking" and "double jacking" that the first mechanical rock-drill designers sought to duplicate it. However, in the early developments, the designers were forced to retreat to a construction known as the "piston drill," wherein the entire drilling element is tied to the piston and reciprocates with it. It took nearly 50 years to devise a method of divorcing the two elements and to achieve the original hammer principle used in hand drilling. The Mont Cenis tunnel, drilled through the French Alps in 1861, usually is considered the birthplace of the mechanical rock drill. The Hoosac tunnel in Massa¬chusetts was drilled at about the same time, and the success of these two ventures paved the way for innova¬tions that produced the Burleigh, Ingersoll, Sergeant, and Waugh piston drills between 1870 and the turn of the century. In 1897, George Leyner of Colorado introduced what has been considered the most significant development in rock-drill history. He devised the hollow drill steel for water flushing; when combined with his free-piston hammer drill, this became the first lightweight and dust¬free underground machine. In addition, Leyner's drills introduced improvements such as automatic rifle-bar rotation of the drill steel and chuck, automatic lubrica¬tion, and an enclosed throttle control. During the 1920s and 1930s, automatic feeds, centralizers, sliding cones, and the automatic water back head were developed, laying the groundwork for all pneumatic underground drills currently in use. Since these pioneering efforts, rock-drill development has been concerned primarily with refining the designs and improving the metallurgy to make faster, lighter, and more dependable machines. Fig. 1 illustrates the progress in drilling speed during the first 125 years of rock-drill development; that progress is a credit to the persistence and inventiveness of the designers in the rock-drilling industry. ROCK-DRILL CLASSIFICATIONS To meet the variety of conditions encountered in rock drilling, several distinct types of drills have been de¬veloped. In general, rock drills may be classified as either hand-held or mounted, with the hand-held ma¬chines including the jackhammer or sinker, the jackdrill or jackleg, and the stoper. The mounted drills are com¬monly known as "drifters." Table 1 shows that each type of drill is available in several sizes from different manufacturers. Fig. 2 illustrates a typical rock drill, showing the principal components. The jackhammer or sinker, shown in Fig. 3, is used primarily for general mine utility work such as drilling anchor holes (short vertical holes to bolt or anchor machinery), pin holes (short, usually horizontal holes to fasten sheaves, etc. to side walls), popholes (for blasting large boulders), and similar applications. They also are used for shaft sinking. Jackhammers are classified ac¬cording to weight, and they range from 7 to 30 kg (15 to 65 lb). The rock drill originally known as a jackleg was made by clamping a pneumatic cylinder or leg to a jack¬hammer, both to support the weight of the machine and to feed the tool forward in horizontal or uphole work. The more modern jackdrill refined this concept to make the hinged pivot for the leg integral with the drill cylinder and to group all drill and leg controls in the drill back head for convenience. Fig. 4 illustrates a typical jackdrill. Jackdrills are classified according to cylinder bore size, ranging from 60 to 83 mm (2.375 to 3.25 in.). Because of their light weight and versatility, jack drills are very effective in small drifts, small tunnel head¬ings, and stoping. The larger machines are applied to hardrock formations and in applications where drilling speed is a primary consideration. In soft formations or

Jan 1, 1982

By Jung-Joo Kim, Jong-Uk Kim, Turab H. Jafri, Han-Kyu Yoo

"INTRODUCTION Steel sets such as H-type and lattice girders are often installed in the tunnels before the hardening of shotcrete to ensure the stability of conventional tunnels in soft ground conditions. In practice, while designing the tunnels with the help of numerical analysis, steel sets are generally considered only as temporary support elements. Only a few studies propose the direct application of composite support in the tunnel design, based on large-scale experiments and numerical analysis. In order to assess the structural performance of the composite support consisting of shotcrete and steel sets, large-scale experiments were performed on two types of arch-shaped specimens by applying the combined effects of axial forces and bending moments. Based on the experimental results, numerical analysis was performed to assess the application of composite support in tunnel design. The crown settlement, axial forces, bending moments, and load distribution in the composite support were analyzed in the light of different structural patterns. LARGE-SCALE EXPERIMENTS USING COMPOSITE SUPPORT Preparation and Procedure of the Experiments The preparation setup as well as the organized procedure of the large-scale experiments using composite support is shown in Figure 1. An appropriate geometry of the specimens was selected by considering the standard cross-section of a two-lane highway tunnel in South Korea. Under the loading conditions meant to develop the axial forces and bending moments simultaneously, arch-shaped specimens were assembled with the ends of the specimens subtending a 60° arc angle at the center of the arc circle as shown in Figure 2. The fabrication of six specimens was completed in two groups based on the dimensions of steel sets, with the first group of three specimens being reinforced by H100 (No.1, No.2, No.3) and the other three by H125 (No.4, No.5, No.6). In order to reduce the voids on the boundary of the shotcrete and steel sets, concrete was casted over the steel sets instead of using shotcrete. The specimens were designed to incorporate the uniaxial compressive strength of 21 MPa. Shear keys and steel plates were installed at the ends of the specimens, so that shear failure could be avoided at the ends and the specimens could also be protected from detachment at the fixation. Translational and rotational movements at the ends of specimens were fixed."

Jan 1, 2016

By V. A. Kharchenko, V. M. Yeremeev

INITIAL PRECONDITIONS To solve tile problem of using the potential reserves of the different coal ranks efficiently (the coal reserves being many times superior in quantity to those of natural gas and oil) one must realise an integrated estimation of the coalfields' and coal deposits' reserves. The actuality of this problem increased especially in the recent years, when the Russian coal industry is being restructured. A structural reorgaisation of this industry, in order to in- crease its efficiency, covers a large spectrum of social and economic problems, comprising a withdrawal from mining the coal reserves that are unsafe from the standpoint of economy and labour protection. According to the information supplied by the 'Rossoogol' company, the Russian coal industry, accounting for abut a fifth of the world coal reserves, has a rather unsafe resource base, for about 5% of the reserves involved in mining do not correspond to the world practice conditions, regarding the coal grade, thickness, geological conditions, proneness to coal and gas outburst hazards. These concern first of all the Moscow, Kizelovsk and Donetsk coal basins, the Prokopievsk-Kiselevsk district of the Kuzbas basin and several other coalfields. Thus, the problem of efficient potential coal reserves' utilization calls for a paramount solution of two basic problems, namely: a) a comparative coalfields' and sections evaluation, and their ranging, in accordance with their industrial importance; b) choosing the 'active' reserves good to be efficiently mined under the present-day conditions. PRINCIPLES OF EVALUATION The investigations that had been carried out make it possible to formulate the following basic principles of the coalfields' reserves' estimation (or assessment). 1. The necessity, possibility and expediency of coal reserves' industrial exploitation are determined by a set of natural, technical, technological, practical, economic, environmental and social factors, thus calling for an integrated and gradual approach to problem solving. 2. One cannot consider the results of same reserves' estimation as being invariable because the former depend both upon constant (mainly natural) and market demands for different grades of coal (those of different power engineering and technological situations), capital investments, material and labour resources, economic (price-forming), technical, technological, environmental and other factors. 3. The rational size and sequence of the operating mines' and reserve sections' resources' involvement into mining depend upon the final aim of posing the problem, whose variants may be (the corresponding limitations being considered) providing for a maximum run-of-mine output (these essentially featuring the past stages of the industry's evolution); providing for a maximum efficiency, measured possibly by the specific or absolute indices of profits an expenses, labour productivity e. al. ; providing for a maximum extraction (maximum integrate utilization) of the known reserves. In this case an important park goes to the economic evaluation (or assessment) of useful application of the by-products being extracted (methane, mine water, rack) compared to the expenses necessary for their utilization. Regarding the steam coal (posing the problem any way it be possible), and extreme limit to the absolute non-efficiency of the coal reserves' exploitation may be posed, using the proportion of energy obtained from the possible amount of the coal to be extracted to the energy consumption necessary to extract, prepare, haul and consume this amount of coal. 4. The most reliable and efficient solutions providing for opening the reserves can be obtained for group of mines, rather than at the level of an individual mine section or an individual mine because it is only in the former case that the possibilities to re- distribute the expenses necessary to develop the good for mining and worse sections and seams can be realized to the greatest extent. Therefore the prospective approach to be considered is the one providing for an integrated organization and choice of the optimum combination of the variants of the ways to use the mines in operation and the free sections of the region in order to satisfy the growing up requirements for coal rather than the one providing for individual mine sections' resources' evaluation. 5. The future possibility and expediency of coal reserves' industrial exploitation will depend upon the prospects to implant at the mines in operation and reserve sections new engineering and technological elements and coal extraction technologies which may essentially change the actual idea concerning the coal reserves worth of being developed in an efficient way. For example, reserves not available to be exploited using conventional coal extraction technology may be regarded as potential resources for in situ gasification, e. g. the operating mines' reserves (non-commercial and non-mined commercial ones), balance and outside balance reserves of the free sections having proved not available to be mined using conventional coal-extraction technologies, as well as the non-extracted reserves of the abandoned and closed mines.

Jan 1, 1996

By Akram Marseet, Andrew J. Petruska, Rik Banerjee

Underground mine roof bolting is a crucial operation for miners’ safety and mine sustainability. Since roof bolting is a manual or human-supervised operation, miners’ safety is at risk due to dust or rock falls. Traditional machine learning algorithms have shown limitations to detecting drillable areas, mainly due to harsh lighting conditions. The authors propose an adaptive deep-learning framework for autonomous roof bolting. The proposed framework is based on implementing a binary semantic segmentation algorithm on color images to classify pixels that belong to rock from those that belong to non-rock. Significantly, the proposed framework implements deep learning semantic segmentation on images from traditional and neuromorphic vision sensors in underground mines. The performance of the proposed model shows an impressive accuracy level of at least 98% at a low number of training epochs with smooth learning curves. The high accuracy enables the implementation of autonomous roof bolting, greatly improving miners’ safety and operational efficiency while reducing human exposure to safety hazards. This research will advance the use of deep learning in mining automation and has the potential to revolutionize the traditional mining industry.

Feb 1, 2024

By James Corcoran, Richard McLane, Joseph DeMello, Eric Carlson, Hans van de Vrugt

The Los Angeles County Transportation Authority’s Purple Line Extension Phase 1 is a $3.12 billion (USD) design-build, underground heavy rail project, connecting an existing station at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue and extending west 3.92 miles under Wilshire Boulevard and terminating approximately 550 feet west of Wilshire/La Cienega Station. The project alignment runs through the heart of the world famous La Brea Tar Pits and one of the world’s largest urban oil elds. This paper presents a case history of the planning, design, and construction efforts to achieve successful construction of the bored tunnels through Reach 3 of the alignment. Further, this paper outlines the proactive partnership between the owner, Los Angeles County Metro (Metro), the Design Builder, Skanska-Traylor-Shea oint enture (STS), and Southwest Geophysics who provided the geophysical services. Specically, the project included background review of historic site data (e.g., oil eld maps, building foundation plans, historic aerial photographs, etc.), geophysical demonstration testing to ascertain the capability of borehole magnetics to detect oil wells, directional drilling of thousands of feet of horizontal and vertical boreholes, collection of high resolution magnetic gradiometer data along vertically and horizontally cased boreholes as well as the collection of surface magnetometer data, discovery (“ground truthing”) of detected geophysical anomalies, and abatement of potential obstructions within the tunnel alignment.

Jun 23, 2024

By J. M. Pachter

Property sales and acquisition are prominent features of today's coal industry. Before selling or buying a site, a company must know the property's economic net worth. Any evaluation of economic net worth would be inadequate if determinations of a property's environmental liabilities and costs were omitted. Short-term and long-term costs can result from liabilities related to reclamation, water treatment, subsidence, and hazardous waste disposal. A structured, interdisciplinary approach can aid in the delineation, summation, and scheduling of these costs and liabilities.

Jan 1, 1986

By Jack R. Miller

This session has been organized to suggest to you that the development of direct reduction is important to the iron ore mining and coal mining industries. The papers presented this morning will include a discussion of the costs of making direct reduced iron (DRI), the iron ore and coal supplies needed to produce DRI, the financing of direct reduction (DR) projects and, probably most important, the impact of the DR development on the iron ore and coal industries. For starters, this opening presentation offers a brief statement about DR practice and DRI, under the title that should surprise no one: "Direct Reduction: What Is It?" There is always the chance? that a brief statement may become long and complicated. But, by mixing some slides borrowed from Hal Lownie with a larger number of photographs accumulated from other sources, I hope to avoid such pitfalls.

Jan 1, 1978

By Kot F. Unrug

When reading different studies discussing trends in coal mining, it appears that a substantial expansion of output by the year 2000 is predicted, even in the most pessimistic forecasts. Depletion of shallow, easy-to-mine deposits is only a matter of time, and the future average mining depth will increase. The proportion of slope to shaft mines operated during the next decades will change in favor of the shaft mines. Since an increasing amount of shafts in new nine developments seems to be inevitable, it appears appropriate to focus more attention on shaft design criteria. Some valuable papers have recently been published (1) that emphasize geotechnical aspects of shaft design. In the discussion that follows some other aspects of design criteria will be evaluated.

Jan 1, 1984

By A. M. Edwards

In many ways a government could be regarded as a macro business enterprise. Its shareholders are its peoples, the productivity of the nation depends on them, and, indeed, the profits or losses of a nation's balance sheet can be linked to the surplus or deficit in its balance of payments. International loans need to be repaid, and in most developing nations the noose is tied so tightly that one wonders if such debts will ever be repaid. In their endeavour to meet such obligations, their currencies may be devalued [sometimes in frightening proportions], in the hope of boosting the export potential. However, this is a vicious circle, since exports will not be achievable unless sufficient technical expertise and infrastructure exist to address the opportunities which may have been created through devaluation. Many of the poorer countries have exportable resources of minerals, which are supplied on the international market. This may be the good news, but, unhappily, steps were seldom taken to enhance the value of the mineral products through further beneficiation and the production of high-value sophisticated products. That is where the vicious circle comes in: inadequate infrastructure is created, competent and well-trained manpower is not generated, and the result has inevitably been that the GDP slips backwards, and the nation becomes progressively impoverished. To exacerbate the problem, it is unfortunate that the more impoverished a nation becomes, the greater is its birthrate, and hence the greater the need to create wealth at the very time that the nation is becoming poorer and poorer. Within this scenario, one may well reflect that this is exactly what nations on the African Continent are experiencing, namely exploding populations, although most of the poorest nations in the world are found on this continent. Yet they often possess a superior mineral production potential. Africa still suffers from what may be called the colonial influence, in that the developed world has regarded this continent as a source of raw materials to feed its own factories. The colonial powers gave only secondary attention to developing the nation's peoples and its infrastructure, such as railways, roads, harbours, and other services. These problems all naturally fall within the ambit of government interest, and it is therefore obvious that the state should play a dominant role in addressing them. The reasons for governmental involvement in mineral-related research and development differ considerably, depending on the state of industrial development of that country. Thus, in the highly industrialised world, government's interest will lie mostly in the fields of strategic minerals, which may not be economically exploitable. An example would be the exploitation of American low-grade chromites during the Second World War, or minerals which need to be imported from unfriendly or unreliable sources, such that disruption would not be in the national interest. Colonial powers like the United Kingdom and France established R&D facilities to assist, inter alia, in the exploitation of mineral resources in their colonies. The approach of developing countries would differ from that of the industrialised nations, in that their primary quest would be to promote, support and encourage the development of infrastructure, and the establishment of major industries in order to create and provide employment opportunities, as well as to support small operators who cannot afford to undertake their own research and development. On the debit side, it is a sad fact that, however good their intentions may be, underdeveloped countries are invariably unable to provide the requisite financial support to sustain their own research-and-development laboratories. In a high-tech world, the cost of sophisticated equipment is steep and cannot be afforded. Again, the proverbial vicious circle comes into play. The competent researchers find themselves without rewarding employment and would therefore shun such institutions. Recent trends in the developed world have been to privatise research-and-development institutions, the argument being that they should draw closer to the industry they serve, and that the provision of taxpayers' money for strategic purposes is no longer as important as it may have been once. Complete state withdrawal has had its negative effect in that long-range, high-calibre research has tended to be replaced by short-term problem-solving projects. Industries engaged in the minerals business differ somewhat from major ones, like motor, computer or pharmaceutical industries, which are large enough to support their own internal research and development, and whose work is highly confidential, so that any leakage could have disastrous consequences. Furthermore, private companies are answerable to their shareholders and costly long-range, 'blue-sky' research would be difficult to justify. Since mineral research has become of lesser importance in the sophisticated First World, this trend has persisted. On the positive side, R&D institutions which are totally financed by government, suffer because they tend to forget the reason for their existence. They have often become a form of auxiliary to an academic institution where higher degrees are collected by scientific boffins who, in their quest for academic excellence, tend to disregard the benefits that industry may ultimately gain from this research endeavour. The trend in recent years - and South Africa is no exception - has been for the state to progressively reduce its subsidy, whilst at the same time encouraging research organisations [for their ongoing survival] to interact closely with industry, and to conduct work directly for them on a contract basis. Organisations such as CSIRO in Australia, CANMET in Canada, the USBM in the United States and Mintek in South Africa all generate income from the private sector. However, the critical fact is that the State should never withdraw

Jan 1, 1995

By J. H. Wilhelm

Continuous thickeners can be sized either from previous experience, continuous pilot-scale test results, or from batch settling tests. Although it is a relatively simple process to size full-scale thickeners when previous experience or pilot-scale operating data are available, batch testing is often the only realistic method for sizing thickeners due to time restrictions, budget limitations and availability of sample material. Many authors have, therefore, suggested means of running batch tests and analyzing the resulting data. Fundamental thickening theory had its beginning with the work o£ Coe and Clevenger(1). In order to determine the size of the thickener settling area, they proposed that a series of batch settling tests be run at various initial concentrations. The solids handling capacity at each concentration can then be determined and the lowest capacity (maximum area requirements) used to size the thickener. Kynch(2) developed a mathematical analysis in which the relationship between solids concentration and settling rate can be obtained from a single batch settling curve. Talmage and Fitch(3), Yoshioka(4)(5) and Dick(6), have enlarged upon these works to give a basis for methods of sizing thickeners.

Jan 1, 1979

By J. Rao Mokka

Extensive exploration has resulted in delineation of a massive sulfide district on the north flank of the east-central Alaska range. The district covers approximately 400 square miles and contains numerous stratiform; transported and some replacement type sulfide deposits ranging in size from less than 1 million tons to 20 million tons. Five types of ores were sampled for the study. Mineralogical analysis revealed that the minerals are too fine grained for conventional grinding and beneficiation. Hydrometallurgical studies were con-ducted using ferric chloride as a lixiviant. Ore microscopic studies as well as electron microprobe analyses of minerals in the raw samples and leach residues explained the low recoveries for certain elements as well as sources of impurities that need to be eliminated from the process streams.

Jan 1, 1991

By Robert Hochscheid

A patent issued to J.N.J. Leeman (1957) described the change in performance that takes place when a cyclone is installed in the horizontal position rather than the vertical position. Although this patent was directed more toward improvements that could be realized in the heavy medium cleaning of coal, it contained specific references to reducing the quantity of fine solids that would report in the underflow, and an example for fine sand classification is also included. The three cyclone installations for which data is given in this paper demonstrate that horizontal mounting of large cyclones can improve classification efficiency, eliminate some operational difficulties, and reduce cyclone maintenance requirements in closed circuit grinding installations. Cyclone Experience at Serrana S.A. Each of four grinding circuits at the Serrana S.A. de Mineracao Apatite flotation plant in Brazil have a 2.7 X 4.6 meter (9 X 15 foot) rod mill and each originally operated in closed circuit with two vertically mounted Model D20B (500m nominal diameter) Krebs Cyclones. New feed size is 25mm. The Apatite is liberated at a relatively coarse 35 to 28 mesh grind, but the 500mm cyclones had to be fed at 66 pct. solids in order to obtain an overflow analyzing 12 pct. coarser than 42 mesh. Because dilution water in the cyclone feed had to be limited, classification was inefficient, and there were other significant circuit difficulties as summarized in a recent article by C. A. Busnardo (1984):

Jan 1, 1985

By Mike Harrington, Tung Vu

The Regional Connector Transit Project is a 1.9-mile-long underground light rail system that will connect LA Metro’s A (Blue), E (Expo), and L (Gold) Lines in downtown Los Angeles. This $1.75-billion design-build project is scheduled for revenue service in Spring 2023. The project consists of 21-foot diameter twin-bored tunnels, a 300-footlong crossover SEM cavern, three new underground stations (at 1st Street/Central Avenue, 2nd Street/ Broadway Avenue, and 2nd/Hope Streets), and cut-and-cover tunnels along South Flower, Alameda, and 1st Streets. This paper, which is the continuation of our previous paper presented in RETC 2019—LA Metro Regional Connector Transit Project: Successful Halfway-Through Completion, will provide insight regarding the construction of major components, and the system integration and testing work undertaken for this complex transit project.

Jun 13, 2023

By W. V. Swarzenski

In its, effort to combat waterlogging and coil salinity, the later and Soils Investigation Division of WAPDA (West Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority) has carried out an extensive program of test drilling and water sampling, since 1954. Data collected during the past ten years have permitted the delineation of fresh and saline ground-water-zones in the Punjab Plain. Fresh ground water containing generally, less than 500 ppm (parts per million) of total dissolved solids is found in wide belts paralleling the major rivers and in other areas of fresh-water recharge. Locally, fresh ground water extends to depths of 1,500 feet and more. Saline ground water occurs downgradient from sources of recharge, particularly in the lower central parts of the interfluvial areas and, presumably, underlies most of the Punjab Plain. The ground waters of the Punjab are characterized by their evolution from calcium, magnesium bicarbonate waters, near sources of recharge, to waters containing a dominant proportion of sodium. The highly mineralized waters of the Punjab are generally of the sodium chloride type, whereas in Dera Ismail Khan District sodium sulfate waters predominate. The pattern of distribution of saline ground-water zones and the observed gradual increase in mineral content, downgradient from sources of recharge, can be explained best by a hypothesis stressing the processes of evaporation from the water table and solution of minerals within the alluvial aquifer.

Jan 1, 1967

By Sadegh Elyasi

TBMand roadheader are two dominating excavation machines in underground tunnelling projects. The performance of these two tunnelling machines has been reviewed and analysed individually by many researchers from multiple points of view. However, there are almost no studies that have made an extensive comparison between these two machines, mostly from financial points of view. The current study is intended to characterize both financial and technical status of these two mechanical tunnelling machines in one of the biggest coal mines in Iran. The main objective of this study is to define the best method and equipment that meets a predefined economic goal, which is mainly to maximize the net present value. To this end, a technical and financial model based on the geomechanical and financial parameters involved in the project has been prepared and the financial part of the project has been carried out by applying COMFAR III financial analysis software. Subsequently, a sensitivity analysis of the model was conducted in order to evaluate the effect of involved parameters on the project. According to the results, a roadheader has better economic justification than a TBM, while the TBM has a better advance rate than the roadheader.

Feb 12, 2021

By Joshua Cole, Joshua Sovechles, Christian Cardoso, Guillermo Bermudez, Martta Hirsi, Joshua Dettamanti, Rabia Abbasi

The implementation of technological advancements in flotation is key to optimize performance in mining operations. Consequently, flotation cell’s performance is highly dependent on the effectiveness of the mixing mechanism. A more efficient flotation mixing mechanism is likely to improve metallurgical performance and optimize energy consumption, which is the motivation for Metso’s journey to develop the latest iteration of FloatForce®. Looking to test the new design at plant scale, Metso approached the Kennecott Copperton concentrator, which is continuously looking for different venues to improve metallurgical performance. In this context, a test campaign was conducted to implement this new flotation mixing mechanism in their rougher circuit during 2024. The industrial trial consisted of several sampling campaigns assessing different operational parameters for comparison purposes around a 300m3 flotation cell. The effect of the new flotation mixing mechanism on the cell’s power draw was also studied. The results of this trial at Kennecott are presented in this paper. Overall new flotation mixing mechanism, FloatForce+ was seen to perform as well as the original FloatForce.

Feb 1, 2025

By B. Stewart

Recent ore pass failures have underlined the need for improved designs, standards, structural monitoring methods, and better hang up prevention and removal techniques. Researchers at the Spokane Research Laboratory of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are investigating methods to improve safety during transport of ore in ore passes. Design criteria and hang-up prevention and remediation strategies involve studies of the effects of static and dynamic ore and waste rock loads on chutes, walls, gates, and support structures. Particle flow analysis methods were used to simulate the response of various ore pass designs to a wide range of ore loading conditions. A full-scale mock-up of actual ore pass and chute assemblies was duplicated and tested for load response. Data from a particle flow code and the mock-ups were com-pared. Loads on an active ore pass chute were measured.

Jan 1, 1998

By S. Horton, F. L. Stanley, P. J. Bethell

Introduction The McClure River Processing Plant is located at McClure in Dickenson County, VA. The plant was originally constructed in 1979 as a 600 st per hour facility. The plant is fed by coals from numerous mines in the area as well as a major longwall mine onsite. Coal is processed predominantly for the metallurgical coal market. The original plant was comprised of three separate processing circuits incorporating a heavy medium vessel for the coarse material (+10 mm). Intermediate sized material (10 x 0.6 mm) was beneficiated in heavy medium cyclones, with the remaining fines (0.6 mm x 0) passing to froth flotation for upgrading. The products from all three circuits were combined prior to thermal drying and then stored in silos or ground storage prior to shipment to the metallurgical coal markets. A middlings heavy medium cyclone circuit was also present to rewash the vessel and primary heavy medium cyclone rejects. The original circuit is as shown as Fig. 1 (Editor's note: All figures are reproduced at the end of this paper.) In reasonably close proximity to the McClure Plant is the much older, less efficient Moss 1 Plant, (Chance cone, table, water only cyclone, froth flotation, Fig. 2), which prior to the McClure Plant expansion was processing considerable tonnages of coal. At that time, the McClure River Plant was processing coal at the maximum possible feed rate, and the Moss 1 Plant was finding increasing difficulty in maintaining the stringent quality specifications on its major metallurgical coal accounts. Given the fact that many of the feeder coals to Moss 1 could be moved with minimal difficulty and cost to McClure, an exercise was conducted to evaluate the potential of expanding the McClure Plant. This would result in transferring coals from Moss 1, thereby increasing yield, reducing operating costs, and enabling customer specifications to be met more easily. After evaluating many possible ways of expanding the McClure Plant, we eventually settled on an approach based on the idea of Gallagher at German Creek in Australia (Gallagher, 1986). Our objective was to increase plant capacity by removing the coarser size fractions (0.60 x 0.15 mm) from froth flotation and at the same time eliminating the finer fractions (1.25 x 0.6 mm) from the heavy medium cyclone circuit, thereby allowing these circuits and therefore the plant as a whole to increase its capacity. These size fractions (0.60 x 0.15 mm from froth flotation and 1.25 x 0.6 mm from the heavy medium cyclone circuit) would be treated in a new spiral circuit. After desired evaluation of the various circuit capacities, including desliming screen, clean coal filter and thermal dryer capacities, etc., it was concluded that we should be able to maintain high levels of processing efficiency in the existing circuitry while at the same time expanding plant feed rate from a nominal 600 st per hour to 1000 st per hour, thereby achieving the objectives The circuit that was finally settled on is shown in Fig. 2. Several unique features were incorporated in this circuit in an attempt to maximize processing efficiency and reduce maintenance costs. First, the idea of a single-stage spiral circuit was abandoned in favor of a two-stage circuit incorporating rewashing the primary spiral middlings in a secondary spiral (Bethell, 88). The spirals selected were Mineral Deposits Model LD4 units. It was felt, after much previous testing, that spiral middlings rather than being a true middling gravity fraction were in fact a combination of true middlings with a preponderance of misplaced light coal and high-density rock. Consequently the insertion of this material directly into either clean coal or refuse streams (per normal practice) would only lead to loss of efficiency. The operating philosophy behind the design of the circuit was to produce the purest coal and rejects possible by adjusting the spiral splitters. Misplacement of refuse into the clean coal and vice versa would be minimized by taking a fairly large middlings cut. By reprocessing this material (10%-15% of primary spiral feed) in a secondary bank of spirals the misplaced material in the primary middlings would be reprocessed and its probability of reporting to the correct stream greatly enhanced. To minimize fines loading on the spirals, fine aperture sieve bends were to be included. A further novel feature of the circuitry is the desliming/ dewatering system. A philosophy of accepting inefficiency but forcing it to work in our favor was developed. The dewatering screens (Linatex Combis) were chosen not for their ultimate screening efficiency but for their ability to remove slimes (tolerating a fair quantity of oversize in the effluent) and their enhanced maintenance characteristics. Any oversize passing into the effluent, together with the fine coal centrifuge effluent, would pass to classifying cyclones, the objective of which was to reject to overflow (and hence froth flotation) as many fines as possible (-150 µm) without running the risk of losing coarse (1.25 x 0.15 mm) material to oversize. Hence, by a process of producing a "slime free" screen product coupled with a "coarse free" cyclone overflow, sizing efficiency could be maximized. Obviously, recirculating load had to be factored into the Combi Screen design capacity. The spiral circuit as shown in Fig. 2 was installed at McClure River in January 1988. The spiral circuit efficiency was very high immediately, and, after the normal debugging, plant capacity has been increased to the point at which we are currently processing of the order of 1100 st per hour. Test program The performance of the spiral circuit has been evaluated by two major samplings of the entire new circuit, coupled with routine bi-monthly tests on all other major components of the plant circuitry.

Jan 1, 1992

By C. J. B. Dreyer

In terms of resources of amphibole asbestos only South Africa can be considered. There are only two asbestos producing fields, one in the Northern Cape Province producing only crocidolite and one in the Eastern Transvaal producing only amosite. The banded ironstone sequence in which amphibole asbestos occurs is discussed, and the genesis of the fibre is briefly reviewed. The properties and characteristics of amphibole asbestos are discussed and compared to those of chrysotile. Approximately 300,000 tonnes of amosite and crocidolite are produced annually. Crocidolite has a potential for a fivefold increase of production, which could be sustained beyond the year 2000. An estimate of the resources of the various producing fields in South Africa is made. Mining methods are reviewed and evaluation techniques discussed.

Jan 1, 1978