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By H. R. Taylor

The history and development of this property is more or less familiar to nearly everyone connected with the mining industry, so that only a brief outline of the more important facts will be given in this article. In 1916, a small pilot mill was constructed by the British Columbia Copper Company at Copper Mountain, and during 1916 and 1917 test work was conducted to determine the possibility of concentrating the ore and also to work out a suitable flow-sheet. In the spring of 1917, the location of a mill site at Allen by, which is about 8,% miles from Copper Mountain, and near the Similkameen river, was decided on, and the designing of a 2,000-ton plant was then worked out by Bradley, Bruff and Labarthe. Early in 1918, the actual construction of the concentrator began, and, after considerable labour difficulties, it was completed in 1920. During this period of construction, the West Kootenay Power Company ran a 60,000-volt power line over from Greenwood, a distance of 102 miles, and also built a sub-station at Allenby to take care of the mine and mill. The concentrator was started up on October 20th, 1920, and ran until December 11th, 1920, a total of 18,354 tons of ore being milled. The results of this short period of operation were encouraging, but, due to tlie prevailing low price of copper and high wages, it was necessary to shut down until a more favourable time. During the latter half of 1923, some work was done on remodelling the mill. This work continued until January 8th, 1924, when it was suspended.

Jan 1, 1929

By Erik Q. Dahl

The strength of green and sintered pellets during reduction under various conditions in a laboratory kiln has been investigated. Equipment and test methods are described, together with the results obtained. The strength of sintered pellets drops sharply when the reduction starts, and goes through a minimum at the 70 per cent oxidation level. At more advanced reduction, the strength increases with increasing metallization. Successful use of green pellets as kiln feed requires that more attention be paid to the pellet preparation than is necessary when producing pellets for separate sintering. In particular, the ores have to be ground to a greater fineness. The initial strength of green pellets is low. Below the 70 per cent oxidation level, however, the strength of these pellets is about the same as the strength of sintered ones. Additions of such materials as silica, limestone and anthracite coal; within reasonable limits, affect the strength only slightly.

Jan 1, 1966

By N. Manopulo, J. Maier, L. Tong, C. Becker, P. Hora

The contribution presents a new finite element approach in which the common updated Lagrangian formulation is replaced by a spatial flow formulation applying a special arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian for-mulation (ALE). The description separates spatially the process in a die inside zone and in a profile zone. For the description of the inside zone, where the filling process occurs, a special Euler time independent mesh is applied. By this formulation the mesh has to be generated only once, which simplifies the generation of spatially optimized meshes. For mapping of the material flow during the filling process the method uses a flow surface traction method as applied in casting simulations. A further strength of the new method is the computational efficiency which allows the modelling of extrusion process with the highest complexity with a response time of 12 hours, which is important for the industrial optimization process.

Jan 1, 2015

By P. C. Benedict, J. A. Titcomb

"The following description of the geology of the Northern Empire mine is recorded by the senior author, but is based on the observations and complementary mapping of both authors.The Northern Empire mine is a mile east of Beardmore, and 100 miles northeast of Port Arthur, Thunder Bay district, Ontario.Production started in March, 1934, and terminated in September, 1941. The total number of tons milled was 425,866, from which 153,103 oz. gold was recovered. The lowest level from which ore was mined was the 1,900- foot, but considerable drifting was performed on the 2,075-foot and 800 feet on the 2,415-foot, the deepest level,The vein strikes about N.72°E. and has an average dip of80°S. In stoped sections the quartz averaged about 2 feet wide. On the 1,725-foot level it was drifted on continuously for more than 7,000 feet. In the mine as a whole, practically no commercial ore was found beyond points 1,400 feet west and 1,800 feet east of the shaft. Conspicuous wall-rock alteration extended throughout this section, but not much beyond these limits. There was some splitting of the vein and widening of the alteration halo on the lower levels. The average general colour of the quartz changes with depth .The vein is in 'Keewatin' lava flows, to which it is almost conformable. It lies only a short distance south from the 'Timiskaming-Keewatin' contact ( Fig. 2). This contact is marked by a black graphitic fault. So far as is known the fault is parallel, or nearly parallel, with the flows in strike, but dips at 72°S., which is 5° flatter than the average dip of the overturned flows. A post-vein, almost flat sheet of diabase about 550 feet thick cuts outthe vein from about the 650- to the 1,200-foot level ( Figs . 1 and 3). If it was intruded along a fault, the fault had only minor displacement. A strong alteration halo extends to 200 feet above and below the diabase. The vein was conspicuous but in large part it was below ore grade for 100 feet or more above and below the diabase.-"

Jan 1, 1954

By Joseph J. Larry

In hard siliceous sandstone strata overlying coal seams, roof bolting is often the bottleneck in the coal production cycle. In the past, these strata have been drilled by pneumatically operated stopers. Although slow drilling is cumbersome and uncomfortably noisy, the stoper was the most effective drill in these harder strata. However, because of the (U.S.) Coal Mining Safety Act, which limits noise levels for operating drills, FMC Mining Equipment developed the water-through-the-drill-steel method of drilling high-compressive-strength strata. Although water-through-the-drill steel had been developed earlier, the real impact of wet drilling techniques surfaced when the dual-boom roof drilling machines were installed at the Virginia-Pocahontas Division, Keen Mountain, Virginia, in 1974. This paper covers some of the technical details of the water-through- the-drill-steel design and its application.

Jan 1, 1979

By M. Moats, J. A. Gonzalez

A review of operating practices in zinc electrowinning plants is presented in this paper. Surveys were sent to several zinc electrowinning plants and data provided by some of these plants was compiled in a database. Information about anodes and cathodes, electrolyte composition, stripping methods, cells, electrical systems, and additives was compiled and analyzed. From the data analysis, correlations between operating variables are presented. Recent trends in operational practices are also highlighted.

Jan 1, 2008

By George H. Bodfish

This paper begins with a short history of air compressors, emphasizing their "roots" in the mining industry. It then describes the types of compressors available, including reciprocal, the various rotary positive-displacement compressors, and the centrifugal. The advantages and disadvantages of selecting a certain type of compressor over another are enumerated, considering customer requirements and operating costs, among other factors. Guidelines to operation and maintenance are discussed, including installation, monitoring and maintenance procedures. Finally, the paper addresses itself to future trends, with special attention being given to the system concept, the increasing use of rotary compressors, power consumption, reliability, packaging and noise attenuation.

Jan 1, 1978

By G. R. Cope, J. S. Getsinger, K. D. Lund, T. Neale

"Mineral exploration in the Sicker Group, a belt of Paleozoic volcano-sedimentary rocks on Vancouver Island, has traditionally centred on auriferous polymetallic volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits such as those currently mined by Westmin Resources Ltd. near Buttle Lake. Recently, however, the focus of exploration in the Sicker Group has shifted toward targets of structurally controlled gold concentrations, with notable success. Major north and northwesterly-trending structural features such as the Cowichan-Horne Lake break (one of several regional high-angle thrust fault s active throughout a long period of geological time) and related fault systems have contributed to localization of gold mineralization.Using the extensive information database compiled by MPH Consulting Limited during numerous exploration projects in the Sicker Group, two cross sections through areas with significant gold occurrences southeast of Port Alberni are presented. The cross sections combine geological, geochemical and geophysical data in an attempt to emphasize the relationship between structural trends and gold mineralization. Examples from specific properties, including gold discoveries along the Mineral Creek fault zone, are used to illustrate this relationship."

Jan 1, 1990

By D. Mraz

"In certain instances, rocks around underground excavations behave as a plastic mass. This paper offers several solutions to predicting the mode of plastic flow around cavities and designing mining pillars where plastic conditions exist.IntroductionWhen stresses around underground cavities exceed yield limits of the host rock, the material often behaves as a plastic mass. The best example of this phenomenon is the behaviour of salt rocks in deep salt and potash deposits (more than 500 m deep).However, many other soft rocks exhibit similar properties. For example, Jeremic(1) described certain types of coal yielding plastically under high pressure. Alder suggested that granulated rock behaves plastically.The object of this paper is to propose a de sign procedure for mining pillars exhibiting plastic flow due to the combination of rock properties and in-situ stresses.Prandtl(3) mathematically defined a concept of a generalized, perfectly plastic substance, not possessing the property of strain hardening (Fig. I). He had in mind, a solid with a quasi quasi-isotropic , polycrystalline structure having a well defined yield point, and he postulated that its material elements start and continue to deform plastically when the maximum shearing stress ""'MAX"" reaches a sharp limit, dependent on the mean value of the sum of the major and minor principal stresses:"

Jan 1, 1984

By L. St-Georges

In aerospace and transportation industries, severe problems are related to fatigue failure. Aluminium is frequently used in these industries to optimize the solidity and minimise the weight of the structures. Nevertheless, the fatigue life of aluminium alloys is limited and specific efforts have to be made to reduce the vibratory stresses in the mechanical parts. When riveted, the life of the sheet metal structures can be increased compared to welded structures, due to the energy dissipated by the friction between the rivets and the sheet metal and the sheets themselves. In the past decade, a new tool was developed to assemble aluminium structures; the friction stir welding. With this new technique, fatigue life of the aluminium welded joints can be increased by a factor from two to ten. However, less energy can be damped by the friction between the components and increased vibratory stresses may occur. In this investigation, the potential of the friction stir welding to create damped aluminium sheet metal structures is evaluated.

Jan 1, 2006

By L. Magne, A. Pinto, M. Maldonado, J. A. Finch

Estimation of gas holdup from electrical conductivity measurements has been used in lab and industrial installations. The approach is based on the application of Maxwell's model, which relates the concentration of a dispersed phase in a continuous medium to measurements of the electrical conductivity of the dispersed phase, continuous medium and the resulting mixture (dispersion). When applied to inferring the collection zone gas holdup in a three phase system and to facilitate real-time on-line measurement, the slurry is assumed to behave as the continuous medium and gas bubbles as a nonconducting dispersed phase. This article derives an equation for estimating gas holdup in a three phase system, eliminating the assumption that the slurry behaves as a continuous medium but rather as a dispersion of non-conducting solid particles in water. In this formulation only water behaves as the continuous medium in the sense of Maxwell, and gas holdup in a three phase system is then calculated from the application of the Maxwell model twice: (1) to determine solid content in a two-phase system, and (2) to determine solid plus gas holdup in a three phase system. To validate the new equation and quantify the errors incurred by assuming slurry is the continuous phase a laboratory flotation cell was instrumented to continuously measure the conductivity of two and three phase dispersions with known solids contents. As the amount of gas in a lab flotation machine is difficult to measure directly or by another indirect technique such as using pressure signals, 2.5 mm dielectric plastic spheres having a density of ca. 1.3 g/cm3 were used instead of air bubbles for validation. Experimental results demonstrated that the continuous medium assumption underestimates gas holdup and that the resulting bias error increases linearly with the solid content and decreases with the magnitude of gas holdup.

Jan 1, 2016

By C. T. Morley

The steadily increasing interest in high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) as a legitimate alternative comminution technology for hard rock applications has led to a proportional increase in the demand for trade-off studies comparing HPGR with more established approaches, typically SAG-based but including AG and stage-crushing designs. The primary trade-off is between a) the higher capital cost typically incurred with HPGR-based designs and b) the higher operating costs of the more traditional technologies. However, if, through circuit design innovation, the capital cost penalty of HPGR circuits could be eliminated or reversed, then the need for trade-off studies would diminish.

Jan 1, 2012

By H. Blaha, H. Wagner

"Room and pillar workings in salt mines are preferred sites for underground waste disposal. A critical issue in selecting waste disposal sites is long-term behaviour of such workings. The long-term behaviour of salt pillars is controlled by the pillar geometry, i.e. the height, width and length of pillars and the level of pillar stress. The latter has a strong influence on creep characteristics of salt pillars whereas the width to height ratio of salt pillars determines the strength of pillars and the deformation characteristics of salt pillars.Three different regimes of pillar creep behaviour of salt pillars can be distinguished, namely a stress level below which the rate of creep approaches a value of zero, a stress range where the rate of creep is constant and finally a stress level above which the rate of creep accelerates. Long-term stability of room and pillar workings can be assured only when the pillar stress level falls within the first stress regime. Strength and creep tests on model salt pillars have shown that at stress levels below 40% of pillar strength the rate of creep approaches a value of zero, between stress levels of 40% and 65% the rate of creep is constant but increases with stress level. Above pillar stress levels of 65% the rate of creep accelerates.Long-term measurements of pillar deformation and surface subsidence above relatively shallow room and pillar workings in salt mines have confirmed these observations. Long-term strength of salt was found that be between 60% and 65% of short term strength. The evaluation of salt pillar behaviour on the basis of critical pillar stress levels was found to be superior to the traditional factor of safety concept because it allows relating pillar deformation measurements to actual pillar conditions. The approach described in the paper was used successfully to evaluate the stability of room and pillar workings in a salt mine and to design strategies to stabilise critical pillar workings."

Jan 1, 2015

By Peter McGoldrick

This Talk ?Australian deposits in world context ?Geological setting: the importance of the basin fill ?Key deposit features using HYC (McArthur River) and Century as examples ?The difference between Aussies & Canuuks(that is between Australian & Canadian sedexdeposits!) ?Timing of mineralization ?Sources for metals and ore fluids ?What makes a super giant sedexdeposit?

May 1, 2006

By Ken Steele, Pam Sangster, Myra Gerow

Ontario leads Canada in production of structural materials and ranks third in production of non-metallic minerals. The total value of industrial mineral production in 1997 was $1.6 billion. The province is the leading producer of nepheline syenite, salt, talc, clay products, cement, lime, sand and gravel, stone and a major producer of gypsum and silica. Barite, sulphur in smelter gas, elemental sulphur, tremolite, serpentine, gemstones and peat are also produced. Table 1 shows recent actual industrial mineral production levels in Ontario. Other industrial minerals, including phosphate, petalite, diamonds, wollastonite, vermiculite, kyanite, garnet, graphite, silica, kaolin, dimension stone and anorthosite, have been the target of exploration and development projects. Investment opportunities exist at all levels from grass-root prospect through to production level.

Jan 1, 2001

By R. Holmestad, M. Gazizov, S. Wenner, R. Kaibyshev, J. K. Sunde

"Mechanical properties and microstructure of an Al-4.7Cu-0.74Mg-0.51Si-0.48Mn-0.10Cr-0.09Ti-0.02Fe (wt. %) alloy subjected to various thermomechanical processing (TMP) have been investigated and compared to conventional ageing at 170°C (designated T6). Three TMP routes involving cold deformation of solution treated samples were tested. These were (i) 3%-stretching (T8-3%), (ii) equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) to true strain (e) of ~1 (T8-1) and (iii) ECAP to e~2 (T8-2), all with subsequent ageing at 170°C for 0-96 h. At peak age conditions, both yield stress, ultimate tensile strength and elongation-to-fracture decreased for the T8-3% state as compared to the T6 condition. Intermediate ECAP (T8-1 and T8-2) lead to significant increase in maximum yield stress, ultimate tensile strength and elongation-to-fracture. The changes in mechanical properties were related to microstructure evolution, encompassing changes in grain sizes, dislocation densities, precipitate morphology and phase fractions, which were characterised using transmission electron microscopy. Relations between TMP, precipitation behavior and contributions to different strengthening mechanisms are evaluated.INTRODUCTION Al-Cu-Mg-Si alloys are widely used as structural materials in aerospace industry due to their attractive combination of high specific strength, good fracture toughness and enhanced creep resistance. These properties are largely due to the formation of a large number of nano-sized metastable precipitates during artificial ageing (Polmear, 2006; Eskin, 2003; Gazizov, Dubina, Zhemchuzhnikova, & Kaibyshev, 2015). The precipitation behaviour in these alloys is complicated and depends among other things on Cu concentration and the Mg:Si ratio (Wolverton, 2001; Chakrabarti, & Laughlin, 2004). In general, the precipitation sequence has been presented in a prior study (Eskin, 2003) as follows:"

Jan 1, 2018

By W. S. Dyer

Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to the fire-clay and silica-sand deposits of the Mattagami and Missinaibi rivers and ? to the lignite occurring in them. The fireclay especially deserves this attention; it is of first-class quality; it appears to be widespread; it is the only fire-clay in central Canada, and part of it lies not more than 20 miles west of Coral rapids, to which point steel will be laid this coming spring by the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario railway. Undoubtedly, these clays will rapidly find a place in industry. The fire-clays and the better grades of silica-sand are Mesozoic in age and have been referred to the Lower Cretaceous or Upper Jurassic. Glacial clays and sands and Palaeozoic shales also occur in the same region, but are of little economic value, and will not be dealt with in this paper. Dr. Robert Bell was perhaps the first to discover the clays, since in the Report of Progress of the Geological Survey of Canada for 1877 and 1878 he reported beds of lignite on Coal brook, a tributary of the Missinaibi river, underlain by sticky clay and overlain by glacial drift. In 1880 E. B. Borron (1) discovered an extensive deposit of white sand and clay on the east bank of the Missinaibi river, five miles below Coal brook, and in 1890 (2) he examined the deposit found by Dr. Bell on Coal brook. He recognized that the underlying clays were quite distinct from the glacial clays of the region, and suggested that they might be used for fire-brick if metallurgical operations were undertaken in the region. Somewhat later, J. M: Bell described a deposit of fire-clay and silica-sand on the Wabiskagami river, another tributary of the Missinaibi.

Jan 1, 1928

By Desmond Y. M. Lee

This paper presents a procedure to prepare input for the computerized pit design system at Iron Ore Company of Canada. The procedure is simple and requires very little training. Also, it is general enough to accept both bench (horizontal cross section) maps and section (vertical cross section) maps. The output of this procedure is data which represent blocks of ore and waste with dollar values based on mineral content. The ultimate pit design is presented in printer-generated graphs, with numbers indicating the depths of pit bottom walls. Roads are added manually by the engineer with the aid of other computer programs. Section maps and bench maps are also printed as part of the output of the ultimate pit design.

Jan 1, 1978

By B. Chareyre, H. Pourpak, L. Scholtès, E. Papachristos

"Numerical methods used to study hydraulic fracturing in low permeability rock masses need to take into account the interaction between the progressive failure mechanism of the intact rock matrix and the pre-existing natural fractures. A fully coupled hydro-mechanical 3D discrete elements model dealing with such interaction is presented here. The ultimate objective is to grasp the role of the rock-matrix failure on the propagation of the main fluid driven fracture under different stress fields and pre-existing fracture orientations. The proposed method provides the spatiotemporal distribution of the induced crack events which can be tracked during the simulations, making possible the identification of the local mechanisms leading to macro-failure in the rock matrix or reactivation of the discontinuity planes. Fluid flow inside a fracture, pressurized crack and hydro-fracking experimental tests were simulated as part of the validation process of the model and, are presented in this paper.INTRODUCTIONWith the expansion of shale gas and geothermal reservoirs exploitation, the technique of Hydraulic Fracturing (HF) has been widely used over the past years (McClure, 2012; Britt, 2012). Despite recent advances in micro-seismicity analysis or numerical modeling (Nagel et al., 2013), the way progressive failure of rocks affects the fluid flow depending on the in situ stress conditions or the rock heterogeneities is not fully controlled yet (Zoback, 2010).In this work we focused on setting up a three-dimensional discrete elements model to study fluid driven fractures propagation. The intact rock is modeled by a discrete element method (DEM) able to reproduce fracture initiation and propagation (Scholtès and Donzé, 2013, Garcia et al., 2013). The pre-existing fractures are explicitly modeled and can be individually defined or be part of a discrete fracture network (DFN) (Harthong et al., 2012). Their mechanical response is fully coupled with the fluid within a HM-DEM framework. The fluid flow and it’s interaction with the intact matrix and the pre-existing discontinuities is modeled through a Pore-scale Finite Volume (PFV) scheme specially enhanced for fractured rock modeling (Chareyre et al., 2012, Catalano et al., 2014) ."

Jan 1, 2015

By E. Mohammadi Zahrani

In this study, Mg-doped fluorapatite (Mg-FA) nanopowders were prepared through a sol-gel, technique and characterized. Designated degree of Mg2+ ions incorporation into the apatite structure was indicated by the x value in the general formula of (Ca10-xMgx (PO4)6F2), where x=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1. XRD, AAS, FTIR and TEM techniques were utilized to characterize the synthesized nanopowders. In vitro bioactivity of the powders was evaluated in simulated body fluid. Powders had a crystallite size less than 100 nm. It was concluded that Mg-substitution could alter bioactivity and dissolution behaviour of Mg-FA. These two parameters were proportional to magnesium content of the powders.

Jan 1, 2010