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By M. R. Yenchek

Faulty insulators on mine trolley/track haulageways may allow the flow of leakage currents into the mine roof and ultimately result in combustion of the local roof material. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL), has devised a passive means to detect overheating insulators on direct current systems. The detector consists of a spring-loaded cartridge that ejects a reflective streamer of white Teflon tape when subjected to elevated temperatures. The cartridge assembly can be easily installed over the outer metallic shell of an existing trolley line insulator. If an insulator overheats due to ground leakage currents, the visible streamer alerts mine personnel traveling on the haulageway.

Jan 1, 1998

By M. T. Errington, P. C. Miller, W. E. Hardwick

Paper discusses in general terms the techno economic merits of various types of aerated biological reaction systems. The current status of the technology leaves many questions unanswered and hence the choice of the best system to employ is open to discussion. Reasons are given for the choice of the reactor system to be built and operated by Davy McKee. The pilot plant has been designed to provide answers to a number of the questions posed by this technology.

Jan 1, 1998

By Denis McDermott

This paper describes the process used at three mines to devel­op safety and training programs. The mines are located in Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. The aims of the programs were to promote and reinforce safe and healthy behaviour, increase productivity and efficiency and to provide a fair and objective basis for the payment of wages. There were common aspects to each of the projects: • mandatory legislation required employers to provide employ­ee training in work performance • employees had little previous involvement in the design and development of the training provided • training had been unstructured with employees relying on the "buddy system" to acquire new skills; the degree of skill acquired by an employee depended on the knowledge and teach­ing capacity of the worker to whom the novice was assigned • appointments and promotions had been based on judgements by supervisors and these were not generally understood by employees • employment conditions for employees were covered by an industrial agreement between management, unions and employ­ees. The degree of sophistication of the industrial agreements varied however none provided a description of work performed in each classification, nor the career or promotional path for an individual • supervisors with the responsibility to train, develop, motivate and reward employees expressed concern that there were no structured processes ( eg work standards or wage progression cri­teria) to support their role.

Jan 1, 1998

By D. L. Slyter

Coeur d'Alene Mines Corporation's Thunder Mountain project in Valley County, Idaho, is one of the most remote active mining operations in the US. High altitude, heavy snows, and proximity to wilderness complicate operations in this environmentally sensitive area. Mining is conducted by conventional open pit techniques while processing utilizes on-off heap leaching and Merrill-Crowe zinc precipitation. The project is one of a few similar operations which detoxify the leached ore prior to its removal from the leach pads. Both leaching and neutralizing ( detoxifying) circuits are closed and independent loops. After leaching, alkaline chlorine solutions destroy residual cyanide in the heaps. Calcium hypochlorite solution for the cyanide destruction is prepared by injecting chlorine gas into milk of lime solution.

Jan 1, 1998

By P. Ollivier

The ore-processing plant of the Soremib mine Pour a (Burkina Faso) has now been in uninterrupted operation for 3 years. Ores from the oxidized and non-oxidized zones of the deposit are processed together in one flotation unit. About 60% of the gold is free and is recovered in a gravity processing unit. The residual gold in the flotation concentrate is processed on the spot by cyanidation and carbon-in-pulp.

Jan 1, 1998

By Bruce E. Holbein, Dennis K. Kidby, Ann L. Huber

World gold production figures and the processes used for gold production indicate a high dependence on both cyanide leaching and carbon adsorption metallurgies. Problems associated with the use of carbon in the treatment of refractory ores as well as economic and environmental considerations associated with the use of cyanide point to the advantages that can be realized through the use of more efficient gold adsorption media and with cyanide recovery. We have developed a process termed AurosaveTM-1 which provides a number of advantages through the use of a new synthetic robust gold adsorption medium, termed Vitrokele TM V-911. This process allows further recovery of gold from a variety of ores and allows for a simplified process for use not involving thermal regeneration or high pressure elution. We have also developed a cyanide recovery process termed Cyanosave ™ which uses Vitrokele TM V-911 and allows efficient recovery of cyanides from decants or tailings and re-use of recovered cyanide. This obviates the high chemical expenses for cyanide destruction where environmental issues require such water and tailings management.

Jan 1, 1998

By Simon Hille, Rein Raudsepp

Since 1991, the Porgera Joint Venture has processed refractory sulphide flotation concentrate by pressure oxidation with subse­quent gold recovery from the washed residue, by a conventional leach/carbon-in-pulp (CIP) circuit. The capacity of the plant has been progressively increased in five stages of development. In December 1995, a third oxygen plant was commissioned, raising the total oxygen production to 750 t/d and thus allowing for an increase in the oxidation capacity of the four autoclaves. The daily sulphur oxidation rate in 1995 was 192 t/d with 99.5% oxidation, as compared to 293 t/d in 1996 with 99.0% oxidation. This paper details the performance of the pressure oxidation circuit through 1995 and 1996, and compares measured plant parameters with the original Sherritt (now Dynatec) process design criteria.

Jan 1, 1998

By Victor C. Storhok, Batric Pesic, Marlyn D. Ballain

No1ihwest Alloys produces magnesium from dolomite by reduction with ferrosilicon and aluminum. This process produces alkaline by-products in quantities that allow their consideration for use as commercial products. Two such products are dicalci­um silicate, termed as Di-Cal, and magnesium oxide, termed simply MgO. The alkaline properties of these materials offer acid neutralizing power, comparable to traditionally used lime. Thus, the materials warrant study for their use in various appli­cations where neutralization of acidic waters or process solutions are required. One such application is the treatment of acid mine waters with the objective of removing heavy metals. The chem­ical stabilities of the produced metal precipitates are critically important, from an environmental point of view, for their safe disposal in tailing ponds. The EPA regulates waste material dis­posal according to the results from TCLP testing. In this ongoing study, three mine waters were selected for treatment with Di-Cal and MgO. Lime was used as the control for these experiments. The waters were collected from the Bunker Hill mine, Berkeley Pit, and the Blackbird Mine. In addi­tion to testing the chemical stability of produced metal precipi­tates by the TCLP procedure, two other parameters were studied as well. They are: 1. the effect of water pH on stability, and 2. the effect of pH on the stability of resulting precipitates. In the first three months of study, it was found that neutral­ization with Di-Cal results in precipitates that range from equiv­alent to superior in performance as compared to those produced using lime for the waters from all three mines. An additional beneficial characteristic of precipitation with Di-Cal is the fast filtering characteristics of produced precipitates, when compared to the precipitates produced by lime. This property may be of significance when considering the improvement in drainage of tailing ponds and the volume of solids produced. This paper will discuss in detail the stability of metal precipitates with respect to various pe1iinent metals found in mine waters of Berkeley Pit (Cu, Zn, Mn, etc.), Bunker Hill (Zn, Mn, Ni and Co), and Blackbird Mine (Cu, Co).

Jan 1, 1998

By R. W. Lawrence, P. B. Marchant

Biohydrometallurgy is now forty years old. Since the discovery of the role of microorganisms in the oxidation of sulphide minerals that gives rise to acid mine drainage, many workers in industry, research organizations and academia in many countries have been active in attempts to develop practical commercial processes which exploit microbiological reactions in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy. Reactions which have potential and are being actively researched include:

Jan 1, 1998

By A. Goulsbra, S. McAllister, R. Dunne

Since 1992, a tailings gravity re-treatment plant has been in operation at the New Celebration Gold Mine to recover aurifer­ous pyrite (Martins, Dunne and Gelfi 1991; Martins, Dunne and Delahey 1993). The gravity pyrite concentrate is ground in a Tower mill to liberate gold (average particle size around 25µm) prior to cyanide leaching. Although the re-treatment plant has met the predicted gold recovery, based on original laborat01y testwork, there is still room for improved gold recovery. This requires enhanced pyrite recovery, especially in the finer size ranges. The application of centrifugal gravity separators would seem to be an ideal means to achieve this criterion. In particular, the Falcon continuous centrifugal separator (Series C machines) would appear to be ideal for this particular duty. A testwork program to evaluate the application of the contin­uous Falcon to recover pyrite from New Celebration ores was unde1iaken over a six month period during the later part of 1997. The work involved laboratory batch testwork, followed by con­tinuous testing of the Falcon Cl0 (2tph to 3tph) and Falcon C40 (l00tph) units. A summary of the results from this evaluation program are provided in this paper.

Jan 1, 1998

By Gregory Owen Lewis

The use of gravity concentration as a means of recovering the 'free' gold component from alluvial and milled ore products is widely used and is receiving increasing attention, particularly with the introduction of the centrifugal-type concentrating units. Because of ever-increasing mining and processing costs and a decline in the gold price, it has become important that the recov­ery efficiency from concentrates is improved so as to increase the yield of bankable gold from this primary recovery step. This paper outlines an alternative hydrometallurgical approach aimed at achieving overall gold recoveries in excess of 98%, together with the elimination of any secondary residue streams which, in the case of conventional treatment methods, require re-processing. An adaptation to the Minataur™ Process technology is being applied with the proposed method, incorpo­rating the pre-treatment of the concentrate, oxidative leaching of the pre-treatment residue, followed by precipitation of a high­purity gold. This route is seen to have application in all scales of operation. Selected results from laboratory-scale testwork are presented to highlight the discussion.

Jan 1, 1998

By William M. Clark

In 1988, the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) launched Responsible Care®, a program of guiding principles created to address the publics' concern about the manufacture and use of chemicals. The Product Stewardship Management Practice code is a key component of the program. Along with the other five comple­mentary codes - Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER), Pollution Prevention, Employee Health and Safety, Process Safety, and Distribution - it has been initiated to protect the health and safety of member companies employees, neighbors, customers, the public and the environment. Possibly no other Management Code requires greater collec­tive effort or comprehensive commitment to implement than Product Stewardship. With its mandated cradle-to-grave control, every employee is required to consider all of the potential cir­cumstances involving product and processes, from raw material supply to customers final use or consumption of product. Degussa Corporation, a long time CMA member, fully endors­es the Responsible Care initiative and is most active in imple­menting the various codes. In fact, the guiding principles of the program are an integral part of the company's business strategy. Degussa recognizes that its long-term success and the health of each of its products, the company and the chemical industry itself, is contingent on the successful implementation of the program. Furthermore, the company believes its role in society and the economy can only be justified and sustained if it improves the overall quality of peoples' lives. Consequently, it is a dictum that Degussa products must provide a net benefit over their entire life cycle - from inception to final disposal - both in terms of their utility and their impact on health, safety and the environment.

Jan 1, 1998

By John C. Schneider

During the past decade, operators and researchers have worked toward a better understanding of the mechanisms operating in flotation. As reported by W. J. Trahar in 1981, this work commenced with the operators determining a relationship between recovery and particle size. They defined three particle size ranges, that being fine, intermediate and coarse. It was noted that the fine and the coarse ranges had slower flotation rates than the intermediate range as demonstrated by their lower recoveries.

Jan 1, 1998

By Paul Chamberlin

Although performing a heap leach test is inherently simple, a lot of information beyond extraction, leach time, and reagent consumption can be obtained from a well designed test program. The following is a list of information to look for and acquire when performing column tests and field heap leach tests.

Jan 1, 1998

By M. S. Hunter, Al Bishop

In 1994, Lone Tree Mine invited Hunter Hawk to participate in a problem-solving arena at their mine located in Valmy, Nevada. Lone Tree was experiencing consistency problems with autoclave valve component quality and delivery. Based upon a prior working relationship at Homestake Mining Company's McLauglin Mine, located in Lake County, California, both customer and vendor enjoyed a measure of rap­po1i and trust - the keys to problem solving communication. This paper is an overview of the problem solving process that has contributed to Lone Tree's excellent record of 95 per cent autoclave availability since 1995.

Jan 1, 1998

By J. M. Girard

Ground control problems at surface mining operations can occur for a variety of reasons. Stress, gravity loading, rock strength, geology, pore pressure, weather effects, underground workings, and many other factors contribute to slope instabilities that range from small rock falls to massive slides of material. While some of these failures can he predicted or controlled by preventive measures, each year many completely unexpected failures occur. Current methods for monitoring generally involve measuring displacements at a few, selected points in and around the suspected area of instability. While most of the displacements along these points will be in a downslope direction, freeze-thaw cycles of water-filled joints, horizontal stresses or pressure, buoyancy in saturated soils, human measurement errors, or other situations can produce deformation in almost any direction, even without any instability in the slope. Determination of which, if any of the observed movements represents a potential hazard is essential.

Jan 1, 1998

By J. H. Tu

The technical paper correctly points out that the kriging variance is not a good measure of the uncertainty of the estimated (i.e., kriged) value of individual blocks. The au thors claim that their proposed jackknife method, which is a rekriging of each block by eliminating, in turn, one sample from the original sample set and then taking the average of the rekriged estimates, not only gives good block estimates, but the resulting jackknife kriging standard deviation is a useful indicator of the "true uncertainty associated with block estimates." However, they immediately abandon the idea of using the block-by-block standard deviations, reasoning that these standard deviations are not independent and that there is no easy way to utilize them. There may be another reason for not using them. The jackknife standard deviations for individual blocks given in their example are mostly in the range of 0.004 to 0.005 oz/st (0.14 to 0.17 g/t) with only one block having a high value of 0.012 oz/st (0.41 g/ t). These individual block standard deviations are as low as the jackknife standard deviation for the mean grade of the entire shape, i.e., 0.0041 oz/st (0.14 g/t). Do they represent the "true uncertainty" of the individual block estimates? Could the authors explain this? In a global shape consisting of a large number of blocks, any given sample will affect the kriged estimate of only those few blocks within its vicinity. This is the rationale for the authors' selective rekriging, making the jackknife algorithm more efficient. On second thought, why not do away with jackknifing altogether? Just cumulate and normalize, if necessary, the kriging weights of each sample used during the ordinary block kriging process, and then compute the global variance from these kriging weights and their respective sample grades? After all, isn't the global mean grade nothing but the weighted average of the samples used in the estimation? Reply by G.S. Adisoma and M.G. Hester The jackknife is one of the many tools in a practitioner's toolbox to solve estimation problems. The strengths of the technique lies in its simplicity, i.e., it uses the concept of mean and standard deviation and the fact that it can be easily combined with other tools, in this case kriging. Because the jackknife kriging (JK) estimate is also the mean of the pseudovalues, the JK standard deviation is attractive just as the standard deviation of the mean explains the variability of the data. The difference is that the pseudovalue calculation in jackknife kriging uses the ordinary kriging (OK) weighting scheme instead of simple arithmetic averaging. The data used to illustrate the jackknife technique in the paper consist of high values that are roughly three times the low values. The resulting JK estimate of the block grades show that the highest estimate is roughly twice the grade of the lowest estimate. The contrast between the low and the high estimate is more evident in the JK estimate than in the OK estimate, even though the mean grades of the blocks for the two estimates are very similar. Nonetheless, in this paper, we are concentrating more on the need for a more realistic measure of uncertainty, or precision, for the estimate. Unlike its OK counterpart, the JK standard deviation of the blocks clearly reflects the original data variation. The highest JK standard deviation of the blocks is three times its lowest value. This follows our intuition that, when the samples used to estimate a block is more variable, the resulting estimation variance (or standard deviation) should be higher than the case where the samples are more uniformly valued. However, block-by-block standard deviation or variance is of little practical value in reserve estimation and classification, as well as in mine planning. One is usually more interested in quantifying not the variance of the individual block estimate, but the uncertainties associated with a much larger dimension, such as the minable reserve. Thus, the thrust of the paper is to find a simple way to obtain a single estimation variance or standard deviation associated with the reserve grade estimate. The discussion by J.H. Tu did not mention how one would obtain the global variance from the OK weights and the sample grades. As a technique that offers a data valuebased measure of uncertainty for its estimate, the "leave-one-out" jackknife fills this need nicely through the block kriging shortcut approach described in the paper. Note: The first column and the last two columns of Table 3 in the paper should have contained a single number each, namely, an OK estimate of 0.0317, a JK estimate of 0.0333 and a JK standard deviation of 0.0041 oz/st, respectively, for the shape, as are obvious from the text. ?

Jan 1, 1998

By Harrison AT, Smart RM

Backfill systems using unconventional cementitious hinders have been successfully used in relatively deep and hard rock tabular mines for longwall, scattered stoping and shaft pillar removals. Two unconventional cementitious systems are discussed: 1. A ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) with an activator containing lime. This has been used with a total tailings 'stable' slurry at a relatively low dosage of less than seven per cent, by mass, based on dry solids. The room and pillar stopes supported with this fill were up to 20 in high and the tailings were relatively high in pyrite. .\ GGBS binder plus a silicate based activator and gelling agent that virtually eliminated all water drainage (and hence post filling shnnkage). The system used a slurry, but the addition of the ;iutivator created a final placed product that had the behaviour of a paste. The system has been successfully used for almost ten years in the following applications: ò sloping widths (mining heights) above 1.6 in; and ò shaft pillar removals in seismically active areas at the end of the life of the shafts. \This paper discusses the technical merits and costs of the systems and compares them to other fill systems (including true paste systems).

Jan 1, 1998

By J Palarski

Over the last 100 years in the Polish mining industry considerable work has been done to assess optimum slurry, develop flexible delivery systems and adjust the fill technology to a wide variety of mining and geological conditions. Sand or industrial mineral waste materials for the backfilling of underground voids are used to control ground movement and surface deformation. This paper discusses various criteria to he considered in the preparation of a fill, including slurry properties, mine infrastructure, mining geometry, placement methods and the purpose of the backfill. This paper presents laboratory and in situ test data on the influence of materials parameters on the slurry flow in a pipeline system, stiffness, permeability, binding time and strength of a backfill, on the distribution of mixture in underground voids or the penetration between roof fall Materials.

Jan 1, 1998

By V. B. Achanti

This paper deals with the effect of various bit geometric parameters on failure characteristics of rock material. Improvement of rock cutting efficiency of continuous mining machines has been an interesting research topic for the last few decades. In the current study, an automated rotary rock cutting simulator, duplicating a continuous miner, was utilized to study these parameters in the laboratory. Improvement of bit performance in terms of its life, cutting efficiency, dust production and energy consumption has drawn wide spread attention over the years. Research shows that optimizing bit parameters can result in efficient fragmentation of rock. Indiana limestone rock material was utilized in this study while bit tip angle, bit tip size, bit spacing, depth of cut and cutting velocity of rotary drum were varied to investigate the failure characteristics. The cutting pressure, penetrating pressure and the depth of cut were monitored on the simulator during the cutting process. Air borne dust and settled dust were measured for each experiment. Then, the specific airborne dust and specific energy were determined for the each type of bit. Triaxial tests were carried out to correlate the failure angle of the rock in static case to dynamic cutting process failure. The physical and mechanical properties of the rock were also determined in order to assess their influence on the wear characteristics of each bit.

Jan 1, 1998