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This paper discusses how the i-kon TM Digital Energy Control System may be deployed by miners of massive underground orebodies to deliver significant advantage in terms of safety, cost and environmental compliance. Digital Energy Control offers an exciting opportunity for mine operators to review their blasting and mining practice to gain the most advantage from this new technology.

Jan 1, 2000

Some important mineral fields are referred to in discussing the formation of placer deposits in Australia. Testing methods include boring hand, with percussion rigs; with auger and pit digging drills; and l by vibro drilling. Sampling errors are minimized by the use of correct techniques and equipment for boring, sampling, and sample dressing, A hypothetical set of data is used to demonstrate the final process of evaluation, and some relevant taxation provisions are discussed.

Jan 1, 1964

By P J. Sack, L V Danyushevsky

"An EXTENDED ABSTRACT is available for download. A full-length paper was not prepared for this presentation. Regional-scale exploration for sediment-hosted gold deposits is hampered by the challenge of evaluating the fertility of ancient sedimentary sequences that host these deposits. Recent developments in laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry allow for the evaluation of the gold fertility of sedimentary sequences using chemistry of early-formed sedimentary pyrite. We present a case study from the Selwyn basin area of Yukon, Canada, where significant sediment-hosted gold exploration has been ongoing for the last five years. Data from sedimentary pyrite in some Neoproterozoic shales are anomalous in Au and As compared to a global data set of unmineralised sedimentary pyrite. If at least some of the gold and associated trace elements in sediment-hosted gold deposits are derived from recrystallisation of early sedimentary pyrite, it follows that strata containing anomalous sedimentary pyrite should be more prospective. Based on this premise, our data clearly show that Yusezyu Formation Neoproterozoic shales in the Selwyn basin area of Yukon are a fertile source rock for sediment-hosted gold deposits, while pyrite from Nadaleen formation shales are strongly anomalous in Hg and Tl, but not Au. We suggest that the area warrants continued exploration for sediment-hosted gold.CITATION:Sack, P J, Gregory, D D, Large, R R and Danyushevsky, L V, 2015. Using sedimentary pyrite chemistry to inform regional exploration for sediment-hosted gold deposits – a gold fertility case study from the Selwyn basin area, Yukon , in Proceedings PACRIM 2015 Congress, pp 69–76 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Mar 18, 2015

By Dunlop JSF

A description of general mining proced- ures and tyre maintenance practice is given with particular reference to tyre mainten- ance facilities and record keeping at Groote Eylandt. Experience with tyre wear on Wabco 85C rear dump trucks is then outlined, concen- trating on wheel camber, wheel alignment, truck speed, tyre pressure, loading and haul road design. T T.1TUnilhTPTTnAT The Groote Eylandt Mining Company Pty. Limited mines and beneficiates sedimentary manganese ores from a series of orebodies occurring in the western part of the island. The island is one of a group on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, about 50 kilometres from the Arnhem Land coast and about 650 kilometres from Darwin. Whilst capacity of the mine is presently 2.3 mil- lion tonnes of product per annum, current production has been reduced to just more than half this figure, due to a general mar- ket recession.

Jan 1, 1982

By M E. Pierce

Recent advances in comminution and heap leach technology have resulted in the development of many large-scale, low-grade open pit mines that coincide with areas of historical underground workings. Twoand three-dimensional numerical modelling has been conducted to assess the interaction between open pit slope stability and remnant underground voids. Most design analyses for open pit slopes assume a two-dimensional problem geometry. This is not the condition encountered in practice ù particularly when remnant underground voids interact with a large-scale open pit slope. Three-dimensional numerical models have been shown to provide a more realistic representation of the interaction between overall open pit slope stability and remnant underground voids.

Jan 1, 2003

By Dudgeon RN, Houston ML

When the original Mount Gunson joint venture,between CSR Limited and United Uranium N.L. ceased operations in December 1971, an intensive exploration campaign was launched to prospect for more ore in the Mount Gunson region. This campaign resulted in the dis- covery'of the Cattle Grid copper deposit. A comprehensive sampling pro- gramme including the sinking of over 200 diamond drill holes and two vertical shafts,proved the existence of 4.6 million tonnes of ore, at a mean grade of 2.4% Cu,calculated at 1.00% Cu cutoff.

Jan 1, 1975

By Kallioinen J

This paper discusses different possibilities to enhance coarse particle flotation using forth manipulation and improved flotation cell design. Experiments were carried out in laboratory, pilot and industrial scale ranging from 0.0015 to 100 m3/axle. During the work it could be shown that the conventional idea of one single flotation cell type for both fine, immediate and coarse flotation of coarse and fine particles need different impeller tip speeds and a different froth control objective for effective operation. For optimal operation for coarse feeds the tip speed must be reduced and the froth vertical velocity must be increased to compensate the respective drainage velocity and also the water film thickness must be taken care of. Turbulent eddies below the froth interface should be suppressed. The paper discusses the effects of different froth manipulation variables like froth vertical velocity and froth residence time to the recovery and selectivity. A function has been developed, between the residence time of the froth and the flotation cell's ability to produce an improved concentrate grade as a function of different operating and froth manipulation variables.

Jan 1, 1993

The treatment of steels with acid solutions for the removal of oxide products represents possibly the largest outlet for chemicals in steel processing. Organic pickling inhibitors are required to prevent base metal attack by these acids otherwis

Jan 1, 1980

Western Mining Corporation (WMC), managers of the Windarra Nickel Project, installed a raise-bored haulage shaft and underground crushing system at the Mt Windarra Nickel Mine in 1982. The system is the second of its type installed by WMC, the first being at the Otter Juan Mine in Kambalda in 1976/77. Both haulage systems became necessary as a result of the increasing production limitations, and escalating costs of a deep decline mine.The Windarra haulage system required a single 3 m diameter vertical raise drill hole, 470 m deep and equipped for skip haulage. Two five tonne skips, in balance, hoist crushed ore and mullock to the surface, at a design rate of 200 tonne/hr, effectively reducing truck haulage leads by up to 50 per cent. The system is now fully operational and will enable the mine to achieve its maximum production rate.The raise-bored shaft system has been shown to be cost effective and would be used again in circumstances where raise drilling is applicable.

Jan 1, 1984

By A M. van Niekerk, W Mey

Coal mining has an impact on the water management of the water scarce Upper Olifants River Catchment. A prefeasibility study was carried out by Anglo Coal and Ingwe Collieries Limited to establish the water supply and demand in the catchment. A geohydrological model was used for the coalfields to determine the stored water and excess water available. Two distinct collective and treatment systems were proposed for the Witbank and Middelburg municipalities to treat excess water from the Anglo Coal and Ingwe Collieries Limited. The Emalahleni Water Reclamation Project for Witbank was initiated first. Water management and treatment experience gained at Anglo Coal was the cornerstone to develop the collection, treatment and distribution system. A full enquiry was issued to Keyplan, Veolia, Bateman Africa and IST Technik to construct, commission, operate and maintain a 20 ML/day desalination plant to treat acidic, saline mine waters to a South African National Standard (SANS) 0241 Class 0 potable water. After the technical and financial adjudication, Keyplan were awarded the contract. An integrated regulatory process was adopted through consultation with all the relevant regional and head office staff of the Department of Minerals and Energy, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and the Mpumalanga Department of Land Affairs via an authorityÆs steering committee. A rock engineering evaluation was done to select both the plant and waste disposal sites as all possible sites are undermined. Various contracts are required with the individual mines for water supply, the Emalahleni Local Municipality for the delivery of potable water and for the disposal of wastes.

Jan 1, 2006

By J Kok

"In some underground mines it has been observed that the primary focus during feasibility studies is to determine the best way to mine the defined orebody. Some studies have been conducted without sufficient consideration of the ventilation and cooling requirements or the risk from exposure to associated airborne pollutants caused by the mining operations.Following the hierarchy of control to manage risk, numerous problems of the ventilation systems in some underground mines could have been avoided if sufficient consideration was given to the ventilation requirements to manage heat, airborne pollutants and leakage during the feasibility study phase. If the constraints and hazards were well defined and understood at the time of the study, efforts could have been made to eliminate or substitute the hazards to decrease the risk. Some of these problems include but are not limited to: primary fan locations heat loads diesel exhaust ventilation design based on the production requirement fire/emergency response strategies.This paper highlights areas in the ventilation discipline that are sometimes overlooked during feasibility studies. It will also highlight the importance of the Ventilation Specialist during these studies. Experience and knowledge of best ventilation practices must be applied in feasibility studies.As a result of adequate consideration to all ventilation aspects in the feasibility study phase, risks will become lower in terms of health, safety, production loss and equipment downtime caused by heat.CITATION:Kok, J, 2014. Feasibility studies – what should be considered in terms of ventilation, in Proceedings 12th AusIMM Underground Operators’ Conference 2014, pp 197–204 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Mar 24, 2014

Since I first enrolled to study Mining Engineering, the idea of working with big machinery and explosives has always appealed to me. After a few courses at uni, combined with vacation work and a number of presentations at the New LeadersÆ Conferences I had attended, I began to realise that the explosives side seemed to have more appeal than the others. As I look back on the past two and a half years that I have spent with Orica Australia Pty Ltd as part of their graduate program, I would have never imagined the dynamics of explosives in mining. This I put down to the ever changing and rapid development in technology converting blasting techniques into a defined predictable science. The opportunities I have been given have delivered all the appeals from when I first started my study. As a result of my entry into a profession that uses explosives to deliver broken rock in a range of mining and construction projects, through the use of advanced blasting technology and products, my experiences have been wide and varied. These experiences have included the use of OricaÆs i-konÖ detonator technology and blast design software to allow for blasting operations to occur in a range of environmentally sensitive quarrying and construction projects throughout New Zealand, to the implementation of various Orica blast based services aimed at improving dragline dig performance and reducing coal loss thus improve overall mine sustainability in the coal mines of Central Queensland, to the advanced utilisation of Orica explosive products and technology in a number of the worlds largest copper mines in Chile. I have witnessed first hand the blasting technology available within Orica Mining Services to both deliver fundamental changes in mining results and in turn kick off my career with a bang.

Jan 1, 2009

The safety culture in mining has progressed towards a zero tolerance of injury. This change has required that some historically inherent risks of mining are engineered out or reduced. One of the significant causes of fatality in Western Australia and Worldwide mining is through rock fall, subsidence and inrush. Efforts put into understanding the material properties of the ground we mine and the backfill we place are reflected in improved safety statistics. It is no longer acceptable to not manage these risks and mining, to be sustainable, has to be safe.   Mining historically produced waste products with little consideration of recycling or impact on the surrounding land. The rehabilitation of mining waste products such as mill tailings, heap leach and waste rock is one step towards managing the environmental impact of these waste products. A better step is towards recycling and redepositing these products to produce a more environmentally sustainable mine site.   Gold fields St Ives lease is an active network of new and historic undergrounds and open pits within the Lake Lefroy and Kambalda district. The process of creating voids underground followed by open pits mining through the old voids allows the use of backfilling to control inherent hazards and dilution. Backfill provides opportunity for the disposal and recycling of mining waste materials at the same time as meeting requirements of mine support. Materials available on the St Ives site include spent heap leach, reclaimed tailings and waste mullock. Through recycling and re-depositing these materials to St Ives and neighbouring mines, the reliance on imported material to meet their needs and impact on surrounding land is reduced.   At St Ives, paste fill and barricade design have been reworked to allow backfilling into stopes with water inflows up to six litres per second. This has required a rethink of the drainage and monitoring of water management systems previously used for hydraulic fill and apply them to paste.   The St Ives open pits have developed methods to mine through underground workings and individual stope voids up to 62,000m3. Here backfill is used to reduce the consequence of catastrophic, unexpected failure of the crown and minimise ore lost down voids and dilution through increased blast movement. This paper outlines the less common methods being adopted to use the recycled materials and ways it has been managed to suit the needs of the company.

Jun 1, 2010

Poor ground conditions associated with historical workings have presented significant challenges to the drilling of production downholes at the Sons of Gwalia Mine. The combination of foam and polymer drilling, the use of Aquacrete to drill through voids and the practice of lining completed holes has allowed downholes to be effectively drilled and blasted in delaminated ground.

Jan 1, 2002

By King R. L

The Bureau of Mines has developed and deployed three expert systems to give advice on mining health and safety. These are: dust control for continuous miners, dust control for longwall shearers, and methane control. All three systems query about the nature and extent of the problem. Typical questions asked deal with observed methane levels, ventilation type and quantity, cutting sequence, and what control technology is employed. Advice given does not focus on a single issue, but may suggest a variety of approaches consistent with the ability of the operator to implement the Suggestions.

Jan 1, 1988

This paper outlines the aims, objectives and means by which a life of mine land use plan was established for Comalco's bauxite mine at Weipa. Comalco realises the need to strategically plan for future mining activities and still minimise the impact of operations on the natural resources of the region. With this realisation long-term forward planning has been implemented to improve the Company's ability to select future sites for mining, industrial use, agriculture, town expansion and conservation purposes.The knowledge of mineral, water, soil and animal resources has expanded dramatically in the past decade. During 1990 Cornalco purchased Geographic Information System technology which has allowed previously collected resource data to be presented in map form. These maps as part of the Life of Mine Land Use Plan are both information based and strategic which can be efficiently updated. The maps allow a broad audience from engineers, geologists, environmental scientists and site managers to government officers and the general public to comprehensively view and scrutinise the operations.

Jan 1, 1992

By S Paciornik

The traditional trading of iron ores is based on chemical specifications and particle size distribution. However, recent characterisation studies, that bring additional information like mineralogical composition and microstructural (textural) aspects, have become important. They contribute to determination of the iron ores downstream beneficiation operations and subsequent steelmaking processing, allowing improvements on both new and existing processes. Despite progress in commercial scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive spectrometer (SEM/EDS) automatic instruments in the last decade, these systems are not capable of performing the identification and discrimination of major iron ore minerals (haematite and magnetite) and the consequent description of its microstructure. On the other hand, reflected light microscopy (RLM) can easily distinguish the iron oxides by their reflectancies, but it cannot discriminate quartz and epoxy resin, which present similar colour on images. The present work proposes an innovative method to perform a quantitative mineralogy characterisation of iron ore based on RLM-SEM co-site microscopy. This technique combines images obtained by RLM and SEM through an automatic registration procedure that accurately aligns the two kinds of images of each field. In fact, it creates multi-dimensional images, which are then analysed using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. The case study is an itabiritic iron ore from Quadrilßtero Ferrffero (Brazil) which contains mainly quartz, goethite, magnetite and haematite. The discrimination of phases that are not distinguishable with either RLM (epoxy resin and quartz) or SEM (haematite and magnetite) can be performed through this multimodal approach, allowing the subsequent mineralogical quantification. The mineralogical quantification computed by image analysis was consistent with independently obtained results based on the Rietveld technique.

Jan 1, 2008

This paper aims to provide some' new and original thoughts on tungsten carbide drill-bits and describe practices and performances, some of which are unique and most of which have not previously been described. Many theoretical and descriptive papers and articles on carbide bits have appeared during the last few years, and in the big majority conclusions such as these were made. These results are marked by premature failure of the bits, or The full or economic life of the bit is seldom reached due to the premature failure of the insert. Unfortunately those conclusions are seldom accompanied by the reasons for premature failure. In the few cases where reasons for failure have been advanced, very little, originality has been shown. The reasons usually given are that the failures are due to bad operators, bad workmanship, faulty steel or unsuitable machines, but it has been shown at Mount Isa that the chief reason for poor performnce is bad design.The first question asked will be, "What is wrong with the design of most bits?" and the answer'is, "The size of' the inserts". There may be many other small faults iiI different types of bit but Mount Isa experience indicates that the size of the insert is the most important factor influencing pit life. Under normal conditions it has been found, that there is a minimum size of insert that will give satisfactory performance, and this minimum is 5/16 in width and ? in. depth at the shoulder. A big majority of the bits at presentavailable in Australia do not satisfy these requirements.

Jan 1, 1953

By Weyer J

Many existing computer planning programs for the mining industry focus either on big mining enterprises with a high production rate or on smaller operations for high value minerals. Big mining enterprises, like the hardcoal company `Ruhrkohle AG' in Germany have their own R&D departments which develop powerful computer programs for planning purposes, partly in co-operation with mining universities. However, there is a remarkable number of small- scale mining operations which are either not able to buy expensive hard- and software or don't have the skills for the operation of extensive software programs. Partly there is also a trend in using rule of thumb calculations rather than computer programs which need a lot of - partly unavailable - data. For this reason a computer program was developed which does not need expensive hardware and software and which can help the planning engineer in the selection of a limited number of possibilities. Until this time the planning engineer established two or three different cases and calculated the results with a pocket calculator. This could last some hours or even some days. Now he or she can use the computer program with a normal PC to compare the cases. All activities are menu-driven. The basis for all, calculations are fixed and variable costs as well as average performance for special activities. The paper gives an example for a possible planning situation in fluorspar mining (originally this program was developed for the fluorspar enterprise Lengenfeld in Germany). It shows the initial situation, the main structure of the program, the input logic and the results. Benefits, limits and possible extensions of the program are discussed.

Jan 1, 1995

Carbothermal Reduction and Nitridation of Ilmenite Concentrates and Chlorination of the Reduced Samples

Sep 13, 2010