Search Documents

By M. M. Gilkey

This report on water requirements for the New Mexico mineral industry includes data on industrial operations closely related to mineral production. It contains general information concerning public water supplies at five principal cities and a short discussion of water needs for agriculture. Background data are presented regarding the geography, hydrography, and water laws of New Mexico, as well as precipitation and evaporation characteristics of the State. Most of the information on source, quantity, distribution, cost, and treatment of water was obtained in interviews with company representatives. Water systems at 46 operations are illustrated by schematic waterflow diagrams. The study revealed that the New Mexico mineral industry in 1962 used about 16 billion gallons of new water and reused 152 billion gallons, a total usage of 168 billion gallons. Consumption amounted to 7.6 billion gallons. Of the 16 billion gallons of new water, 11.9 billion gallons was "self- supplied" from ground water sources, and 2.6 billion gallons was self supplied from surface sources. Approximately 1.5 billion gallons was purchased. Some of the water from company-owned wells is piped as far as 30 miles. Reported costs of the self-supplied new water range from 1 to 20 cents per 1,000 gallons and average 8 cents per 1,000 gallons for power and maintenance. Inadequacy of the supply of new water at many operations necessitates large-scale recirculation. Reported costs for recirculating water (power and maintenance) average 1.8 cents per 1,000 gallons. For the entire New Mexico mineral industry in 1962, the value of product was $42 per 1,000 gallons of new water intake and $88 per 1,000 gallons consumed. Analyses of 40 water samples, listed in the appendix, show the wide range in water quality at plants throughout the State. Projection of the 1962 water requirements of the mineral industry indicate that the total demand for new water will increase from the 16 billion gallons used in 1962 to 24 billion gallons in 1980, a 50 percent increase; and to 36 billion gallons in 2000, which is 125 percent more than the 1962 intake of new water.

Jan 1, 1965

By M. M. Gilkey

This report on water requirements for the New Mexico mineral industry includes data on industrial operations closely related to mineral production. It contains general information concerning public water supplies at five principal cities and a short discussion of water needs for agriculture. Background data are presented regarding the geography, hydrography, and water laws of New Mexico, as well as precipitatton and evaporation characteristics of the State. Most of the information on source, quantity, distribution, cost, and treatment of water was obtained in interviews with company representatives. Water systems at 46 operations are illustrated by schematic waterflow diagrams. The study revealed that the New Mexico mineral industry in 1962 used about 16 billion gallons of new water and reused 152 billion gallons, a total usage of 168 billion gallons. Consumption amounted to 7.6 billion gallons. Of the 16 billion gallons of new water, 11.9 billion gallons was "self- supplied" from ground water sources, and 2.6 billion gallons was self supplied from surface sources. Approximately 1.5 billion gallons was purchased. Some of the water from company-owned wells is piped as far as 30 miles. Reported costs of the self-supplied new water range from 1 to 20 cents per 1,000 gallons and average 8 cents per 1,000 gallons for power and maintenance. Inadequacy of the supply of new water at many operations necessitates large-scale recirculation. Reported costs for recirculating water (power and maintenance) average 1.8 cents per 1,000 gallons. For the entire New Mexico mineral industry in 1962, the value of product was $42 per 1,000 gallons of new water intake and $88 per 1,000 gallons consumed. Analyses of 40 water samples, listed in the appendix, show the wide range in water quality at plants throughout the State. Projection of the 1962 water requirements of the mineral industry indicate that the total demand for new water will increase from the 16 billion gallons used in 1962 to 24 billion gallons in 1980, a 50 percent increase; and to 36 billion gallons in 2000, which is 125 percent more than the 1962 intake of new water.

Jan 1, 1965

To reduce the exposure of mining machine operators to respirable dust. Approach: A protective curtain of filtered air is blown down around the operator's head, from a manifold mounted on the machine canopy. How It Works: Mine air is drawn into the system through a filter which removes respirable dust. The filtered air enters a centrifugal blower which pushes it through a flexible hose to a manifold mounted on the canopy above the operator. Air leaves the manifold through a perforated plate and flows down around the operator's head. A photograph of an installed system can be seen in Figure 1. The second photograph, Figure 2, shows the sys-tem components. An important advantage of this dust protection system is that it is not worn or carried, or in any way connected to the operator. It is therefore not uncomfortable, encumbering, or

Jan 1, 1976

By John C. Machisak

The National Safety Competition is sponsored and conducted annually by the Bureau of Mines, U. S. Department of the Interior, to stimulate greater interest in safety in the mineral-extractive industries and to encourage the development of more effective accident-prevention programs. Since its beginning in 1925, thirty-four safety contests have been conducted. This publication reports results of the 11 annual contests for the period 1948-1958, inclusive. Mineral operations awarded the "Sentinels of Safety" trophy for the best safety record in their competitive group as well as those ranking second, third, fourth, and fifth are listed along with a summary of their achievements in preventing disabling injuries. In addition, this publication contains statistical information reflecting the disabling work-injury experience of all other mines and quarries enrolled in the annual contests. The injury statistics of these operations are arranged in the six groups of the competition and through 1955 are the only data on injury-severity at noncoal mineral operations published by the Bureau of Hines. Recognition of the National Safety Competition in promoting safety has increased steadily during its 34 years. The number of plants participating in these annual competitions increased from 210 in 1925, its first year, to a record of 675 in 1958. The expanding scope of the National Safety Competition indicates that more mines and quarries in the United States are enrolling 90 all available means to promote safety on the job will be used. Safety contests like this are generally recognized, in the field of safety promotion, as an effective way to arouse and hold the interest of employees and officials in accident-prevention programs. They tend to forge individual precautionary acts into group action centered on a common objective, such as winning the ?Sentinels of Safety? trophy.

Jan 1, 1960

The mining licence for the Macraes gold mine places emphasis on the progressive rehabilitation of the land to a state compatible with the landscape and environment that existed prior to mining activities taking place. The shallow soils and hostility of the environment dictate that choices of plant species should focus on persistence rather than high productivity, choices that are made easier by observing the vegetation patterns that have developed naturally within the area, by recontouring landforms to integrate with the surrounding countryside and the use of appropriate plants and establishment techniques.

Jan 1, 1992

By Walter L. Fisher

The public interest in the Alaskan situation is such that, with the consent of the President, I have concluded, at the request of the American Mining Congress, to make at this time a candid, if somewhat informal, expression of the views I have formed as Secretary of the Interior, under whose official supervision much of the administration of the Territory is now placed. Pressure of other matters imperatively requiring attention has prevented their presentation in as precise and comprehensive a form as I had hoped. The absence of the President from Washington has also prevented the submission to him of what I have prepared. I wish to say, however, that no one is more earnest than he in the desire to see a policy of prompt and wise development inaugurated in Alaska, and that the general policy contained in this address has been discussed with him, meets his approval, and will have his support. I have recently returned from an altogether too brief but nevertheless a most interesting and profitable visit to those portions of Alaska that are more immediately involved in the questions now under public consideration. Favored by extraordinary weather and the cooperation of steamship and railroad lines and the assistance of all of the governmental agencies, including the Revenue-Cutter Service, I visited every port in Alaska that seems likely in the near future to become an important entrance to the country. I examined all of the harbor and town sites which for this purpose have attracted any considerable public attention. I traversed the entire length of each of the three railroads that have been constructed in the Terri.tory and made a short trip from White Horse down the upper Yukon. Both before and during the journey I examined a mass of books, records,' and papers relating to the country and its resources. I had conferences with official committees representing the principal communities I visited and with numerous individuals, residents both of the coast and of the interi.or, and conferred with engineers, miners, prospectors, railroad officials, business and professional men.

Jan 1, 1911

By Ian MacKenzie

Over the past twelve years, professionals such as architects, engineers, accountants, and attorneys have not had to pay a great deal of attention to GST. The fees charged to clients (outputs) have not been subject to GST, but they have had to pay GST on al purchases of materials and taxable services relating to their activities.

Jan 1, 1990

By B. Samanta

Abstract - Ore reserve estimation, based on sparse drill hole data, was conducted for a placer gold property in Nome, Alaska. A problem with sparse data is that random subdivision of the data into modelling and evaluation subsets (as is commonly done) becomes a problem, as random selection may result in biased/skewed subsets. Therefore, a technique that combined data segmentation with genetic algorithms (GA) was applied to divide the samples into three equivalent subsets: training, validation and testing. Data segmentation was done on the basis of the distribution of gold values. Neural network and a variety of kriging techniques were used to estimate gold grades. A multi-layer feed forward neural network along with "early/quick stop" training was used for neural network modelling. A comparative evaluation of kriging and neural network methods was then performed. The results revealed that neural network was generally superior to the kriging techniques for gold grade estimation in the Nome deposit.

Jan 1, 2002

By L. Harris

The Yanacocha project is the first foreign investment in Peruvian mining since Cuajone during 1976. Three years after the project began, it has become the largest producer of gold from heap-leach operations in the world and the top producer in Latin America. The success of Minera Yanacocha SA (MYSA) opens a new chapter in Peruvian mining with the exploitation of its widely spread gold deposits. And it has attracted the interest of foreign investors in Peru’s mineral resources. Construction began on Aug. 1, 1992. The first gold bar was poured on Aug. 7, 1993 from ore from the Carachugo Mine. During 1993, Minera Yanacocha produced 2.5 t (81,000 oz) of gold and 9.4 t (304,000 oz) during1994 (40% above budget). Production was expected to exceed 15.5 t (500,000oz) during 1995 with the start-up the Maqui Maqui Mine.

Jan 1, 1996

By I. E. Wahn, E. A. Boutin

"The Manibridge Mill is unique in its treatment of relatively high grade nickel-copper ore because in the mill design are included one 10' diam. x 10' Maxwell cell, and three 12' diam. x 12' tank cells. These large cells are used as rougher-scavenger cells. Three 8' diam. x 8' tank cells as well are used for cleaning and recleaning of the tank cell concentrate.Flexibility of flow is the main criterion in the tank cell circuit. Targets from these cells are a high grade nickel-copper product with a minimum of talcose gangue.The operation of the tank cells has been encouraging and they have performed well with both low and high grade heads, yielding a high grade concentrate product.Manibridge Tank CellsDescription:The tank cells at Manibridge consist of one 10' x 10' Maxwell cell, three 12' x 12' tank cells, and three 8' x 8' tank cells. The four large cells are currently being used as rougher scavenger cells. The three small cells are used as cleaner cells.Both sets of tank cells consist of Denver steel tank and Super Agitator Mechanisms with steel beam super-structures. The agitator mechanism has a totally enclosed ball bearing spindle housing with a cold rolled steel shaft, and a stanclard standpipe with adjustable collar.The air rings for the tanks were fabricated by Nelson Machinery. Both large and small cells have injection rings with equally spaced air holes in the bottom centre line of the ring.Air is supplied to the tank cells by a Dresser Clark low pressure air blower.The following is a table of pertinent data on the tank cells:"

Jan 1, 1974

By Alex C. Smith, Michael J. Sapko

A series of explosive detonation experiments was conducted in NIOSH’s Bruceton and Lake Lynn Experimental Mines to evaluate low level (<6 psig) detonation wave propagation behavior in single and multiple entry configurations. Entry cross-sectional area varied from 5 to140 m2 and explosive weights of Pentolite ranged from 0.24 to 2.4 kg. Behavior of the detonation wave was evaluated through recording of the pressure as a function of time and distance from the explosive detonation in single and multiple entry interconnecting tunnels. Peak pressure from detonation of an explosive in an underground mine maintains magnitude for a greater distance than is the case on the surface and is shown to follow the simple scaling rela-tionship P = 702.8(W/Vt)0.514(0.65)n, where P is the peak detonation pressure in kPa, W is the weight of the explosive charge in kg, Vt is the total volume in m3, and n is the number of splits, n = 0, 1, 2, …n. The total energy, or impulse, I, generated by these detonations can be expressed as I = 1.34(W/A)0.64n, where W is the weight of the explosive charge in kg, A is the area of the main tunnel in m2, and n is the number of side en-tries, n = 0, 1, 2, …n.

By Michael J. Klishis

Accident rates continue to show that underground mining jobs areamong the most hazardous occupations in the United States and roof bolter operators continue to have one of the highest accident incident rates (MSHA, 1991) despite efforts by labor, government, and industry to reduce and eliminate work-related hazards. In the last two decades we have seen technical innovations such as the ATRS, and there has been an increased emphasis on hazard awareness through programs such as MSHA&apos;s REAP, but bolter operators continue to be injured and killed. Researchers at West Virginia University examined risk in the roof bolter&apos;s job and developed new approaches to accident and injury prevention. The study concentrated on the workers&apos; job performance, machinery and the work environment to identify miner&apos;s risk and hazard exposure while bolting.

Jan 1, 1993

By Steve W. Ciccone

The Red Dog Mine is both the largest known zinc reserve and the largest zinc producer in the world. The mine started in 1989, and by 1999 had increased production from approximately 300,000 tonnes per year (t/yr) of zinc concentrate to in excess of 900,000 t/yr. The VIP Mill Optimization Project further increased zinc concentrate production to 1.1M t/yr while improving both product quality and zinc recovery. The Mill Optimization project also addressed a number of issues related to risk reduction: power generation capacity, water treatment capacity and concentrate thickening. The project was faced with numerous challenges, the most daunting of which was the schedule. This US$105M project was executed, from conception to completion, inside of two years. Less than nine months elapsed from concept to delivery of materials and equipment to site. The project also faced a 100-day icefree shipping window, the challenges of construction in an Arctic environment, and an extremely tight labour market for qualified craft personnel. These challenges were successfully addressed with several innovative approaches to project execution, including an Alliance contracting arrangement between the owner, engineer and contractor; full integration of the team; construction of modules in Anchorage; and fast-track engineering, procurement and construction. Steve Ciccone, AMEC?s project manager on the Mill Optimization project, works for the Mining & Metals unit of AMEC, a world leader in the provision of engineering and construction services. He obtained his BASc from the University of British Columbia and is currently midway through his MBA program at Simon Fraser University. Steve has 15 years of experience providing engineering and project management services on mining and metals projects, and has been involved in the execution of five capital projects and several studies at Red Dog since 1995. George Hope was responsible for process design and engineering on the Mill Optimization project and has been Manager, Project Development at Teck Cominco since 1995. Prior to this time, he was a project manager and chief metallurgist for Lac Minerals for 14 years and a mill superintendent and metallurgist for Noranda for 5 years. George received his BSc in Mineral Technology from the Royal School of Mines in England.

May 1, 2002

By H. Haselhuhn

Filtration of hematite ore slurries can be a bottleneck in some hematite processing plants due to inadequate filtration rates caused by the dispersion of fine particles. Flocculation of fine particles in the slurry decreases the specific cake resistance of the filter cake allowing for increased filtration rates. CO2 sparging of hematite slurry was shown to increase the filtration rate by altering the pH and the surface chemistry of the particles. It was shown that an increase in filtration rate of 278% can be accomplished by lowering the pH from 11 to 6.5 using CO2. This was attributed to increased flocculation of hematite and silica particles in the ore.

Jan 1, 2012

By John R. Eckel

A Iaboratory drilling rig has been devised and placed in operation which permits the application of hydrostatic, terrastatic, and formation pore pressures to a rock sample for drilling under controlled conditions. Calibrated rests of this equipment in-dicate qualitative agreerment with field results on the effect of weight on bit, rotary speed, and rate of circ~~lation on drilling rate. Tests under pressure, using water and air as the drilling fluids, indicate that when drilling saturated limestone samples, a pressure differential between hydrostatic and formation pressure is the only pressure which affects drilling rate. A differential in either direction causes a reduction in rate, but the same diflerential from the wellbore into the formation causes the greater reduction. Also, in lime.stone, air favorably affected drilling rote only when compared to water at high hydrostatic pressurre, all other conditions remaining constant. Large increases in drilling rate with air could be obtained in the laboratory only while drilling a shale, which offered a limited permeability to nitrogen and which could be drilled with a differential from the formation into the wellbore. In general, the magnitude of the changes due to the pressure effect were small compared to changes in drilling rate obtainable by changing either bit weight or rotary speed. INTRODUCTION In the course of Humble&apos;s drilling research program, the desirability of investigating several factors which lend themselves to laboratory rather than field study became obvious. Principal reasons for this are the expense involved in field studies and the difficulty of exercising the required degree of control. Of primary importance are investigations of the effect of fluid pressure on rock rate, the effect of pressure on rock drillability, and a study of the fundamental mechanics of rock failure and chip generation. Several years ago some work in the laboratory on the effect of mud properties on drilling rate was re- ported to the API&apos;, but the completion of this work and the investigation of the other variables affecting drilling rate required equipment somewhat more elaborate than that used on these earlier tests. This equipment has been assembled to form Humble&apos;s Drilling Engineering laboratory. To date only the effect of pressure on rock drillability while using water and air has been investigated, and this work is not yet complete. Facilities are available to investigate the effect of fluid properties on rate of penetration, and information is being assembled on a current basis on the mechanics of drilling. The sequence of presentation in this progress report is somewhat different from that in which the data were obtained since the order of ex-

By A. G. Rozner

TRANSVERSE rupture tests have been commonly used in mechanical investigations of brittle materials. The specimens are simple, easy to prepare, and loading presents no difficulty. Owing to the complexity of stress distribution in bending1 one can determine stresses rigorously only for the elastic range. The bend-test results, however, are at times converted into tensile-strength data, determined as maximum fiber stress. The assumption is made that for small plastic deformations the linear stress-strain relation applies. This problem was experimentally investigated by Bach3 who tested cast iron in bending and in tension and found that the maximum fiber strength obtained in bending exceeded the experimental tensile strength by a factor depending on the geometry of the tested piece. The factor varied from 1.57 for a rectangular cross section to 2.12 for a circular cross section of the tested beam. Since this work was carried out 60 years ago, the cast iron used could be expected to have been highly brittle, thus the extent of plastic deformation prior to fracture very small. We have therefore carried out a number of tests on magnesium-modified cast iron with an average elongation of -5 pct. It was hoped that the data obtained from the tests would serve as a guideline for comparing data obtained in tension and bending for brittle materials. Mechanical properties were measured at room temperature on an Instron tensile machine at a crosshead speed of 0.05 in. per min. The three-point bend test employed cylindrical bars 0.20 in. in diameter with a 1.0-in. span. For the tensile test, cylindrical tensile specimens with a gage length of 0.85 in. and a diameter of 0.160 in. were used. Results are summarized in Table I. From Table I one can see that fracture strength

Jan 1, 1965

In 2006, a total of 4,573 stone mining operations reported employment to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).1 Stone mines comprised 30.7% of all mining operations. ? Mines producing the primary commodity of limestone (crushed and broken) comprised the largest number of operations (n=2,042; 44.7%). ? Stone mining operations were located in all states and territories except Delaware and North Dakota. ? Pennsylvania had the most stone mines (n=368; 8.0%), followed by Texas (n=342; 7.5%).

Jan 1, 2008

By R. W. Stahl

An award is a form of recognition given for superior performance in a special field of endeavor. Each year awards are given by the Joseph A. Holmes Safety Association and the National Safety Council to mineral industries&apos; mines, quarries, and plants that have worked a specific number of man-hours without a lost-time injury. These awards have a dual significance in that they prove that efficiency can be attained without injury to persons. Safety awards do not result from luck or good fortune but do result from sincere desire coupled with sufficient effort and cooperation to achieve a desired goal.

Jan 1, 1963

Jan 1, 1943

Jan 1, 1943