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By Alireza Golabchi

The AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry is an information intensive industry and all related processes employed during different phases of a project, including planning, designing, building, manufacturing, occupying, and maintenance, involve vast amounts of data that is used for a wide variety of purposes. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a powerful shared knowledge resource which stores this data to support decision making about a facility through all these different phases in its life cycle. Nowadays, BIM is mostly used in the design and construction phases while it can also be highly beneficial beyond those stages. For example, in the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phase, BIM could be used for automated facilities management or robotic inspection to provide semantic knowledge for navigation. For any implementation not related to the original intent of the BIM (design), organizations need to be able to represent their project data in a common interpretable form, which provides the possibility of an accurate exchange of data among different software products and platforms, known as interoperability. This study has investigated the current state of interoperability between software products used as Building Information Modeling tools. The main focus has been on a popularly used format for BIM models, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), since it has been specifically developed to enable standardized data exchange. The research methodology involved a comprehensive literature review and the gathering of all fragmented prior research related to the field in order to develop a consistent understanding of the current state of knowledge. This was accompanied with a detailed case study that evaluated and compared two dominant pieces of BIM software, Revit and Bentley, and examined their interoperability strengths and weaknesses while using the IFC format.

Aug 1, 2013

By B. K. Bhattacharyya, Morley. L. W.

"The primary purpose of conducting aeromagnetic surveys in mineral areas, and interpreting the data thus obtained, is to aid in the extrapolation of the geology from known to unknown areas-both in a horizontal and vertical direction. This paper describes one of the steps in the process of interpretation which has, in the past, been neglected-that of mathematically or quantitatively treating the data in two-dimensional map form. For this, several techniques are available.These techniques determine the downward and up-ward continuation fields, the second vertical derivatives and the fields reduced to the pole from the total magnetic field data. Second vertical derivatives and downward continuation fields increase the resolution and sharpness in the observed magnetic anomalies and tend to outline the surface traces of causative bodies with a reasonable amount of success in most cases. The 'reduction to the pole' is a mathematical process of calculating the field at the north pole from the observed field so that the un-desirable effects of the dip and declination of the earth's field and of rock magnetization are eliminated.New and accurate means of carrying out these calculations have been developed by the Geological Survey of Canada. In this paper are also presented the results of a method for obtaining the symbol and numerical map of the processed data with the help of the printer associated with the computer. The tedious work of digitizing magnetic field values in a map can be speeded up by the use of a semi-automatic coordinatograph, with the aid of which field values can be accurately transferred to punched cards."

Jan 1, 1966

By O. Espinoza Ortega, S. Song

A process scheme has been devised to improve the silver recovery and the grade of concentrates from the scavenger concentrate of a silver ore flotation circuit. Based on modal analysis studies it was found that silver sulfide minerals in the scavenger concentrate were associated as simple binary particles and finely disseminated in sulfide and non-sulfide gangues. Fine grinding of the concentrate improved the grade-recovery curve of silver to a very limited extent owing to heterocoagulation between liberated fine silver sulfides and coarse particles of gangue. This heterocoagulation phenomenon was prevented by grinding the concentrate in the presence of the dispersing reagent sodium hexametaphosphate. The silver grade-recovery curve was improved by practicing. before the conventional flotation step, a selective aggregation step for the fine silver sulfide particles using the non-polar oil kerosene, the sulthydryl collector Aerophine 3418 and conditioning the pulp under strong agitation conditions.

Jan 1, 2004

By Brian Flintoff

"When I was first asked to prepare this paper and presentation in late June, I thought it might be fun to ""step back and paint the bigger picture."" Having attempted to do this, fun is not the first descriptor that now comes to mind, and speaking dyslexically, I've had 'nuf.'Unlike Nostradamus, or even Orwell, I've discovered that I'm ""clairvoyantly challenged"" and not even the psychic hot-line was of much help, at least with respect to process control! I am somewhat comfortable speculating on evolutionary change, but the radical developments that will arise from revolutionary changes are well beyond my mortal capabilities. Even with evolutionary change, I'm reminded of the lessons of time series analysis which show the prediction error to grow exponentially as the horizon moves into the future. As Macluhan is reported to have said: ""Predicting the future based on the past is a little like driving your car while looking in the rearview mirror!""Having honestly presented my qualifications, allow me to try to look at process control and to offer some conjecture on where we're probably headed. In the end, it is said that: ""The plant of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.1""IntroductionA little less than a decade ago Andy Mular and I co-edited a monograph entitled ""A Practical Guide to Process Control in the Minerals Industry."" The work was commissioned by the senior management of a consortium of Canadian mining companies, since it was widely perceived that control was an area of great economic potential, but one that had not been effectively tapped. The concern was that if the industry could not soon deliver on the ""potential"", the term may well have appeared in the epitaph of what was, to these men, a very attractive investment opportunity. I think it is fair to say that over the past few years process control has clearly established itself as an essential technology in plant operation and optimization. That isn't to say that we get it all-right, all-the-time, but, the circumstances are much different than they were. In the eyes of many, process control has attained the distinction of being considered a mature technology, even though there are still countless avenues for exploration."

Jan 1, 1998

By A. M. Gaudin

Introduction The discovery of artificial radioactivity, that is, of radioactivity of acorns other than those which are naturally radioactive, has increased vastly the possibility of using radioactivity as an analytical cool. The incomparable value of radioactive atoms, which are commonly termed tracers, arises from the extreme sensitivity of this analytical method. To get an idea of this extreme sensitivity it may be useful co recall that gravimetric analytical methods will not permit the weighing of anything much lighter than one-hundredth of a milligram of material. Under the most favourable circumstances, this represents an uncertainty in the answer of 1016 acorns, or 10,000,000,000,000,000 acorns. Accurate spectrographic methods possibly have a sensitivity 10,000 times greater than this, but the uncertainty is still of the order of 1012 atoms. The tracer permits ascertainment of decay of a single atom so that its sensitivity, without half trying, can be several orders of magnitude greater than that of any other method available co chemists. In addition co the sensitivity of tracers to which reference has just been made, tracers have another property which makes them unique. A radioactive atom is almost exactly like the corresponding non-radioactive acorn m regard to its electronic structure, and therefore in regard to its chemical properties. The nucleus is different, but the nucleus does not participate in chemical reactions. Therefore, a tracer acorn behaves like an ordinary atom until such time as its nucleus undergoes a catastrophic decay. This unique property permits one to use tracer acorns as atomic spies and therefore to follow the behaviour of acorns of a certain kind among their own kind. In other words, the tracer method permits us to study and measure what we call self-diffusion. All of the uses of tracers that have been made depend on the two properties co which reference has been made.

Jan 1, 1949

By D. Stone, N. J. Aslin, W. Webb

In today's modem copper electro-refineries, increasingly higher average current densities are being employed. With these increases many refineries are approaching their limiting current density. The nearness of the average operating current density to the limiting current density has placed increasing emphasis on the need to maintain an even current distribution. This paper explores the importance of maintaining even current density and discusses the factors, processes and practices that are necessary to achieve and maintain high quality production at high operational intensity.

Jan 1, 2005

By Y. A. Grinin, M. A. Liamina, V. A. Shumskij, Y. I. Sannikov, M. V. Radashin

"A brief history of the development of the Kivcet flash smelting process is presented. The broad scope of the process with an ability to treat high grade lead sulphide concentrates, as well as oxidized lead-zinc residues, is emphasized. Fine coal in the charge serves two purposes, one as auxiliary fuel and the other as a pre-reductant for ferric iron in residues. Current Kivcet operations incorporate a layer of coke or “coke checker” at the surface of the slag in the reaction shaft that acts as a reducing agent for flame products or slag that flow through it. Details of this invention, are given. IntroductionFor many years, the sinter-blast furnace lead smelting process has been the main internationally accepted method used for the production of primary lead metal. In recent times, this process has been unable to meet legislated environmental restrictions and it became clear in the mid-1960s that a new and cleaner process would have to be developed. The present level of Kivcet performance was developed in three main stages:1. flash smelting natural sulphide lead raw materials with the attached electric furnace for production of lead bullion and crude zinc;2. natural raw material smelting with lead and zinc separation in a “coke filter” or “coke checker” at the surface of the slag in the reaction shaft to produce lead bullion and ZnO-bearing slag that can be fed to conventional slag fuming; and3. processing of oxidized lead-bearing raw materials, such as low grade zinc plant residues, with the production of lead bullion and ZnO-bearing slag periodically directed to slag fuming."

Jan 1, 1998

By John F. Gartner

"Traditionally, the geologists of Canada have been occupied with the tasks of finding new mineral bodies, locating gas and oil fields or hunting for economic deposits of industrial minerals. A very minor percentage of graduate geologists have applied their skills to solution of the ""urban blight"" or employing their understanding of ""Nature"" for the optimum use of land by mankind. However, things are changing quickly. The role of the geologist in the planning process is being established. It is an exciting time! Geologists are now being consulted on a wide range of urban planning problems. These vary, tor example, from assessment of the geological environment for the new communities of Erin Mills and Meadowvale, which will have total populations in excess of 100,000 people (truly a satellite city), to a complete geological/ geohydrological assessment of the new sanitary landfill for the city of Guelph.Use of geologic techniques and methods for urban studies must be enhanced with certain skills not taught, in the past, to the geologist. These include airphoto interpretation, soil mechanics, geohydrology, municipal engineering and highway engineering to mention a few. The geologist has the unique training to assess the natural environment and to discover, warn and explain the implications of man's attempt to command his environment."

Jan 1, 1972

By Frank B. Amon

Highland Valley Copper had to make some significant changes in the way it was working in order to counter the effects of ever-increasing costs and decreasing metal prices. A mine/mill optimization plan started in 1997 introduced new technologies and management approaches that resulted in a dramatic drop in cash breakeven costs. The changes involved employee training, added authority and responsibility for staff, better communications, and a consistent approach to setting and achieving property-wide goals. The net effect was to change the culture of the organization from one that was fragmented and focussed on local objectives to one that is cohesive and has common goals. These changes have allowed the mine to remain in business during a protracted period of low metal prices, and have positioned the mine favourably to benefit even more from any future increase in prices.

May 1, 2004

By L. K. Daneshmend

The mine of the year 2020 will need to be based on a new way of mining. It will employ technology in a paradigm that assumes responsibility for sustainable development: taking account not only economic but also ecological and social issues. This will require a holistic approach to mine design and planning, considering all controlling factors and impacts (technical, economic, environmental and social). A national collaborative strategy is required to address the several options that exist for the development and application of 2020 mining technology. Key issues in implementing 2020 mining technology will also relate to human resources, in terms of employment, skills and education. A need exists to proactively prepare for 2020 through development of a comprehensive education and training strategy.

Jan 1, 1998

By Peter Claus

In the last years, supported gold catalysts with particle sizes smaller than 10 nm have attracted a lot of attention. While gold bulk metal is rather inert in chemical reactions and, thus, is of low interest for catalysis, highly dispersed gold particles supported on oxides as TiO2 or ZrO2 show surprisingly high activities in some reactions important for the chemical industry. The oxidation of carbon monoxide at low temperatures is mainly used as model reaction to study the unusual properties of gold catalysts [1]. On the other hand, to evaluate the catalytic potential of gold, other chemical reactions which allow to control also the selectivity have to be considered. The selective hydrogenation of ???-unsaturated aldehydes to allylic alcohols is of both commercial relevance (e.g. in fine chemical and pharmaceutical intermediate production) and specific scientific interest [2]. Note that thermodynamics favors hydrogenation of the C=C over the C=O group (stronger negative free reaction enthalpy of 35 kJ/mol), and for kinetic reasons the C=C bond is more reactive than the C=O group. Thus, in the presence of most of the conventional hydrogenation catalysts, based on Pt, Rh or Pd, -unsaturated aldehydes such as acrolein and crotonaldehyde are hydrogenated predominantly to the saturated aldehydes and only to a minor extent to unsaturated alcohols. Therefore, it is desirable to find catalysts which are able to control the intramolecular selectivity by hydrogenation preferentially the C=O group while keeping the olefinic double bond intact (Fig. 1).

Oct 1, 2003

By James K. Gowans

"Cominco Ltd's Polaris Mine, located on Little Cornwallis Island, Northwest Territories (latitude 75degrees 30') went into production in late 1981, becoming the world's most northerly base metal mine. The concentrator, powerhouse, shops, offices, dry and warehouse, were uniquely designed and constructed on a 100f t wide by 400 ft long by 65 ft high barge. This process barge was constructed in southern Canada at Trois Rivières, then towed 3,500 miles into the High Arctic Islands and beached on Little Cornwallis Island.The paper deals with the original design philosophy, flowsheet and the initial year's operation of the Polaris process barge.IntroductionTo bring a mining property into production in the Canadian High Arctic, a company must deal with the harsh environment, the short shipping season and the high cost of labour. In trying to minimize the effect of these fact or s, the concept of a barge-mounted process plant was investigated as an alternative to the conventionally built concentrator. Cominco's previous experience gamed at the Black Angel Min e on Greenland's west coast suggested that this would be a practical alternative.The normal shipping season at Little Cornwallis Island is approximately six weeks long, from mid-August to the end of September. All equipment and materials must be delivered during the ""shipping window"". The logistics problems are enormous; if the conventional approach had been used the major process equipment would have been delivered to Little Cornwallis Island at the same time as the completed barge actually was! Construction would also be starting at the start of the worst climatic conditions, the Arctic winter. Nine months' production was gained by opting for the ""barge"" approach."

Jan 1, 1983

By Robert Boutilier

For more information on what the social licence means, see the following: Joyce, S. and Thomson, I. 2000. Earning a social licence to operate: Social acceptability and resource development in Latin America. The Canadian Mining and Metallurgical Bulletin, 93(1037) Nelson, J. and Scoble, M. 2006. Social License to Operate: Issues of Situational Analysis and Process. Vancouver, BC: Department of Mining Engineering, University of British Colombia. Thomson, I. and Boutilier, R.G. 2010. The Social License to Operate In P.Darling, (Ed.), SME Mining Engineering Handbook: Littleton, CO: Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. Much of what has been written and said about the social license to operate focuses on what the company has to do or not do. But the social license is a two-sided relationship. We also need to look at what the community has to do, or not do, in order to be capable of issuing a social license that is meaningful.

May 1, 2010

By C. Moreland

Fluidized low-temperature carbonization of coal, a recent development, offers a possibility of reducing fuel costs of coal-burning electric ?generating plants. The Research Council of Alberta have built a pilot plant and are conducting a programme to -develop a carbomzation plant for Alberta sub-bituminous coals which will produce char suitable for use as a .boiler fuel, and tar of a potentially high value as a ?chemical raw material. The economies of the process as a whole, and the value of the tar, have yet to be assessed.

Jan 1, 1958

By Jason Mewis

Jason Mewis is the founder and president of ENGCOMP, a consulting engineering firm in Saskatoon Saskatchewan focusing on the mining sector. He has over 17 years of experience working on projects for the heavy industrial market in Saskatchewan, as both a Senior Structural Engineer and Project Manager. Jason is an entrepreneur with experience in many areas including estimating, planning, facilitation, and Risk Analysis. He has presented at many seminars and conferences across North America on the subject of Project Risk and and has become recognized for his expertise in this area of project management.

May 1, 2013

By S. Dessureault, M. Yildirim

More mining companies are now investing in IT, including updating one of the traditional IT process control tools used in the mining industry: real time in-pit truck allocation control and monitoring systems, or fleet management systems (FMS). These systems have been used to maximize the overall mine production by improving equipment utilization and reducing production costs. Most modern operations monitor the in-pit operations using GPS and wireless communications to produce data. Improvements in bandwidth, sensors, and computing power are causing modern systems to become more complex and generate more data. However, human analysis by simple regression or table generation in spreadsheets of the data is becoming impossible. Data mining solves this data management problem. Data mining finds patterns and relationships in very large data sets. This paper describes the application of modern data mining techniques on truck dispatching systems in a real open pit hard-rock copper mine. The analyses conducted included determining how the trucks performed under particular conditions and allocation systems. The long-term benefits of this work are to identify strengths and improvement opportunities in truck assignment systems and establish the skill sets and IT infrastructure needed in undertaking more complex datadriven technology such as a truck dispatcher trainer.

Jan 1, 2007

By A. Vien, A. J. Neale, B. C. Flintoff, R. P. Edwards

Froth flotation is one of the most widely used and effective processes for mineral beneficiation. First introduced in 1911, flotation technology has seen many developments over the past 80+ years. Innovations in reagent chemistry, equipment design, process analysis and process control have given design and plant engineers a powerful set of "tools" for process optimization. However, it does not follow that all flotation systems are optimized. As Klimpel observes: "The problem with the industrial flotation process is that it is relatively easy to get reasonable results, and relatively difficult to get excellent results" Klimpel (I 988). While reasonable was sufficient in the past, competitive forces will make excellent necessary in the future. Judging by the activities in many Canadian plants this transition is already underway. This paper examines the role of some of the optimization "tools" in effecting this change.

Jan 1, 1994

By Henrik Saxén, Mikko Helle

The operation of hot stoves used for preheating the blast in the ironmaking blast furnace has a strong effect on the consumption of reductants, economic performance of and CO2 emissions from the steelmaking site. Generally, it is recommended to maintain as high blast temperature as possible, because this minimizes the rate of reductants in the blast furnace. The blast temperature is affected in a complex way by the time periods of heating and cooling of the stoves, and by the amount of gas combusted in the stoves. Furthermore, as the hot stoves show degraded performance with age, it is a non-trivial task to select optimal operation parameters for the stoves. The paper addresses this computationally by applying a one-dimensional heat-transfer model of the hot stoves for optimization of the performance of the system. The complexity and strong coupling of the decision variables is demonstrated by numerical examples, where the blast temperature is maximized under different constraints.

Jan 1, 2015

By Barry J. Turley

With over 700 large electric-drive haulage trucks operating in Canadian mining today and over 3700 in mines worldwide, most aspects of electric drive are well known. Recently, however, extensive application of these trucks to down-hill hauling in mountain mining makes it vitally important that many of us better understand the operation and proper application of the dynamic retarding feature of these vehicles. This paper is an attempt to clear up misunderstandings on this subject, to suggest precautions that mining operators should take in comparing competitive retarding systems and to challenge equipment manufacturers to evolve improvements to the important aspect of system performance.

Jan 1, 1978

This paper describes basic parameters, such as surface forces and film elasticity, affecting the stability of foams (two-phase froths). We used the thin film pressure balance (TFPB) technique to measure the surface forces in foam films stabilized with various frothers such as pentanol, octanol, methyl isobutyl carbinol (MIBC), and polypropylene glycol (PPG). The results were compared with the foam stabilities measured experimentally and the film elasticities calculated using a new model developed by Wang and Yoon (2006). It was found that at low electrolyte (NaCI) concentrations foam stability is controlled by both film elasticity and surface forces (or disjoining pressure), the relative contributions from each changing with frother type and concentration. Further, the kinetics of film thinning was studied at a high electrolyte concentration. The results obtained in the present work showed that the major role of a frother is to decrease the hydrophobic force rather than to increase the film elasticity. This conclusion is drawn from the observation that at the typical frother (MIBC) concentrations employed in flotation, frother additions cause sharp decreases in hydrophobic force while causing relatively little changes in film elasticity.

Jan 1, 2006