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By Claudio Acuña, Sergio Romo, Gerardo Fuentes

The leaching kinetics of a zinc concentrate in autoclave reactors were studied. A sample of concentrate from Bolivia, with typical mineralogical characteristics of the Andes region, was used. A concentrate containing 49% zinc and 145 ppm of silver from Minera Viacha was characterized chemically and mineralogically (atomic absorption, X-ray diffraction, and SEM microscopy) and tested in bench scale reactors. Two types of autoclave batch reactors were used at 40 bars of oxygen pressure and three levels of temperature (150°C, 200°C and 250°C). The solid to solution leaching ratio was 1:10 (10% sulphuric acid concentration). The effect of the particle size of the concentrate on the leaching kinetics was studied (P80: 145 and 45 µm). Iron from the leaching solution was removed by precipitation by increasing the pH in order to generate a clean solution for zinc electrowinning. The zinc solution was used to evaluate the feasibility of cathode production at the laboratory scale. Zinc extractions with higher liberation (P80 = 45 µm) reached up to 98%. Ground concentrate with finer sizes resulted in agglomeration and the use of dispersing agents did not improve slurry mixing. The leaching solution contained 55 g/L zinc and 7 g/L iron; it was purified by precipitating iron. The precipitation was evaluated using sodium hydroxide and ammonium hydroxide. In the first case, a colloidal suspension of ferric salts was formed while in the second case, different iron compounds were precipitated. The precipitate obtained with ammonium hydroxide had better filtering properties. Electrowinning was carried out using two types of cathodes (stainless steel and aluminium) and solutions purified with ammonium hydroxide. Zinc cathodes formed on stainless steel presented a better physical quality than those formed on aluminium.

Jan 1, 2015

By Albert J. Phillips

FOR the most part, recent changes in nonferrous physical metallurgy have been gradual and of a transition nature rather than abrupt modifications of existing methods. Development of new alloys containing vital constituents in what formerly would have been considered minute amounts has necessitated more precise control of metallurgical procedure than ever before. Realization of the remarkable effects of minute amounts of specific foreign elements in many alloys has brought about a revolutionary control in the selection of even the most commonplace raw materials. In addition, recognition of the widespread occurrence of precipitation hardness in metal systems, and the utilization of many of these, has emphasized not only the need for precise temperature control but also the necessity for considering the time factor in its effect upon properties in the treatment of most metals. These needs have caused the development and widespread installation of equipment that permits precision of control undreamed of a generation ago.

Jan 1, 1935

By G. E. Johnson

E. D. HYMAN*—How much sorting of scrap is done ? G. E. JOHNSON (author's reply)—We do practically no sorting. We charge "run of mine" scrap to the furnace. The unmeltables, mostly iron, are in such demand today that there is no difficulty in disposing of them. It may soon be desirable to sort out from the unmeltables as much of the brass as possible. J. J. BRUGMAN†—We have somewhat similar problems in the secondary aluminum business. What is your method of removing the unmelted material from the furnaces? Why have you such an apparently small space in which to charge your materials? Do you find that you have to seal that opening, or can you have it open and continuously charge at one end and pull out the other ? G. E. JOHNSON—Our means of melting scrap is efficient only to the extent that we use the waste heat from the vaporizing chamber to do the job. It is a batch process. We open the charge door and place the scrap on the hearth by hand shoveling. The door is then closed during the melting down period. After the melting is complete, the opposite door is opened and the unmeltables are raked out. The doors are approximately 3½ X 4½ ft and are not sealed during the process only closed. They are nominally tight. Some metal is oxidized in the process. We have visualized a means of conveying the materials through this melting unit with the metals that are melted trickling out during its travel. T. H. WELDON‡—Mr. Johnson, in line with the last question, is it necessary to seal the furnace between the melting down and the vaporizing unit, or have you got an inverted syphon in the bottom of the chamber? G. E. JOHNSON—That was one of the first things we encountered. We had to have a sealed opening, and it is a molten metal seal. You have indirectly asked me another question, which was: "Do you have to seal up the melting unit?" I would say we should exclude as much air as possible, although we are not too efficient in doing that. We allow the melting unit doors to be open when we charge and when we remove unmeltables. You can readily see that that would lead to the idea of having a controlled atmosphere in the melting unit, and I think this would do a more efficient job of melting the scrap. T. H. WELDON—How often do you charge the furnace? G. E. JOHNSON—We charge the melting unit, and rake out the unmeltables, about every hour. H. R. HANLEY*—Are any provisions made for controlling the rate of oxidation for the production of various size particles for certain characteristics of the zinc oxide product? G. E. JOHNSON—Yes, there are many. You are getting pretty much into the fine points of zinc oxide manufacture. Some of us still think we have something to learn about that. In general, this muffle furnace as I have described it to you produces a rounded particle of zinc oxide which is generally formed by a rapid oxidation of the zinc vapor, followed by rapid cooling. We have gone to the other extreme in some of our experiments. We have changed the furnace to produce a type of zinc oxide, such as we thought was peculiar to American process zinc oxide, by controlling the temperature at the point of oxidation and maintaining that temperature for a much longer period of time than we do when we make the rounded shape. There are other relationships that this furnace readily provides. One of the important factors is the ratio of air to zinc vapors. We can vary that by varying the air supply to the baghouse, or vary the rate at which we are vaporizing the zinc by the simple expedient of regulating the temperature over the carborundum arch. We have a number of variables that permit us to produce all of the grades of French process zinc oxide from lead-free up through the highest grades of seal oxides. There are many controls that we can apply to the operation. What I have said is but a brief condensation. K. MORGAN*—Can Mr. Johnson give us some idea of the fuel consumption of the furnace ? How much oil does he use per ton of zinc distilled? I am also interested to know what sort of heat transmission he gets through the arch? What is the thickness of the tiles used to construct the arch? Some time ago we built a small furnace for a different purpose, using a carborundum arch, and we found that the reflectivity of the molten zinc surface was so great we had to use a very high arch temperature. We found we made an improvement by having a layer of carbon on the surface of the zinc. Has Mr. Johnson had any experience on these points ? Does he make any sort of insolu-bles which he leaves in the furnace which he cannot tap out ? G. E. JOHNSON—I believe your first question was the fuel consumption. If I recall, somewhere in this paper there is a test that I quote. I believe we used 800 gal in a given period of time. Offhand I cannot translate that into tons of metal. I might also state that we have this understanding; that the carborundum arch, as the temperature becomes higher, becomes more efficient in heat transmission. As a matter of fact, I believe it is at about 2600°F or higher that the highest efficiency of heat transmission becomes available. We have calculations that I cannot quote from memory which indicate that the carborundum arch does a really very fine job for this type of furnace. Another point that we had considered was the fact that this furnace could be readily constructed so as to furnish an ideal source of heat for waste heat boilers. If a carborundum arch was used over the melting unit, we would have no zinc vapors in the gases at all— just clean combustion gases from which we would have removed some of the heat. L. P. DAVIDSON†— The insolubles

Jan 1, 1950

By P. J. Oakley, W. M. Thomas, S. W. Kallee, D. G. Staines

A Friction stir welding (FSW) is now extensively used in aluminium industries for joining and material processing applications. The (FSW) technology has gained increasing interest and importance since its invention at TWI almost 15 years ago. The basic principle, recent applications and the continuing development of the FSW technology are described. The paper will introduce some of the variants of FSW, such as Dual-rotation, Twin-stir(TM), and the Stir-lock(TM) technique.

Jan 1, 2006

By P J. Jacobs

FORACO is the third-largest global drilling services company, and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The company’s historical roots are in French-speaking West Africa, delivering hydrogeological drilling services to resource companies, villages and regional centres. Today, FORACO operates over 300 drill rigs in more than 20 countries.The Asia Pacific region of FORACO runs a fleet of 37 late model drilling rigs servicing the diamond drilling, reverse circulation, coal, coal seam gas and hydro drilling sectors.FORACO Australia has extensive experience delivering large diameter coring (LDC) samples to the resource community. In the past three years, the company has been involved in six 8? coring projects in a variety of geographies and geologies, including iron ore, coal and uranium. FORACO has developed proprietary equipment and techniques to deliver cost-effective LDC samples with outstanding core recovery.The FORACO LDC sampling system is hands free, with mechanised rod and corebarrel handing to minimise the risk of manual handling injuries. Sample volumes are six times PQ (the common industry standard for large core samples), with core recoveries consistently above 96 per cent in extremely difficult formations.Eight inch coring is a conventional coring system suited to hole depths up to 150 m. For deeper applications, FORACO has recently invested over $4 M in a 6? wireline coring system capable of achieving depths of 300 m.CITATION:Jacobs, P J, 2014. Large diameter core sampling, in Proceedings Sampling 2014 , pp 71–76 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).

Jul 29, 2014

By A. Ghadyani

This investigation was undertaken to assess the possibility of ash and sulfur removal by microbial action of high sulfur-content coal. Thiobacillus ferrooxidans and Thiobacillus thiooxidans have been used for biodesulfurization of coal. Feed samples were provided from Tabas coal mine located in Yazd province, Iran. The sample contained 28.80% ash and 2.30% sulfur. Flotation tests were implemented to optimize the effective parameters in these cells which were constant during bio-flotation tests. According to the results, obtained from various tests using Taguchi orthogonal array design (L27), the values of optimized parameters were pH at 7, 1000 g/t gas oil as a collector, 10% solid content, 15 min conditioning time, 100 g/t MIBC as a frother and 800 rev/min rotor speed. Bio-flotation tests are carried out by means of laboratory double discharge cell and mesophilic bacteria as depressant reagent using above mentioned optimized parameters. The bio-flotation experiments were conducted based on a Taguchi orthogonal array design (L9) with four variables (bacteria type, bacteria count, rotor speed of mixer and bio-conditioning time). The collected data was analyzed by using DX7.0, Minitab14.0 and WinRobust1.02 softwares for evaluation the effect of each parameter on the optimization criteria. Considering the highest combustible recovery and the lowest ash and sulfur content, the value of optimized bacteria type, bacteria count, rotor speed of mixer and bio-conditioning time were Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, 5×107 cells/g(coal), 100 rev/min and 20 min respectively. Under this condition, ash and sulfur content and combustible recovery were predicted 12.39%, 2.08% and 82.03% respectively.

Sep 1, 2012

By Robert W. Hunt

(Cleveland meeting, October, 1912.) PERHAPS of all the scientific economic questions which have been claiming the attention of capitalists, metallurgists, manu-facturers, directors of public utilities, and the general public of America, during the last few years, none have been of more importance than the one relating to the wear and safety of steel rails. The discovery of the Bessemer process made possible modern railway development. In that growth, as has generally happened in all progressive movements, ill its department have not remained equally balanced. Iron rails permitted the construction of roadways for the passage of power-driven vehicles. In time the speed and weight of such carriages proved too much for the wearing-qualities of the rails, and the limit of railway capacity seemed to have been reached. Bessemer made his invention, which was soon perfected and developed, especially as related to steel rails, and thereby increased the limit of capacity, acid vastly greater railway progress was, made possible. The Siemens-Martin open-hearth process followed, and was later supplemented by the Thomas-Gilchrist basic improvement. For a time the Bessemer steel rails of commerce Were, more than equal to all that was asked of them, but this did not long continue, as evidenced by the records in our Transactions. Revolutionary changes occurred in the industrial world, and in no part of it more than in steel-rail manufacture. Great and powerful commercial combinations were made, whose financial resources made possible the supplanting of the then most efficient blast-furnaces, steel-works, mid mills, by others of theretofore unimagined capacity. Old traditions and practices of steel-making were wiped away, and, in too many cases, output was apparently the chief aim, with the result that much dissatisfaction with the wear and safety of rails was felt by railway officials, and the general public was concerned as to its safety when traveling. The climatic conditions of the winter

Dec 1, 1912

By Rudrajit Mitra, Erik Hulthén, TOBIAS HARTMANN, ELISABETH CLAUSEN, Aarti Sörensen

There has been an ongoing debate on how to transform engineering education to better prepare students for today`s professional world that is characterized by increasingly complex problems and challenges that engineers are tasked with upon entering the industry. Within the conceive–design–implement–operate (CDIO) framework, entrepreneurship education presents a valuable pedagogical approach to foster the necessary skills of the students through integrated, hands-on, active learning experiences. While numerous publications have addressed possibilities of how experiential, problem-based, project-based and active learning can be integrated into engineering curriculum, there has been hardly any attention on mining engineering with respect to adopting this approach. This paper will address the possibilities of integrating entrepreneurship education into mining engineering programs in particular. This paper will enhance and foster discussion among academics from mining engineering on how to integrate elements of entrepreneurship education on a course, program and departmental level to infuse value creation experiences across the curriculum.

May 25, 2022

By Arthur V. Petty

The Bureau of Mines has researched the utilization of mining and pro-cessing wastes as raw materials for the production of glass-ceramic pipe. Characterization of various wastes as to occurrence and chemical composition is reported. A computer program was developed and used to identify waste materials and mixes that would result in glass melts from which glass-ceramics could be produced after cooling and subsequent heat treatments. The production of abrasion-resistant pipe from inexpensive and readily available domestic resources could offer an economical substitute for high-alloy steels containing the critical and strategic materials cobalt and chromium.

Jan 1, 1984

By G. M. Carrie

Introduction The subject of basic refractories is daily becoming of increased importance in metallurgical processes, and there is a constantly growing necessity for the development of better materials. This fact, together with the realization that Canada possesses one of the best sources of such refractories in the British Empire, if not in the world, made it appear? advisable that the subject be presented to the Empire Mining and Metallurgical Congress at the 1927 meeting. Having been in close touch with developments in the Canadian product during the past five years, G. M. Carrie was requested to prepare such a paper. The Canadian producers of magnesia refractories have succeeded in developing the product to a place where it has almost entirely displaced imported materials from the Canadian market. These developments were made possible by a close study of the methods of preparation of the material, and by an exceedingly careful control of the manufacturing process so as to obtain a thorough blending of the different constituents with the resultant uniformity of composition. This point is very important to the metallurgist, as un-uniform materials are a potent cause of difficulties in most manufacturing processes and the constant trend is towards their elimination. The temperature at which the Canadian material is burned ensures high specific gravity and thorough shrinkage. The grain size of the product is so controlled that the voids are only just sufficient to allow of proper bonding, thus making possible a dense, hard bottom affording high resistance to erosion and shock. Careful proportioning of the constituent elements absolutely prevents disintegration.

Jan 1, 1927

By Warren C. Bracewell

At your request, am submitting to you several suggestions for the amendment of our safety code which you felt should be kept up to date. These suggestions are the individual opinions of the several members of the Committee who have expressed (heir wishes to me in the form of letters. I am particularly indebted to Mr. Daniel Harrington, Mr. Wm. Littlejohn, Mr. Warren Bracewell, Mr. James Dalrymple and Mr. Hugh McLeod. Would recommend the following amendments Section 1. Wherever practical trolley wires should be securely hung to roof or timbers at a distance of not less than five feet and not more than six and one-half feet above rail and six inches to one side. Spacing of hangers should be from 20 to 25 feet apart. (Adopted.) Section 2. 500 volts D. C. should not be allowed in any installations. Trolley wires should not carry a voltage of more than 250 D. C. nominal voltage. (Referred back.) Pumps, mining machines and other small machinery units where A. C. power is used should not carry a voltage of more than 220. Large units, such as pumps, motor generator sets and hoists, may use a volt- age of 2,200. When power cables to operate same are of armored construction, cables should be securely buried at all crossings, on haulage-ways or where men travel. (Adopted.) Section. 4. Where power lines pass through door frames or stop- pings they should be properly insulated with porcelain compound or rubber tubing. Wherever men get on or off man-trips in vicinity of trolley wires same should be secure1y guarded and should also be protected with a cut- out switch, same to be pulled before men are allowed to get on or off trips. (Adopted.)

Jan 1, 1926

By Lowell Stroud

Ten natural gases containing from 0.023 to 8.4 percent helium were investigated. In seven high-helium samples, the isotopic abundance of Ne21 was greater than in the atmosphere, being supplemented by 33 to 85 percent of "excess" or "radiogenic" Ne21. The ratio of He4/Ne21(rad) in these gases was evaluated and found to vary between 2.9 x 107 and 5.9 x 107 , a factor of approximately 2. Argon concentrations were determined by the isotope dilution method. The isotopic ratios of Ar40/Ar36 in the high-helium gases were from 5 to 75 times the atmospheric value, with the Ar40 being about 80 to 99 percent radiogenic in nature. The ratios of He4/Ar40(rad) in all 10 gases were evaluated and found to range from 4 to 18. The isotopic ratio of N14/N15 in four of the high-helium gases was essentially the same as in the atmosphere; in three cases it was approximately 5 percent higher than the atmospheric value of 272.0. The genesis of nitrogen and the relationship of nitrogen to helium in natural gases were reviewed and are discussed in terms of a theory for the concurrent generation of nitrogen, helium, radiogenic neon 21, and petroleum (hydrocarbon gases and liquids).

Jan 1, 1967

By David C. Slack

In recent years public concern over the environment has grown enormously. A very aware populace has exerted pressure on its legislators to enact enforcement laws dealing with pollution. Among the different types of pollution, sulfur dioxide in the air is a large and readily identifiable constituent. Air pollution, according to the EPA, costs the U, S. billions annually with SO2 a major portion of this cost. Fossil fuel and oil fired power plants release better than 50% of the SO2 in the country. Thus great attention is being focused on the methods power plants are utilizing to control emissions. With a time schedule of compliance by early 1975, decisions are being made and systems chosen that will have to perform - and perform - and perform. Therefore, a large majority of the power plants are presently considering lime in the planning and operational phases of their stack gas desulfurization programs. The reasons for this are: Lime scrubbing has more development and pilot work completed than most other methods; the removal potentials are relatively high; the stoichiometric ratios are not excessive and, the process has relatively low capital and operating costs. Many pilot plant studies have been completed recently using lime and the first operational full scale lime scrubbing unit is now in the start-up phase at this time at Duquesne Light Company's Phillips Station here in Pittsburgh. Also, because of completed development work, the problem of solid waste disposal will also be tackled at this power station at the same time. There are various methods for the use of lime in scrubbing for S02, but for our purposes I would like to describe the cyclic wet lime process. This method called "Scrubber Addition of Lime" involves contacting the flue gas with a slurry of milk of lime.

Jan 1, 1973

The Ernest Henry Mine is an open pit copper-gold mining operation located in north-west Queensland, Australia. It is owned and operated by Xstrata Copper with a current concentrator throughput of approximately ten million tonnes per annum. The pit will cease mining towards the end of 2010. Extensive surface diamond drilling has confirmed an extension of the orebody to depths of 1000 m below surface. A prefeasibility study was commissioned in late 2006 to investigate underground mining options with the preferred mining method being an inclined sublevel cave. In February 2008 mining of a decline commenced in conjunction with a feasibility study to further investigate the project. Work from the prefeasibility study indicates that an underground crusher, conveyor and hoisting shaft could be utilised to crush and transport broken ore from the sublevel cave workings to the concentrator. The study suggests that a production rate of five million tonnes per annum could be achieved and sustained for up to ten years. Ventilation designs and requirements will form a large section of the feasibility study. This paper will detail investigations of preliminary ventilation network designs of the proposed sublevel cave. Work has been completed using both Ventsim and VumA ventilation simulation packages. Ventsim was used to provide preliminary estimations and suggest alternatives for: surface fan duties;airflow characteristics (direction, velocity, pressure and quantity); andventilation network design in key mine areas. With mining activities reaching depths in excess of 1000 m below surface an analysis of heat conditions should be conducted. The VumA software package was used to model the thermal properties of the ventilation system. This model will provide a basis for the preliminary decisions on refrigeration requirements for the mine.

Jan 1, 2008

By Arthur Notman

IN VIEW of the wide publicity given to the charges by the Couzens Committee of the United States Senate of discrimination by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in favor of the copper companies, it becomes a matter of interest to consider the basis for these charges. The point to be determined is whether they rest on a foundation of fact or are purely and simply matters of opinion. The whole question boils down to the purpose of the Tax Law as applied to mines, which is to afford the same protection to them as provided for all other taxpayers, namely: that they were to be allowed to pay back as depletion to their owners the values of their properties as they existed or were estimated to exist on May 1, 1913, free from tax. To determine these valuations it was? necessary to select from a wide range of possibilities a set of values for a number of essential factors.

Jan 1, 1925

By S. D. Graham

"The extractive metallurgy of gold is largely controlled by mineralogical factors such as the presence of refractory gold, particle size, gangue mineral associations, presence of preg-robbers, oxygen and cyanide consumers, and locking characteristics in base metal sulphides. Light microscopy and automated mineralogy techniques are regularly used to characterise the effect of these variables on gold recovery. However, despite their widespread application there are a range of limitations when grades are low. Typically, the analysis of low-grade samples requires the preparation and analysis of numerous polished blocks. This is often costly and time consuming, with complexities regarding analysing statistically representative particle quantities and problems overcoming stereological bias. This is compounded by the “nugget” effect and high tenor nature of gold mineralisation. X-ray Microscopy techniques have the potential to overcome many of these problems, in particular the statistical representivity of analysis, removing stereological bias and effectively locating phases that are present in ultra-trace proportions. In this paper we outline the potential benefits of employing X-ray Microscopy (XRM) in characterising gold losses from a typical Cu-Au porphyry project, which were illusive in 2D based analysis. The talk will also outline additional application areas of XRM within the extractive value chain."

Jan 1, 2017

By B. J. Zhang

Conventional spirals are capable of providing excellent clean coal recovery, although at a relatively high ash content. Compound spirals, which provide two stages of spiral cleaning in a single taller unit, have been commercialized in recent years to improve upon the cleaning performance obtained from conventional spirals. The present study aimed at optimizing the performance obtained from a compound spiral for cleaning especially high sulfur fine and ultrafine coal. Industrial-scale spiral units were utilized for this study in a pilot-scale facility at the Illinois Coal Development Park. A statistically designed experimental program was conducted to optimize ash and sulfur cleaning performance of the compound spiral. It was found that significant cleaning of ultrafine coal (i.e., 150 microns × 45 microns and even 45 microns × 25 microns size coal) is achievable with the compound spiral. However, operating conditions for cleaning finer coal fractions (-150 microns size coal) have to be significantly different from those used to clean coarser coal fractions (+150 microns size coal). The sulfur rejection trends were different from ash separation efficiency trends in all size fractions except 45 microns × 25 microns. The probable error (Ep) and effective specific gravity of separation (SG50c) determined for the compound spiral cleaning of the overall particle size were as low as 0.07 and 1.62, respectively. However, the bypass of a small percentage of clean coal to the tailings stream of the compound spiral, may need further adjustment of the key process parameters.

Jan 1, 2014

By P. Karimi, A. Akcil, A. Amini, H. Abdollahi

"In this study, cyanidation experiments were carried out on a massive sulfide ore sample, whose grades of the precious metals gold and silver were found to be 4.2 g/t and 311.9 g/t, respectively. Other elements in the ore were arsenic with average grade of 1,751.6 g/t; antimony, 619.7 g/t; zinc, 781.4 g/t; copper, 454.6 g/t; lead, 101.8 g/t; mercury, 324.3 g/t; and bismuth, 0.6 g/t. The first objective of test work focused on determining the best conditions for extracting gold from the ore, ground to less than 75 microns. Different influential parameters such as particle size fraction, cyanide concentration, pH and leaching time were investigated. The optimum parameters were found to be particle size fraction of less than 25 microns, cyanide concentration of 2,000 mg/L, pH of 11 and cyanidation time of 24 hours. In these optimum conditions, the highest gold and silver leaching efficiencies were 76.88 and 59.63 percent, respectively. In addition, roasting as pretreatment at a temperature of 700°C over a period of two hours was evaluated. Cyanidation testing of the roasted ore in the optimum conditions found increases in the gold and silver leaching efficiencies to 85.97 and 67.57 percent, respectively. Moreover, antimony extraction rose to 43.10 percent, from 23.73 percent without roasting.IntroductionGenerally, gold ores can be classified as “free milling” or “refractory,” depending on how they respond to cyanide leaching (La Brooy et al., 1994; Celep et al., 2009). While high gold recoveries (> 90 percent) from free-milling gold ores can be readily achieved, refractory gold ores are often characterized by low gold recoveries (50-80 percent) within a conventional cyanide leaching process (Rubisov et al., 1996; Adams, 2005; Celep et al., 2009). The presence of preg-robber components such as carbonaceous matter, sulfide minerals and aluminosilicate can further decrease gold and silver dissolution rates and recoveries. With the negative effect of the presence of preg-robbers, gold dissolution is considerably diminished in solutions with high cyanide concentration (Tan et al., 2005). In such refractory gold ores, gold particles may sometimes be occluded or included in the sulfide minerals, and pretreatment becomes necessary to break down the mineral structure to liberate gold for subsequent recovery. These ores are usually pretreated with an oxidizing process, after which gold and silver can be recovered by a standard cyanidation process. The main oxidizing processes available for refractory gold ores are roasting (LaBrooy et al., 1994; Angelidis and Kydros, 1995; Li et al., 2009; Karimi et al., 2010; Kyle et al., 2012), biological oxidation (Lawrence and Bruynesteyn, 1983; Komnitsas and Pooley, 1990, 1991; Deng and Liao, 2002; Ciftci and Akcil, 2010, 2013) and pressure oxidation (Mason, 1990; Murthy et al., 1992; Qingcui et al., 2009). In addition, ultra-fine grinding is being used in some plants for the liberation of gold and silver particles that are interlocked in the sulfide or silicate minerals (Celep et al., 2011)"

Jan 1, 2015

By G. T. Daware, M. J. Chaddha, S. P. Masurkar, P. G. Bhukte, A. Agnihotri

JNARDDC has evaluated bauxite deposits of India from the geo-technological point of view. During the evaluation studies, it was observed that bauxite deposits are associated with saprolite resources. During bauxite mining, various low-grade materials such as saprolite, laterite and low-grade bauxite are generated. These materials typically have low-alumina, high-iron oxide and high-silica content. Owing to their inferior quality, these materials cannot be used for alumina production and hence remain unutilized at the mine site. For the present study, the saprolite samples were collected from the Western Ghats bauxite deposits in India. The sintering studies were conducted on saprolite granules using a variety of parameters. The sintered granules were characterized, and their properties determined. The test results showed that bulk density, apparent density, porosity and refractoriness (PCE 1645–1659 °C) of the aggregates were within the range of refractory specifications. The feasibility tests carried out at the refractory industry indicated that the developed aggregates are suitable as refractory material and can substitute for calcined clay. Currently, high-purity clay resources used in the refractory industry are limited and fast exhausting; therefore, the industry is likely to face an acute shortage of raw materials, which will become more critical in the future. Therefore the sintered granules (aggregates) developed from saprolite, which is a mining waste, provide a low-cost, eco-friendly solution for the fast-exhausting resources of the high-purity clays. The developed process may change the Indian bauxite mining scenario because saprolite may substitute as a potential raw material for the refractory industry.

Apr 12, 2021

By A. M. Raichur, K. Keltner, M. Misra

The removal of oxyanions of arsenic present in mine process water and drinking water to a regulatory level (i.e. below 50 ppb) is a challenging problem. Conventional water treatment methods presently used for controlling arsenic have several drawbacks and limited success. A new adsorbent (LS™) developed at the University of Nevada, Reno, has strong specificity for both arsenate and arsenite species present in process waters. The adsorbent in very selective to oxyanions of arsenic and competition of other indifferent ions is minimum. Water samples from different sources were tested and arsenic was successfully removed to below 50 ppb. This paper describes both batch and packed column tests conducted in the laboratory as well as at the plant sites using LS™.

Jan 1, 1997