Monthly Archives: March 2021

Common Mining Equipment

Posted by on March 25, 2021 Comments Off on Common Mining Equipment

The 3rd article from ThermoFisher’s Top 10 list – Common Mining Equipment.  Have a great day!

Common Mining Equipment

Link to the original article – https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/new-to-the-mining-industry-make-sure-you-know-the-most-common-types-of-mining-equipment/?icid=CAD_blog_mining_2020Dec

New to the Mining Industry? Make Sure You Know the Most Common Types of Mining Equipment
By Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane, Editor
12.21.2015

“Working in the mining industry can be a dangerous place if you don’t know what you’re doing. Regular training is essential and understanding the machines you’re working near or operating plays an important role in all aspects of the industry.

Each type of mining equipment comes with its own set of mining activities. The most common types of mining equipment vary depending whether the work is being carried out above or below ground or mining for gold, metals, coal or crude oil. From drilling machines to excavators, crushing and grinding equipment – the mining industry comes complete with all the right tools. New to the job and want to find out what it all means? Here’s a few of the industry’s most common types of equipment and why they’re important for the job.

Mining Drills

Probably one of the most common pieces of mining equipment, drills are an important part of the underground mining operation. Underground mining is carried out when rocks or minerals are located at a fair distance beneath the ground. But then they need to be brought to the surface. Underground specialized mining equipment such as trucks, loaders, diggers etc. are used to excavate the material and are normally hauled to the surface with skips or lifts for further processing. Drilling is normally required to place explosive charges to liberate the minerals from the overburden material. Underground mining techniques have progressed significantly over the past years, including using remote controlled machinery.

Drills assist in creating holes descending underground. If miners are required to work underground, drills can also be used in ensuring the holes are large enough to serve as a portal for miners to enter. Directional drilling is also a type of mining technology where miners will use the tools and certain methods to drill wells.

Blasting Tools

Blasting tools are an essential part of the mining industry and are used to break down and fracture materials (usually rocks) by use of a calculated amount of explosive to liberate the sought-after product from the waste material. Blasting is also used to remove pockets of unwanted material that are preventing mining machines and personnel to get to the seam containing the materials of interest. Unmanned drill rigs will drill holes at pre-determined depths and positions on a blast face to ensure that a particular size fraction is achieved and that little of the overburden is liberated with the blasting to reduce material handling costs. Once this process has been completed, an excavator is used to recover the blasted rocks and other debris that has been dislodged during the blasting. The material is then conveyed to a central conveying system which will take it directly to the surface or via a skip and hoist system.

Blasting equipment is used for both underground and open pit mining operations and is known to be one of the most hazardous aspects of the job.

For mining operations to be successful good blast designs are absolutely vital as poor practices and excessive explosives can result in damage to rock structures causing unwanted caving.

Earth Movers

For above ground mining, earth movers are utilised regularly to carry loose soil and earth from one location to another. Earth movers play an important role in the mining industry because the equipment is specifically designed to work on large earth-moving and mining projects for a faster and more practical process. Used for digging, pushing and transporting the earth, they require the specialised skills of an operator.

Earth movers are heavy mining equipment that the industry would struggle to survive without and work hand in hand with bulldozers. Earth movers are normally used for removing overburden or waste material, which enables the excavators to remove the material or mineral of interest. Bulldozers are used to move this overburden material around to create a working surface for other equipment such as haul trucks and excavators.

Crushing Equipment

As its name suggests, crushing equipment is used to crush rock and stone. Designed to achieve maximum productivity and high reduction rate, mining crushing equipment can come in a variety of different types for a range of jobs.

Crushing equipment is specially configured to break down the hard rock matter or gravel to a manageable size for transportation or conveying. They are valuable pieces of equipment in the industry because they reduce the costs associated with handling of larger sized material and also ensure efficient liberation of elements of interest in downstream processing of the material. In an opencast or strip mining operation, the run of mine (ROM) material is normally transported to the primary crusher by haul trucks, and in underground mining operations it is conveyed to the primary crusher. Crushing equipment is important to the mining process because it reduces the use of precious excavated resources and eliminates the amount of material on site.

Feeding, Conveying, and On-line Elemental Analysis Equipment

Once the excavator transporter brings the raw material to the crusher for processing, the feeding device feeds the material into the crusher and in return the material is screened and all oversized material is recirculated back to the crusher to ensure correct size fraction is obtained. This weighbelt ‘feeding’ equipment, usually referred to as “Weighfeeders,” conveys and controls the feedrate into the crusher to improve crusher efficiency.

Feeding and conveying equipment are necessary to the mining industry to move and control material flow within a mining and processing operation to facilitate efficient operation of equipment and determine operating rates and yields. In some instances secondary crushing is required prior to processing of the material. Once the material is at the correct size, fraction processing can occur which could include, milling, flotation, leaching etc.

Belt scale systems let you monitor production output and inventory, or regulate product loadout, while providing vital information for the effective management and efficient operation of your business. There are elemental crossbelt analyzers that provide real-time quality analysis of critical process streams to facilitate sorting, blending and out-of-seam dilution control. While materials are on the troughed belt conveyor, an automatic sampling system (which could be single or multi-stage) can take a representative sample directly from the moving material stream. (Take a look at this video to see how a sampling system works.) Weighbelt Feeders that convey and control feedrate accurately and reliably can reduce material consumption, help maintain blend consistency, and increase profits.

Flow measurement systems provide continuous, real-time flow measurement of free-falling materials or dense phase, pneumatically conveyed bulk solids, which is important to ensure and maintain product quality and process efficiency.

All these common mining tools are crucial to the industry and assist in getting the job done efficiently and cost effectively.”

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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.

Fools Gold – Pyrite

Posted by on March 18, 2021 Comments Off on Fools Gold – Pyrite

The next article from ThermoFishers top 10 list!  Enjoy!

Pyrite - Fools Gold

Link to the original article – https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/pyrite-the-real-story-behind-fools-gold/?icid=CAD_blog_mining_2020Dec

Pyrite: The Real Story Behind “Fool’s Gold”
By Ali Somarin
04.01.2014

““Fool’s Gold” is technically known as pyrite or iron sulfide (FeS2) and is one of the most common sulfide minerals. Sulfide minerals are a group of inorganic compounds containing sulfur and one or more elements. Minerals are defined by their chemistry and crystalline structure. Minerals that have the same chemical composition but different crystal structures are called polymorphs.

Pyrite and marcasite, for example, are polymorphs because they are both iron sulfide, but each has a distinct structure. Minerals can also have the same crystalline structure but different elemental compositions, but it’s the crystal structure that determines the mineral’s physical characteristics.

In addition to pyrite, common sulfides are chalcopyrite (copper iron sulfide), pentlandite (nickel iron sulfide), and galena (lead sulfide). The sulfide class also includes the selenides, the tellurides, the arsenides, the antimonides, the bismuthinides, and the sulfosalts. Many sulfides are economically important as metal ores.

Pyrite is called “Fool’s Gold” because it resembles gold to the untrained eye. While pyrite has a brass-yellow color and metallic luster similar to gold, pyrite is brittle and will break rather than bend as gold does. Gold leaves a yellow streak, while pyrite’s streak is brownish black. If you want to know more about how to tell real gold from “Fool’s Gold,” watch this video produced by the University of Knottingham.

Pyrite is so named from the Greek word for fire (pyr) because it can create sparks for starting a fire when struck against metal or stone. This property made it useful for firearms at one time but this application is now obsolete. Pyrite was once a source of sulfur and sulfuric acid, but today most sulfur is obtained as a byproduct of natural gas and crude oil processing.

Today pyrite is sometimes sold as a novelty item or costume jewelry. But pyrite isn’t entirely useless; in fact it’s a good way to find real gold because the two form together under similar conditions. Gold can even occur as inclusions inside pyrite, sometimes in mineable quantities depending on how effectively the gold can be recovered.

Pyrite has long been investigated for its semiconductor properties. Learn about studies underway to develop pyrite as a material to make solar cells.

Pyrite is found in a wide variety of geological settings, from igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock to hydrothermal mineral deposits, as well as in coal beds and as a replacement mineral in fossils. Pyrite can be either disseminated throughout igneous rock or concentrated in layers, depending on depositional mechanism and environment. Pyrite forms in sedimentary rocks in oxygen-poor environments in the presence of iron and sulfur. These are usually organic environments, such as coal and black shale, where decaying organic material consumes oxygen and releases sulfur. Pyrite often replaces plant debris and shells to create pyrite fossils or flattened discs called pyrite dollars.

In calcite and quartz veins, pyrite oxidizes to iron oxides or hydroxides such as limonite, an indicator that there is pyrite in the underlying rock. Such oxidized zones are called “gossan,” which appears as rusty zones at the surface. Gossans can be a good drilling targets for gold and other precious or base metals.

Pyrite is unstable and oxidizes easily, which is an issue in controlling acid mine drainage. Pyrite is a widespread natural source of arsenic, which can leach into ground-water aquifers when geologic strata containing pyrite are exposed to the air and water, during coal mining for example. Acid mine drainage and groundwater contamination requires close monitoring to ensure that it has been neutralized before being returned to the earth.

A question: If you have a shiny and tiny golden color spot in your sample, how would you identify it? Is it gold? Is it pyrite? Portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers are an important tool in this effort. In 2-3 seconds, you can identify that grain using a portable XRF. Isn’t that amazing? In addition to being used for exploration and mining applications, XRF analyzers can be used to monitor elemental contaminants at mine sites and in waste streams. XRF analyzers are capable of quantifying a wide range of elements, including sulfur, lead, and arsenic.”

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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.

Cement Manufacturing Process

Posted by on March 11, 2021 Comments Off on Cement Manufacturing Process

Following on from the previous article from ThermoFishcer on the Top 10 Mining articles of 2020, here is the full article on The Cement Manufacturing Process.

Happy reading!

Cement Manufacturing Process

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Link to the original article – https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/the-cement-manufacturing-process/?icid=CAD_blog_mining_2020Dec

The Cement Manufacturing Process
By Darrell Leetham
08.20.2015

“Different minerals need to be mined in order to make cement. Limestone (containing the mineral calcite), clay, and gypsum make up most of it. The US Geological Survey notes that cement raw materials, especially limestone, are geologically widespread and (luckily) abundant. Domestic cement production has been increasing steadily, from 66.4 million tons in 2010 to about 80.5 million tons of Portland cement in 2014 according to the U.S. Geological Survey 2015 Cement Mineral Commodity Summary. The overall value of sales of cement was about $8.9 billion, most of which was used to make an estimated $48 billion worth of concrete. Most construction projects involve some form of concrete.

There are more than twenty types of cement used to make various specialty concrete, however the most common is Portland cement.

Cement manufacturing is a complex process that begins with mining and then grinding raw materials that include limestone and clay, to a fine powder, called raw meal, which is then heated to a sintering temperature as high as 1450 °C in a cement kiln. In this process, the chemical bonds of the raw materials are broken down and then they are recombined into new compounds. The result is called clinker, which are rounded nodules between 1mm and 25mm across. The clinker is ground to a fine powder in a cement mill and mixed with gypsum to create cement. The powdered cement is then mixed with water and aggregates to form concrete that is used in construction.

Clinker quality depends on raw material composition, which has to be closely monitored to ensure the quality of the cement. Excess free lime, for example, results in undesirable effects such as volume expansion, increased setting time or reduced strength. Several laboratory and online systems can be employed to ensure process control in each step of the cement manufacturing process, including clinker formation.

Several laboratory and online systems can be employed to ensure process control

Laboratory X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) systems are used by cement QC laboratories to determine major and minor oxides in clinker, cement and raw materials such as limestone, sand and bauxite. Read Analysis of Clinker and Cement with Thermo Scientific ARL OPTIM’X WDXRF Sequential Spectrometer to learn why XRF is the technique of choice for elemental analysis in cement industry. Combination X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) systems accomplish both chemical phase analysis for a more complete characterization of the sample. Clinker phase analysis ensures consistent clinker quality. Such instrumentation can be fitted with several XRF monochromators for major oxides analysis and a compact diffraction (XRD) system which has the capability of measuring quartz in raw meal, free lime (CaO) and clinker phases as well as calcite (CaCO3) in cement.

Read XRF/XRD Combined Instrumentation Can Provide Complete Quality Control of Clinker and Cement to learn more about technology that combines the advantages of both XRF and XRD together.

Cross Belt Analyzers based on Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) technology are installed directly on the conveyor belt to measure the entire material stream continuously and in real time to troubleshoot issues in pre-blending stockpile control and quarry management, raw mix proportioning control, and material sorting. Read PGNAA Improves Process and Quality Control in Cement Production to learn what makes PGNAA particularly suited for cement analysis.

Accurate cement production also depends on belt scale systems to monitor output and inventory or regulate product loadout, as well as tramp metal detectors to protect equipment and keep the operation running smoothly. The Cement Manufacturing Process flow chart sums up where in the process each type of technology is making a difference.”

 

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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.

Top Mining Articles

Posted by on March 4, 2021 Comments Off on Top Mining Articles

ThermoFisher has published an article listing the 10 most read articles on their blog last year.  Interesting read!

Each week we will be publishing one of the top ten in full so make sure you come back next week!

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Link to the original article – https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/top-10-mining-articles-this-year/

ThermoFisher Scientific

Top 10 Mining Articles This Year
By Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane, Editor
12.29.2020

“Here are the ten most read articles on this mining blog during the past year. Over a quarter of a million people viewed our mining blog this year. Surprisingly, the most read article, with over 47,000 views is a cement-related story. Take a look below and read the ones you missed. Some of them are a bit dated, but are still useful and tens of thousands found them still of great interest.

1. The Cement Manufacturing Process

Cement manufacturing is a complex process that begins with mining and then grinding raw materials that include limestone and clay, to a fine powder, called raw meal, which is then heated to a sintering temperature as high as 1450 °C in a cement kiln. In this process, the chemical bonds of the raw materials are broken down and then they are recombined into new compounds. The result is called clinker, which are rounded nodules between 1mm and 25mm across. The clinker is ground to a fine powder in a cement mill and mixed with gypsum to create cement. The powdered cement is then mixed with water and aggregates to form concrete that is used in construction. Learn about the various laboratory and online systems that can be employed to ensure process control and a quality product.

2. Pyrite: The Real Story Behind “Fool’s Gold”

Pyrite is called “Fool’s Gold” because it resembles gold to the untrained eye. While pyrite has a brass-yellow color and metallic luster similar to gold, pyrite is brittle and will break rather than bend as gold does. Gold leaves a yellow streak, while pyrite’s streak is brownish black. Learn about other reasons this Sulfide mineral is often mistaken for gold, and how XRF analyzers can help identify the real thing.

3. New to the Mining Industry? Make Sure You Know the Most Common Types of Mining Equipment

The most common types of mining equipment vary depending whether the work is being carried out above or below ground or mining for gold, metals, coal or crude oil. From drilling machines to excavators, crushing and grinding equipment – the mining industry comes complete with all the right tools. New to the job and want to find out what it all means? Here’s a few of the industry’s most common types of equipment and why they’re important for the job.

4. Where Will All the Lithium Needed for Electric Cars Be Mined?

There’s a growing demand for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries to supply the electric car market. But lithium is a poorly concentrated mineral, so traditional hard-rock mining of lithium-bearing pegmatite and spodumene is a costly and time-intensive endeavor. The easiest and least expensive method of obtaining lithium is by the evaporation of highly concentrated lithium brine. Learn where it’s being found and mined.

5. Where Did Those Gemstones Come From?

Mining for precious colored gemstones is rigorous and time-consuming because the deposits are few and when found, tend to be characterized by small quantities of gems scattered throughout a large amount of rock. Modern mining techniques are of little value in these circumstances, and the deposits are often too small to be profitable for major mine outfits, who leave them to small, independent miners who rely on the same manual techniques they have been using for decades. Nevertheless, in recent years, several major mining companies have entered the gemstone market with new strategies for employing modern mining practice.

6. What Is Ambient Air?

Air quality is an important issue, especially in highly regulated industries such as coal mining, cement processing, and coal‐ and oil‐fired power generation. Rules such the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) and the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Standards are designed to protect the public and keep ambient air pollution-free. Ozone is another pollutant of ambient air that has been linked to global warming and health risks for children. The 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for Ozone addresses primary and secondary ozone standard levels.

7. What You Need to Know About Mining Philippines

Mining Philippines, an international conference and exhibition organized by the Philippines Chamber of Mines, showcased the latest products that are advancing the interest of mining, quarrying and mineral processing. According to the show website, attendees learned about the latest technology that can help in “efficient exploration, development and utilization of minerals in consonance with sound economic, environmental and social policies etc. in the Minerals, Metals & Ores industry.

8. Mining and the Environment: What Happens When A Mine Closes?

Mining operations, however expansive and complex, are temporary. Eventually, once the most accessible and valuable materials have been extracted, the mine is closed, and the site must be restored back to its original state. This includes covering up mine entrances, replanting grass and trees, and testing surrounding water, soil, and air for contaminants.

9. Ubiquitous Industrial Minerals: Nature’s Most Popular Raw Materials

Industrial minerals are generally defined as minerals that are not sources of metals, fuel, or gemstones. The most widely-used industrial minerals include limestone, clays, sand, gravel, diatomite, kaolin, bentonite, silica, barite, gypsum, potash, pumice, and talc. Some of the industrial minerals commonly used in construction, such as crushed stone, sand, gravel, and cement, are called aggregates. Industrial minerals are extremely versatile; most have at least two, sometimes many more, applications and span multiple markets.

10. Potash: A Look at the World’s Most Popular Fertilizer

Today, potash comes from either underground or solution mining. Underground potash deposits come from evaporated sea beds. Boring machines dig out the ore, which is transported to the surface to the processing mill, where the raw ore is crushed and refined to extract the potassium salts. When deposits are located very deep in the earth, solution mining is used as an alternative to traditional underground mining. Solution mining employs the use of water or brine to dissolve water soluble minerals such as potash, magnesium or other salts. Wells are drilled down to the salt deposits, and the solvent is injected into the ore body to dissolve it. The solution is then pumped to surface and the minerals are recovered through recrystallization.”

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Top Mining Articles

Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.