Articles tagged with: Environmental

Pre-Concentration – Savior or Not?

Date: April 13, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies

Can pre-concentration become a savior for the mining industry by lowering metal production costs?

Pre-concentration is a way of reducing the quantity of ore requiring higher cost downstream processing, i.e. grinding in particular. One can attain significant cost savings in energy consumption and operating expenses by using a low cost method to pre-concentrate minerals into a smaller volume. A previous blog “Remote Sensing of Ore Grades” discussed one new pre-concentration method currently under development.

Pre-concentration isn’t new

Pre-concentration has been around for many years. However the techniques available are generally limited. Hence many ore types are not amenable to it..unfortunately.

The main methods available are:

Ore sorting, which can be done using automated optical, electrical, or magnetic susceptibility sensors to separate ore particles from waste. The different sensors can rely on colour recognition, near infrared radiation, x-ray fluorescence, x-ray transmission, radiometric, or electromagnetic properties. The sensors can determine if a particle contains valuable mineral or waste, thereby sending a signal to activate air jets to deflect material into ore and waste bins.

Density separation, or specific gravity differences are another property that some pre-concentration methods can use. Gravity based systems such as dense media separation (DMS), jigs, or centrifugal concentrators are currently in commercial production.

Scrubbing, another very simple pre-concentration method is scrubbing, whereby simply separating fines or coatings may remove deleterious materials prior to final processing. Blue Sky Uranium is a recent project that I was involved in where a simple scrubbing step resulted in 4-5 times increase in grade and volume reduction.

Benefits

Pre-concentration provides several benefits:

If done underground or at satellite mine site, the ore hoisting or ore transport costs can be reduced.
If the pre-concentration rejects can be used as mine backfill, this can reduce backfilling costs.
Processing of higher grade pre-concentrated mill feed can reduce energy costs and ultimately reduce the cash cost of metal produced.
Grinding costs can be reduced if waste particles are harder than the ore particles and they can be scalped.
Minimizing waste through the process plant will reduce the quantity of fine tailings that must be disposed of.
Lowering operating costs may potentially allow lowering of the cutoff grade and increasing mineral reserves.
Higher head grades would increase metal production without needing an increase in plant throughput.

Limited ore types are suited for pre-concentration

Not all ore types are amenable to pre-concentration and therefore a rigorous testing program is required. In most cases a pre-con method is relatively obvious to metallurgical engineers but testing is still required to measure performance.

Testing is required to determine the waste rejection achieved without incurring significant ore loss. Generally one can produce a higher quality product if one is willing to reject more ore with the waste. It becomes a trade-off of metal recovery versus processing cost savings.

Fine particles generated in the crushing stage might need to bypass the pre-con circuit. If this bypassed material is sent to downstream processing circuits, one may need to examine crushers that minimize fines to avoid excessive material bypassing the pre-con circuit.

Reject waste or reject ore?

One must decide if the pre-con system should reject waste particles from the material stream or reject ore particles from the stream. The overall metal recovery and product quality may be impacted depending on which approach is used.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the mining industry is continually looking for ways to improve costs and pre-concentration may be a great way to do this. Every process plant design should take a look at it to see if is feasible for their ore type.

While the existing pre-concentration methods have their limitations, future technologies may bring in more ways to pre-concentrate. This is probably an area where research dollars would be well spent.

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

Landslide Blog – If You Like Failures

Date: April 5, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies

For those of you with a geotechnical background or have a general interest in learning more about rock slides and slope failures, there is an interesting website and blog for you to follow.

The website is hosted by the American Geophysical Union the world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists. The blogs on their site are written by AGU staff along with contributions from collaborators and guest bloggers.

The independent bloggers have editorial freedom in the topics they choose to cover and their opinions are those of their authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the American Geophysical Union. This provides for some leeway on the discussions and the perspectives the writers wish to take.

Landslide Blog

One specific area they cover well in their Landslide Blog are the various occurrences of rock falls and landslides from any location around the globe. They will present commentary, images, and even videos of slope movements as they happen.

Often they will provide some technical opinion on what possibly caused the failure event to occur. The Landslide Blog has a semi-regular email newsletter that will keep you updated on new stories as they happen.

The following links are a few examples of the type of discussions they have on their website.

Here is a description of a small water dam failure in Greece.

Here is some video of the Samarco tailings runout in Brazil.

From time to time the Landslide Blog will examine mine slopes, tailings dams, and waste dump failures, however much of their information relates to natural earth or rock slopes along roads or in towns.

Some of their videos are quite fascinating, illustrating the forces behind some of earth’s natural erosion processes. Check it out for yourself.

The bottom line on all of this is that the less the mining industry is mentioned in the Landslide Blog, the better it is.

Note: You can sign up for the KJK mailing list to get notified when new blogs are posted.

Tailings Disposal Method Risk

Date: March 8, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 4 Replies

After the Mt Polley and Samarco tailings failures, there have been ongoing discussions about the benefits of filtered (dry stack) tailings as the only way to eliminate the risk of catastrophic failure. Mining companies would all like to see risk reductions at their projects.

However what mining companies don’t like to see are the capital and operating costs associated with dry stacking.

The filtering cost and tailings transport cost are both higher than for conventional tailings disposal. Obviously this cost increase gets offset against improved environmental risk and simpler closure.

What should a mining company do?

In my experience, when designing a new mining project, all companies will complete a trade-off study for different tailings disposal methods and disposal sites. Contrary to some environmental narratives, mining companies really do want to know what are their tailings disposal options. They would likely all adopt the dry stack approach if it was the most advantageous and least cost method.

The mining companies are fully aware of the benefits but the dilemma is the cost and being able to somehow justify the technology. Complicating their decision, companies also have other ways for reducing tailings risk.

The tailings decision gets complex.

In a tailings risk analysis, people will use a risk-weighting approach to assign an expected economic impact to their tailings plans. For example, if the cost of a failure is $200 million and the risk is 0.1%, then the Expected Cost is $200,000. The problem with this is its based on a theoretical calculation on an assumed likelihood of failure.

In reality either the dam will fail or it won’t. So failure remediation money will be spent ($200M) or it won’t be spent ($ zero), it won’t be partially spent ($200k).

The accepted tailings risk therefore becomes a subjective factor.

While implementing a dry stack may reduce the risk of catastrophic failure to near zero, implementing a $100,000 per year monitoring program on a conventional tailings pond will reduce its risk to a degree.

Implementing a more expensive $500,000 per year monitoring program would reduce that risk even further.

Installing in a water treatment plant to enable periodic water releases may further lower the tailings risk.

The company can look at various mitigation options to keep lowering their risk, although none of the options would necessarily bring the risk down to zero. Ultimately the company could compare the various risk mitigation options against the dry stack costs in order to arrive at an optimal path forward. At that point the costs for dry stack may be competative.

What level of risk is acceptable?

So the question ultimately becomes how low does one need to bring the tailings risk before it is acceptable to shareholders, regulators, and the public. I don’t think the answer is that one must lower the risk down to zero. There are not many things in today’s world that have zero risk. Driving a car, air travel, shipping oil by ocean tanker, having a gas furnace in your house.. none of these have zero risk yet we accept them as part of life.

Environmental groups continually discuss ways of forcing regulators and mining companies to take action against the risk of tailings failure. This is commendable.

However they generally fail to provide any guidance on what level of risk would be acceptable to them or to the public. It is difficult for these groups to actually define what an acceptable risk level is. They offer no solutions, other than its either zero risk or shut down all mining.

Conclusion

We know that mining is here to stay so we all should work together towards solutions.

The solutions need to be realistic in order to be taken seriously and to play a real role in redefining tailings disposal. Dry stack may not be the only solution and we should be looking for more ways to improve tailings disposal.

Since these other options don’t seem to be available yet, dry stack tends to offer the best solution in most circumstances. I have written another blog on this topic where I suggest the industry just bite the bullett and go to dry stack in all new projects. The trend appears to be going that way but no where near 100% acceptance. You can read that post at this link “Fluid Tailings – Time to Kick The Habit?”

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

3D Model Printing – Who To Contact?

Date: January 2, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 7 Replies

One of the technologies that is still getting a lot of press is 3D printing. It seems new articles appear daily describing some fresh and novel use. Everything from home construction, food preparation, medical supplies, and industrial applications, 3D printing continues to find new applications in a wide range of disciplines.

Mining can take advantage of 3D printing

In a previous blog “3D Printing – A Simple Idea”, I discussed the helpfulness of printing 3D topographic models for the team members of a mining study. I was recently contacted by a consulting firm in Texas that specializes in printing 3D mining models. Here is their story and a few model images as provided to me by Matt Blattman of Blattman Brothers Consulting. (www.blattbros.com/3dprinting)

Blattman Brothers Consulting

Their 3D printed models are used in the same way geologists and mining engineers have employed models for decades. In the past we saw the physical models made of stacked mylar or plexi-glass maps, wood or foam core. We recognized that there is value in taking two dimensional sections or plan maps and making a 3D representation. This provides more information than those viewed on a computer screen.

Physical models convey scale, interactions and scope in ways that no other method can. Technology like 3D printing improves the model-making process by allowing the addition of high def orthophotos, reducing the model cost, increasing its precision and delivery time.

Currently 3D models can be made in a variety of materials, but the primary three are extruded plastic, gypsum powder, or acrylics.

Plastic models (ABS or PLA) are cheap, fast and can created on relatively inexpensive, hobbyist printers. The downside to these models is that the number of colors available in a single model are limited, typically a single color.

Powder-based printers can typically print in 6.5M colors, allowing for vibrant, photo-realistic colors and infinite choices for title blocks, logos and artistic techniques. However, gypsum models can be as fragile as porcelain and require some care in handling.
Acrylic models allow for translucent printing (“looking into the ground to see the geological structure”) and are more durable than the gypsum. Nevertheless, acrylic models are significantly more expensive than the other two types and the color palettes are limited.

Here are some examples.

Leapfrog Model

Acrylic Model

Powder Based 3D Model

Blattman’s models are created from the same 3D digital data already in use by most companies involved in geological modeling and mine design. Other than the units (meters versus millimeters), the triangulated surfaces created by the software are no different than those created by mechanical or artistic 3D modeling programs.

While many 3D printing services are available on the market, not all of them are able to speak “mining”. They may not be able to walk the skilled geologist or mining engineer through the process of creating the necessary digital formats and that’s where Blattman comes in. With more than 20 years of mining experience and having already gone through the 3D printing learning curve, they can assist any natural resource company through the process, either as a full-service/turn-key project or just to advise the client on how to prepare their own files.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that 3D printing is here to stay and its getting better each year. Go ahead and check out the technology to see if it can advance your path forward .

We would be interested in hearing about any experiences your have had with 3D modelling, pro’s and con’s.

Note: You can sign up for the KJK mailing list to get notified when new blogs are posted.

Fluid Tailings – Time to Kick The Habit?

Date: November 12, 2015 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 8 Replies

What is one thing that we constantly hear about negatively yet we continue to do it (although we know it can be bad for us)? Is that thing smoking or is it fluid tailings storage? Can we break either of these habits?

Short term pain for long term gain.

Those of us in the mining industry constantly hear from stakeholders about the negative impacts of fluid tailings storage. By “fluid” I mean conventional tailings that can liquify and flow great distances. We know of numerous mines that have had failures, resulting in fatalities and catastrophic damage. Check out the horrific example video below. It appears some people were walking or driving mid-way up the dam face.

We also know of many mines that have used fluid tailings their entire operating lives without any incidents. Therefore some say it is fine to continue doing that.

The question for me has become whether the mining industry should kick the habit of fluid tailings storage even though not every dam has failed.

Quitting isn’t easy

Quitting smoking takes real effort, some pain, maybe a change in lifestyle, but most importantly an overall commitment to quit. It isn’t easy but pays off in the long run.

The same holds for fluid tailings storage.

Moving away from conventional tailings storage requires real effort, some pain, a change in operating style, and a commitment to quit. It won’t be easy but will pay off in the long run by avoiding major tailings incidents, less negative press, and fewer environmental permitting issues. No longer will consultants and regulators be disputing factors of safety of 1.2 versus 1.5, when they could be discussing factors of safety of 5 versus 10.

Quitting fluid tailings storage may bring relief to stakeholders, shareholders, regulators, and mine management. They’ll all sleep better at night knowing there isn’t a large mass of fluid being restrained simply by a dam at a factor of safety of 1.5. Engineers say they can design dams that will be stable for perpetuity. Even if one agrees with that statement, that is still no guarantee that failures won’t happen somewhere.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that no one wants to sit downwind of a smoker and no one wants to live downstream of a tailings dam. Perhaps it is time for the mining industry to kick the habit of fluid tailings storage, regardless of the cost and discomfort. Short term pain for long term gain.

In another blog post I have discussed how tailings storage always require a tradeoff between cost and risk. Normally lower cost options present high risks, and vice versa. How much risk is acceptable to a company or to the public? You can read that post at this link “Tailings Disposal Method Risk“.

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

Mining Takeovers – Should Governments Be (Heavily) Involved?

Date: July 13, 2015 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 5 Replies

I have seen some on-line discussions about whether governments should be regulating corporate takeovers, some of which may be outside their own borders. The fear from some groups is that mine assets may be acquired by less than desirable acquirers.

One specific example that I have seen is related to the 2015 disposition of foreign resource assets by both Barrick and Ivanhoe to Zijin, a Chinese company. I don’t know much about Zijin, other than having heard Norway’s government directed its $790 billion oil fund to sell holdings in some companies because of their environmental performance. Zijin was one of these companies.

In light of the Norway decision, some groups are questioning whether Zijin should be allowed to buy mining assets currently owned by Canadian or American companies.

Its a balancing act

It appears that some groups would like their governments to step in and prevent a company from selling their mining assets to another company that may have a poor reputation or limited financial capacity. The fear is the new company would operate in a non-sustainable manner and ignore local environmental rules.

Government sanctioning of deals gets tricky in that how do they define which companies have poor reputations and which don’t. Also how can they dictate to the shareholders of a company, possibly nearing bankruptcy, that they cannot sell their assets to a certain interested party?

Governments have stepped in and blocked acquisitions in the past but these were mainly related to deals involving antitrust issues or technology of national interest.

It will be interesting to see whether the idea of governments sanctioning the acceptability of acquirers in the mining industry will gain traction.

It may be an overstep for the government of one country to block the acquisition of a foreign property when the owner may not have the capability to develop the project while the acquirer does.

The foreign government may want to see their own resources developed but another government may be hindering that by blocking transfer of ownership.

The last thing we want are more country-to-country disputes. I presume the only option in this case is to revoke the mineral concessions and assign them to someone willing to develop them. One company will lose an asset, which creates new issues related to compensation. It also harms the reputation of that country as a place to invest in. Unfortunately it had no choice if a foreign government was getting in the way.

Conclusion

The bottom line is whether the government of one country have the veto rights to prevent development in another country? Does the government of one country have the right to decide the environmental standards in another via prevention of an asset sale?

Can pre-concentration become a savior for the mining industry by lowering metal production costs?

Pre-concentration isn’t new

Pre-concentration has been around for many years. However the techniques available are generally limited. Hence many ore types are not amenable to it..unfortunately.

The main methods available are:

Density separation, or specific gravity differences are another property that some pre-concentration methods can use. Gravity based systems such as dense media separation (DMS), jigs, or centrifugal concentrators are currently in commercial production.

Benefits

Pre-concentration provides several benefits:

If done underground or at satellite mine site, the ore hoisting or ore transport costs can be reduced.

If the pre-concentration rejects can be used as mine backfill, this can reduce backfilling costs.

Processing of higher grade pre-concentrated mill feed can reduce energy costs and ultimately reduce the cash cost of metal produced.

Grinding costs can be reduced if waste particles are harder than the ore particles and they can be scalped.

Minimizing waste through the process plant will reduce the quantity of fine tailings that must be disposed of.

Lowering operating costs may potentially allow lowering of the cutoff grade and increasing mineral reserves.

Higher head grades would increase metal production without needing an increase in plant throughput.

Limited ore types are suited for pre-concentration

Not all ore types are amenable to pre-concentration and therefore a rigorous testing program is required. In most cases a pre-con method is relatively obvious to metallurgical engineers but testing is still required to measure performance.

Testing is required to determine the waste rejection achieved without incurring significant ore loss. Generally one can produce a higher quality product if one is willing to reject more ore with the waste. It becomes a trade-off of metal recovery versus processing cost savings.

Fine particles generated in the crushing stage might need to bypass the pre-con circuit. If this bypassed material is sent to downstream processing circuits, one may need to examine crushers that minimize fines to avoid excessive material bypassing the pre-con circuit.

Reject waste or reject ore?

One must decide if the pre-con system should reject waste particles from the material stream or reject ore particles from the stream. The overall metal recovery and product quality may be impacted depending on which approach is used.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the mining industry is continually looking for ways to improve costs and pre-concentration may be a great way to do this. Every process plant design should take a look at it to see if is feasible for their ore type.

While the existing pre-concentration methods have their limitations, future technologies may bring in more ways to pre-concentrate. This is probably an area where research dollars would be well spent.

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

For those of you with a geotechnical background or have a general interest in learning more about rock slides and slope failures, there is an interesting website and blog for you to follow.

The website is hosted by the American Geophysical Union the world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists. The blogs on their site are written by AGU staff along with contributions from collaborators and guest bloggers.

Landslide Blog

One specific area they cover well in their Landslide Blog are the various occurrences of rock falls and landslides from any location around the globe. They will present commentary, images, and even videos of slope movements as they happen.

Often they will provide some technical opinion on what possibly caused the failure event to occur. The Landslide Blog has a semi-regular email newsletter that will keep you updated on new stories as they happen.

The following links are a few examples of the type of discussions they have on their website.

Here is a description of a small water dam failure in Greece.

Here is some video of the Samarco tailings runout in Brazil.

From time to time the Landslide Blog will examine mine slopes, tailings dams, and waste dump failures, however much of their information relates to natural earth or rock slopes along roads or in towns.

Some of their videos are quite fascinating, illustrating the forces behind some of earth’s natural erosion processes. Check it out for yourself.

The bottom line on all of this is that the less the mining industry is mentioned in the Landslide Blog, the better it is.

Note: You can sign up for the KJK mailing list to get notified when new blogs are posted.

After the Mt Polley and Samarco tailings failures, there have been ongoing discussions about the benefits of filtered (dry stack) tailings as the only way to eliminate the risk of catastrophic failure. Mining companies would all like to see risk reductions at their projects.

However what mining companies don’t like to see are the capital and operating costs associated with dry stacking.

The filtering cost and tailings transport cost are both higher than for conventional tailings disposal. Obviously this cost increase gets offset against improved environmental risk and simpler closure.

What should a mining company do?

The mining companies are fully aware of the benefits but the dilemma is the cost and being able to somehow justify the technology. Complicating their decision, companies also have other ways for reducing tailings risk.

The tailings decision gets complex.

In reality either the dam will fail or it won’t. So failure remediation money will be spent ($200M) or it won’t be spent ($ zero), it won’t be partially spent ($200k).

The accepted tailings risk therefore becomes a subjective factor.

While implementing a dry stack may reduce the risk of catastrophic failure to near zero, implementing a $100,000 per year monitoring program on a conventional tailings pond will reduce its risk to a degree.

Implementing a more expensive $500,000 per year monitoring program would reduce that risk even further.

Installing in a water treatment plant to enable periodic water releases may further lower the tailings risk.

What level of risk is acceptable?

Environmental groups continually discuss ways of forcing regulators and mining companies to take action against the risk of tailings failure. This is commendable.

However they generally fail to provide any guidance on what level of risk would be acceptable to them or to the public. It is difficult for these groups to actually define what an acceptable risk level is. They offer no solutions, other than its either zero risk or shut down all mining.

Conclusion

We know that mining is here to stay so we all should work together towards solutions.

The solutions need to be realistic in order to be taken seriously and to play a real role in redefining tailings disposal. Dry stack may not be the only solution and we should be looking for more ways to improve tailings disposal.

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

Mining can take advantage of 3D printing

Blattman Brothers Consulting

Physical models convey scale, interactions and scope in ways that no other method can. Technology like 3D printing improves the model-making process by allowing the addition of high def orthophotos, reducing the model cost, increasing its precision and delivery time.

Currently 3D models can be made in a variety of materials, but the primary three are extruded plastic, gypsum powder, or acrylics.

Plastic models (ABS or PLA) are cheap, fast and can created on relatively inexpensive, hobbyist printers. The downside to these models is that the number of colors available in a single model are limited, typically a single color.

Powder-based printers can typically print in 6.5M colors, allowing for vibrant, photo-realistic colors and infinite choices for title blocks, logos and artistic techniques. However, gypsum models can be as fragile as porcelain and require some care in handling.

Acrylic models allow for translucent printing (“looking into the ground to see the geological structure”) and are more durable than the gypsum. Nevertheless, acrylic models are significantly more expensive than the other two types and the color palettes are limited.

Here are some examples.

The ability to grasp a map or technical drawing is a learned skill and not everyone has it. If you’ve just spent $20M on a feasibility study, why assume that the attendees in a public meeting will fully appreciate the scale and overall impact of your proposed project with 2D maps?

That message can be better conveyed with a model that is easily understood. One of Blattman’s clients, Luck Stone, recently described how they use their 3D printed models in this video.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that 3D printing is here to stay and its getting better each year. Go ahead and check out the technology to see if it can advance your path forward .

We would be interested in hearing about any experiences your have had with 3D modelling, pro’s and con’s.

Note: You can sign up for the KJK mailing list to get notified when new blogs are posted.

What is one thing that we constantly hear about negatively yet we continue to do it (although we know it can be bad for us)? Is that thing smoking or is it fluid tailings storage? Can we break either of these habits?

Short term pain for long term gain.

We also know of many mines that have used fluid tailings their entire operating lives without any incidents. Therefore some say it is fine to continue doing that.

The question for me has become whether the mining industry should kick the habit of fluid tailings storage even though not every dam has failed.

Quitting isn’t easy

Quitting smoking takes real effort, some pain, maybe a change in lifestyle, but most importantly an overall commitment to quit. It isn’t easy but pays off in the long run.

The same holds for fluid tailings storage.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that no one wants to sit downwind of a smoker and no one wants to live downstream of a tailings dam. Perhaps it is time for the mining industry to kick the habit of fluid tailings storage, regardless of the cost and discomfort. Short term pain for long term gain.

Note: If you would like to get notified when new blogs are posted, then sign up on the KJK mailing list on the website. Otherwise I post notices on LinkedIn, so follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkuchling/.

I have seen some on-line discussions about whether governments should be regulating corporate takeovers, some of which may be outside their own borders. The fear from some groups is that mine assets may be acquired by less than desirable acquirers.

In light of the Norway decision, some groups are questioning whether Zijin should be allowed to buy mining assets currently owned by Canadian or American companies.