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Mining Education and Innovation

‘The Smartest Places on Earth’ – by Van Agtmael and Bakker – by Shawn Donnan (Financial Times – March 13, 2016)

https://www.ft.com/

An optimist’s guide to the rust belt revival

For years the dominant narrative about the American rust belt has been one of decline and decimation — a once-thriving industrial core turned into a dystopian wasteland by the winds of free trade and persistent undercutting by China.

But in The Smartest Places on Earth, former financier Antoine van Agtmael and journalist Fred Bakker make a courageous case for an alternative vision. What if the real story of the rust belt these days is one of reinvention? What if we ought to consider these regions “the emerging hotspots of global innovation”?

It is a courageous argument because it goes against the political grain in America. Eight years after the global financial crisis, the US is reaping the political damage of not just the crisis but also of the decades-long economic patterns blamed for hollowing out the manufacturing sector and the middle class.

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‘The Geography of Genius,’ by Eric Weiner – by Ashlee Vance (New Your Times Sunday Book Review – January 8, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union tried to make a version of Silicon Valley from scratch. A city called Zelenograd came to life on the outskirts of Moscow and was populated with all manner of brainy Soviet engineers.

The hope — naturally — was that a concentration of clever minds coupled with ample funding would result in a wellspring of innovation and help Russia keep pace with California’s electronics boom. The experiment worked as well as one might expect. Few people will read this on a Mayakovsky-branded tablet or smartphone.

Many similar attempts have been made in the subsequent decades to replicate Silicon Valley and its abundance of creativity and ingenuity. Such efforts have largely failed. It seems near impossible to will an exceptional place into being or to manufacture the conditions that lead to an outpouring of genius.

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Why A Mining Company Is Getting Into Face Recognition Software – by Krithika Varagur (Huffington Post – July 9, 2016)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Caterpillar Safety Services monitors its truck drivers for signs of sleep fatigue. Drowsy driving is notoriously tough to detect. There’s no test to prove it, the way a breathalyzer can prove someone was driving drunk. But technology to detect drowsy driving is in the works.

In commercial transport, one industry is leading the way: mining. The stakes are particularly high in this field since the enormous haul trucks used in mining are several times the height of a person. Imagine dozing off at the wheel of one of these.

Caterpillar Safety Services, a consultancy branch of the global mining company, has partnered with the tech company Seeing Machines to put fatigue detection software in thousands of mining trucks around the world. The software uses a camera, speaker and light system to measure signs of fatigue like eye closure and head position.

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Province sinks funding into bio-mining research – by Jonathan Migneault (Northern Ontario Business – July 8, 2016)

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A new Laurentian University industrial research chair position in bio-mining, bio-remediation and science communication has the potential to kickstart a new industry in Sudbury that could create hundreds or even thousands of jobs, said the director of the Vale Living with Lakes Centre.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say there will be an entire industry built around this,” said Laurentian professor John Gunn, who is also the Canada research chair for stressed aquatic systems. “The demands are so big.”

The province is investing more than $630,000 through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation to create the five-year research chair position at the university. The announcement was made at a press conference in Sudbury on May 9.

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University of Saskatoon opens mine reclamation research facility – by Betty Ann Adam (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – July 7, 2016)

http://thestarphoenix.com/

The metres-thick layers of minerals, soil and vegetation used to cover tailings and waste rock at decommissioned mines need to prevent hazardous materials from leaching to surface water for centuries into the future.

A new research testing facility unveiled Thursday at the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security will be used to better understand how those “cover systems” respond to weather and other natural elements like tree roots, burrowing animals and insects, said Jeffrey McDonnell, head of the Global Institute for Water Security’s Mine Overlay Site Testing (MOST) facility.

Until now, the only way for a mining company to know how to isolate waste was to use computer modelling to design a layered system based on predictions of how a particular site would respond to the environment and then build an actual test site at the mine and monitor it for five or 10 years. Mine closure is one of the largest costs of the mining enterprise, McDonnell said.

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‘Major’ Sudbury project receives $5 million – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – June 30, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Laurentian University has received $5 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. toward a $100-million research project that will develop a mass of expertise on how to improve mineral exploration.

The NOHFC announcement was made Wednesday by Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle, who said the project dovetails nicely with the mineral development strategy his government announced in December.

That strategy is part of the Government of Ontario’s blueprint to make Ontario the global leader in the mining industry. Getting to that No. 1 spot depends on how well mining research and innovation are harnessed, said Gravelle.

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NEWS RELEASE: Ontario Supporting Geoscience Research (Ministry of Northern Development and Mines – June 29, 2016)

Initiative to Help Stimulate Mineral Development in Northern Ontario

Ontario is supporting a groundbreaking research proposal that will help lead to future mining innovations and create jobs in the North.

The province’s Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) is investing $5 million over seven years to support Laurentian University in its proposal to form a research consortium to better understand how and where base and precious metal deposits formed. This research could lead to improved success in finding ore bodies for future mining development.

Since 2003, Ontario has invested more than $1 billion through the NOHFC to more than 7,463 projects, leveraging more than $3.97 billion in direct economic activity and creating or sustaining over 28,100 jobs in Northern Ontario.

Investing in research and innovation is part of the government’s economic plan to build Ontario up and deliver on its number-one priority to grow the economy and create jobs.

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Sudbury experiment heads to London – by Mary Katherine Keown (Sudbury Star – June 27, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Get your geek on with Mayor Brian Bigger and the folks from SNOLAB, as they enchant a whole new continent with an exhibit of the orb’s great achievements.

Bigger is heading to London, England, on Tuesday with his chief of staff, Melissa Zanette, as well as Ian Wood, head of the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation, to sell Sudbury to a global audience and to launch a SNOLAB exhibition at Canada House, the country’s high commission in the United Kingdom. The exhibit, coincidentally, opens on July 1.

“I really believe it’s a fantastic opportunity to advocate for our city and to promote economic development, and to represent our city,” Bigger said. “There’s a lot of focus on our city through the scientific community for Arthur McDonald’s Nobel Prize in physics and so this is SNOLAB’s opportunity to present Sudbury and all the scientific work that’s been done there.”

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CEMI releases results of $6.7M deep underground mining research – by Marina von Stackelberg (CBC News Sudbury – June 24, 2016)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

New tools and guidelines could prevent rock walls from collapsing

New research spearheaded in Sudbury could prevent injuries, deaths, and mine shut-downs by helping mining companies predict and prevent rock walls from collapsing kilometres below the earth’s surface.

“There was a need by the deep mining industry to better understand how the rock in underground mines behaves in response to the mining process itself,” said Damien Duff.

Duff is vice-president of geoscience and geotechnical research and development at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) in Sudbury, the group that led the research.

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PRESS RELEASE: CEMI’s S.U.M.I.T. deep mining program delivers industry value results: A Rich Partnership of Academic and Industry Research Teams

CEMI S.U.M.I.T. Deep Mining Program Participants
CEMI S.U.M.I.T. Deep Mining Program Participants

Mining Deeper, Safer, and More Economically

Sudbury, ON (June 23, 2016) – CEMI (Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation) has completed a one of a kind $6.7 million collaborative R&D initiative. The SUMIT Program – Smart Underground Monitoring & Integrated Technologies for deep mines (managed by CEMI and led by Laurentian University in partnership with Queen’s University and the University of Toronto, with contributions from the University of Waterloo, the University of Alberta and Carleton University) aimed at developing and advancing smart engineering techniques, technologies and tools to facilitate step-change advances in productivity, efficiency, energy optimization in underground mining at depth.

Through collaborative research and development with the support of Vale, Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations – A Glencore Company, Rio Tinto, and the Ontario Government, SUMIT focused on three challenges associated with deep underground mining: 1. Rock mass characterization to “better see into the ground” and anticipate risks and interpret dynamic processes; 2. Enhanced mine development for faster mine construction to increase economic returns; and 3. Sustaining deep mines through energy optimization and underground environmental controls.

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[South Africa] Govt prioritises fight against acid mine water in Gauteng – by Dylan Slater (MiningWeekly.com – June 17, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Government’s acknowledgment of the severity of acid mine drainage (AMD) in the Witwatersrand, Gauteng, and the subsequent priority given to taking steps to alleviate the problem are of “significant importance”, states Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) CEO Mariette Liefferink.

After years of numerous mines having decanted, or verged on the precipice of decanting acid mine water, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) has taken strategic steps with the allocation of funds and plans to tackle the issue of acid mine water poisoning water courses throughout South Africa.

Acid mine water is commonly referred to as AMD. AMD is generated when sulphide-bearing minerals, often in the form of pyrite (which is iron sulphide found in reefs mined for gold), are exposed to oxygen and water. This process, termed pyrite oxidation, is characterised by the generation of sulphuric acid and dissolved iron.

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Creating the World’s Biggest Robots Proves Challenging for Miners – by David Stringer and Rebecca Keenan (Bloomberg News – June 17, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Creating the world’s largest moving robots to transport iron-ore across the vast Australian Outback is proving more complex and time-consuming than expected for Rio Tinto Group, fueling doubts the technology can deliver promised returns as major rivals defer similar investments.

Rio, which gets more profit from iron-ore than anything else, is already two years behind schedule with a $518 million effort to deploy automated trains on its 1,700-kilometers (1,056 miles) of track. While the system was designed to save money by expanding capacity and reducing labor costs, instead the delays mean the producer has cut output forecasts, and raised questions about whether the project is viable, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

“There was an underestimation of the mechanical work we had to actually do versus the reality,” Andrew Harding, the chief executive officer of Rio’s iron-ore unit, said in a June 3 interview in Perth.

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NEWS RELEASE: The National Research Council is spearheading research efforts with provinces and industry to develop innovative aluminium products

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/index.html

Tuesday, June 14, 2016 – Ottawa, Ontario ─ A newly formed alliance called ALTec Industrial research R&D Group is consolidating research efforts in the Canadian aluminium sector to develop innovative aluminium products for ground transportation vehicles. As a cost-effective and sustainable material, aluminum is increasingly being used to manufacture components for lightweight vehicles which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and meet increasingly stringent fuel consumption requirements.

“By 2020, the world aluminum market in the transportation sector alone is forecasted to represent more than 65 billion US dollars,” says Michel Dumoulin, General Manager of Automotive and Surface Transportation at the National Research Council of Canada. “Canadian businesses include aluminum in the design of their vehicles, but we saw a gap in knowledge transfer and this is where ALTec comes in.”

ALTec has already 23 members and partners which will have access to state-of-the-art facilities and Canada’s most advanced expertise in aluminium forming, assembling, corrosion control, and performance validation.

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Mining and nuclear decommissioning: Robots in dangerous and dirty areas (Robohub.org – June 3, 2016)

I2Mine Full Promotional Video from MIRO on Vimeo.

http://robohub.org/

Workers have long confronted dangerous and dirty jobs. They’ve had to dig to the bottom of mines, or put themselves in harm’s way to decommission ageing nuclear sites. It’s time to make these jobs safer and more efficient, robots are just starting to provide the necessary tools.

Mining has become much safer, yet workers continue to die every year in accidents across Europe, highlighting the perils of this genuinely needed industry. Everyday products use minerals extracted from mining, and 30 million jobs in the EU depend on their supply. Robots are a way to modernise an industry that is constantly under pressure with the fall in prices of commodities and the lack of safe access to hard-to-reach resources. Making mining greener is also a key concern.

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University of Saskatchewan offers mining specialization – by Alex Frazer-Harrison (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – May 28, 2016)

http://thestarphoenix.com/

POSTMEDIA CONTENT WORKS – A new set of undergraduate courses at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Engineering is helping open the door for students seeking to enter the mining field.

The “mining engineering option” courses in geological, chemical and mechanical engineering allow students seeking a bachelor of engineering degree the opportunity to take additional specialized classes related to mining. Announced in 2013, the first five students to enrol will graduate this spring.

“This means students taking engineering degrees in chemical, mechanical or geological can pick up these mining-focused classes. … We have a strong interest at home because there are still very large mining operations in Saskatchewan,” says Al Shpyth, executive director of the International Minerals Innovation Institute, which entered into a funding agreement with the U of S for five mining-related courses and the options.

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