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Mining Education and Innovation

Research network reaches out to businesses for deep mining research – by Jonathan Migneault (Northern Ontario Business – December 3, 2014)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

CEMI digs deeper

The Ultra-Deep Mining Network in Sudbury received 62 proposals from researchers and mining supply and services companies to bring forward any ideas that would improve ultra-deep mining productivity or safety to reality.

The Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) launched the Ultra-Deep Mining Network to find practical advances that would make ultra-deep mining — deeper than 2.5 kilometres or roughly 8,000 feet — more economically viable.

Thanks to contributions from the federal government and mining sector, the network has $46 million to apply to research over a five-year period.

Bora Ugurgel, managing director of the Ultra-Deep Mining Network, said most proposals were from mining supply and services companies, while around 10 per cent were from academics.

The network has identified four areas of research that would benefit mining at extreme depths: rock stress reduction; energy reduction; material transport and productivity; and improved human health.

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Education ‘absolutely critical’ to mining sector: SAMSSA – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – December 04, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Sudbury’s two colleges promote their services to mining sector

Sudbury’s post-secondary institutions play an “absolutely critical” role in the city’s mining cluster, says the executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA).

“New programs are the big thing for us,” said Dick DeStefano at the organization’s 11th annual general meeting Dec. 4. “Our guys hire everybody they can.”

When he addressed SAMSSA members and local dignitaries that morning, DeStefano identified four critical components of Sudbury’s mining cluster: mining extraction, support services, post-secondary institutions and research institutions.

Cambrian College President Bill Best, and Collège Boréal President Pierre Riopel took to the stage to address the local mining supply and services sector, and outline the solutions their institutions can provide. Riopel announced Boréal will launch a new prospecting and exploration technology program in 2015.

The program, he said, was a direct response to industry needs after conversations with DeStefano and other mining sector representatives. “The college system is a very nimble system,” Riopel said. “We’re listening to industry.

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Conference shines spotlight on deep mining expertise in Sudbury – by Norm Tollinsky (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – November 26, 2014)

This column was originally published in the December 2014 issue of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal.

Delegates from around the world share deep mining solutions

Deep Mining 2014, held in Sudbury September 16 to 18, was a big hit, attracting 302 attendees from around the world.

“It was an overwhelming success,” said conference co-chair and Laurentian University associate professor Marty Hudyma. “We really didn’t know what to expect in view of the fact that the industry is in a downturn. We were optimistic that we would get 200 delegates, and 250 would have been beyond our wildest dreams, so we were ecstatic with 302.”

According to Hudyma, approximately half of the delegates were from outside the Sudbury area, including contingents from Australia, South America, Europe and South Africa.

Deep Mining 2014, the seventh International Conference on Deep and High Stress Mining, was hosted by the Australian Centre for Geomechanics. It attracted 62 papers on a wide variety of topics including ground control, seismicity, ventilation, mine design and logistics.

“The feedback I got from delegates was that there were a lot of very good case studies on deep mining and the challenges they have to deal with,” said Hudyma.

“There are three real challenges. The first is the ground conditions and the stresses are getting more difficult, so we have to modify our mining practices to be able to work effectively and safely at great depth.

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Roots run deep in Sudbury’s reclamation efforts – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – November 21, 2014)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business  provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.  

Still lots of work to be done, though

Forty years, $28 million and 9.5 million trees after reclamation efforts began, the moonscape that was once Sudbury is taking on a greener hue — but only half the job is done.

A total of 81,000 hectares have been impacted by the city’s industrial activity, which started with the logging industry in the early 1800s, and intensified in the early days of mining when open roasting beds sent high levels of sulphur dioxide into the air, raining down metal particulate across the landscape.

Since its inception in 1973, VETAC (the Vegetation Enhancement Technical Advisory Committee) has brought together volunteers from science, industry, academia, government and Sudbury’s citizenry to return the land to its original state, said Dr. Peter Becket, a reclamation, restoration and wetland ecologist with Laurentian University who’s dedicated his life’s work to the task. But it hasn’t been easy.

“The estimate is that we have about 7,000 hectares to do,” said Beckett, who gave the keynote address during the Nov. 20 gathering of the Sudbury chapter of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).

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OBITUARY: Engineer Walter Curlook was ‘Pied Piper of productivity’ – by Judy Stoffman (Globe and Mail – November 20, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Walter Curlook’s favourite film was the Danish drama Babette’s Feast. Perhaps this story, of a Parisian chef who takes refuge in an austere religious community, then spends all her money to prepare a sumptuous meal that awakens her hosts’ repressed senses, confirmed Mr. Curlook’s belief in generosity – sharing wealth to enlarge people’s horizons.

As a metallurgist, engineer and manager who spent his entire career as an executive at Inco when it was the world’s largest nickel miner, he understood how to create wealth as well as share it. Mr. Curlook, who died on Oct. 3 in Toronto of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 85, held 14 patents for improvements to nickel refining and played a role in the establishment of a science centre, a college and a research facility for particle physics in Sudbury that has no equal in Canada.

Brilliant and tenacious, he never stopped working. After he retired from Inco, he became an adjunct professor in materials science and engineering (unpaid) at the University of Toronto and donated $1-million to set up two laboratories there for the study of minerals.

“He was one of those people able to use a larger percentage of his brain than most of us,” his son Michael said. His daughter Christine Stinson recalled her father’s ability to be so absorbed in some problem that he would not hear his children speak: “He would sort of zone out and my mother would tell us, ‘Quiet – your father is thinking.’”

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NORCAT training centre at Collège Boréal – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – November 17, 2014)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – NORCAT, the Sudbury-based mining research and innovation agency, has opened a training and development centre in Timmins. The facility is set up at the Timmins campus of Collège Boréal.

NORCAT Timmins, as the facility is called, will provide programs, services and training resources that focus on such things as reducing injuries, saving lives and enhancing productivity in the workplace, said Ken Stewart, the manager of training and development for NORCAT Timmins.

Stewart said Northern College had previously established an e-learning training partnership in Timmins but he said there was a market demand to “grow the business” in Timmins.

“Certainly we will have classroom training and this will enhance their e-learning courses. We have in excess of 50 courses,” Stewart said.

NORCAT has set up two training and e-learning classrooms at the college and Stewart said he is confident that Northeastern Ontario mining operations will soon be taking advantage of the facility.

“Of course, the big thing now is simulation training. That is huge. NORCAT has a simulator in Sudbury. We can look forward to seeing either that simulator, or a stand alone simulator, come to Timmins to be used with the local mining community,” said Stewart.

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Micro-organisms have mega-potential for mining – by Steve Armstrong, Carl Weatherell and Jean Vavrek (Halifax Chronicle Herald – November 12, 2014)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/

Steve Armstrong is president and CEO, Genome Atlantic; Carl Weatherell is executive director and CEO, Canadian Mining Innovation Council; Jean Vavrek is executive director, Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

Canada is fortunate to have a plethora of natural resources. In Nova Scotia alone, the mining industry is turning some of those resources into 5,500 jobs, contributing $420 million to the annual economy, and of course, providing the raw materials for products that are used every day.

But all of that doesn’t come easily. Globally, the mining sector faces environmental challenges, rising production costs, and fluctuating prices that warrant substantial interest in discovering new solutions to extract these resources in the most efficient and sustainable way.

Deloitte’s 2014 Tracking the Trends report on mining says: “Miners should innovate by adopting technologies to enable mine design and planning, energy supply, as well as adoption of emerging technologies.”

One of those emerging areas of technology is genomics — the combination of genetics, biology and computer science that studies the DNA in a living organism. This may seem an unusual focus for a sector like mining, but hidden within the rocks and dirt are countless communities of microscopic organisms known as microbes (such as bacteria) that could play a gigantic role in the sector.

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Sudbury’s Superstack could be coming down: Vale – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – November 4, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

A Sudbury landmark, rated 10 out of 45 attractions to see in the Nickel City, could be coming down, depending upon the result of an analysis by Vale Ltd. The mining company may decommission the 1,250-foot Superstack that has become synonymous with Sudbury’s regreening efforts.

It cost about $25 million to build the giant smokestack in the early 1970s to move sulphur dioxide emissions miles out of the Sudbury Basin where it was killing vegetation and polluting the air.

Because today’s mining processes produce so much less SO2, the Superstack may be superfluous and a much shorter stack could likely do the job.

Kelly Strong, vice-president of Vale’s Ontario and United Kingdom operations, made the announcement about the Superstack study at a noon luncheon Monday of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.

No business person asked questions of Strong, not even about the Superstack, when Strong finished his 25-minute presentation to 260 people. Strong told reporters after the luncheon that talk of disposing of the giant stack is bound to create a buzz in the community.

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Mining sector lacks support for innovation: Industry expert – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life –  November 03, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Pierre Lassonde to address mining sector challenges at Laurentian Nov. 6

The mining industry lacks the government support needed to innovate, says Pierre Lassonde, chairman of Franco-Nevada Corporation.

Lassonde is scheduled to speak at Laurentian University’s Fraser Auditorium Thursday, Nov. 6, where he plans to address many of the issues Canada’s mining sector faces.

“The Ontario government blew $300 million on MaRS (Innovation) here in Toronto for high technology that has gone nowhere, producing nothing,” Lassonde said in a phone interview with NorthernLife.ca. “Why don’t you invest that money in exploration and find billion-dollar ore bodies that are going to produce a billion dollars worth of taxes?”

Lassonde said there have not been any major technological breakthroughs in the mining sector since the 1980s. While machinery has gotten bigger and more efficient, and exploration techniques have gotten more refined, nothing has changed dramatically, he said.

“We’re reaching the limit of many of the technologies we’ve been using for the past 50 years,” Lassonde said. The advent of reflection seismology in oil exploration increased the rate of new discoveries from one for every 10 drill holes, to seven for every 10 drill holes, Lassonde said, but there has been no such advancement in mining exploration.

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Press Release: Ultra-Deep Mining Network issues Pan-Canadian Call for Proposals

Sudbury, ON (October 27, 2014) – Canada’s Ultra-Deep Mining Network (UDMN) is pleased to announce a Pan-Canadian – Call for Proposals for its Think Deep Program.

This $46 million business-driven network, managed by the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) aims to become the leading expert in ultra-deep (below 2.5km) research and innovation and to solve the challenges that impact resource extraction in these environments. Recognizing the importance of deep mining, earlier this year, the federal government’s Business‐led Networks of Centres of Excellence (BL‐NCE) program awarded $15 million to Ultra-Deep Mining Network.

This program aims to support solution-providers capable of creating the industry-needed tools and technologies that will help ultra-deep mines (below 2.5kms) to operate more effectively and safely, generate more value, improve the human environment and enhance mine productivity in the short term.

Working to amplify and expedite commercial value and enhance ultra-deep mining innovations in Canada and beyond, this program is intended to help the mining industry accelerate research and development, increase investment in R&D and/or deploy proven innovative and advanced technologies. This program is not intended to support fundamental research, but rather apply new forward-looking technologies to mining at depth.

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Saskatchewan mining has quiet future – by Paul Sinkewicz (Regina Leader-Post – October 25, 2014)

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

Gouging potash from deep beneath Saskatchewan’s surface has been the work of nasty, snarling, belching beasts of machines for more than 60 years.

The application of brute force courtesy of workhorse diesel engines did the job just fine, but with each burly r.p.m. came the inevitable byproducts of internal combustion – fumes and diesel particles and the need to bring more sweet, clean air down the shaft and deep into the subterranean tendrils of the mines.

That will all change if Patric Byrns has his way. The president and CEO of PapaBravo Innovations has been rapidly creating a new way of doing business in the province’s potash mines with a line of electric trucks. They are clean, quiet and powerful, and they are attracting attention.

“You can only exhaust so much diesel particulate into a confined space without expanding the ventilation system,” said Byrns. “So, in that environment, if you can replace diesel engines with electrics, it expands their production capabilities for what they have for ventilation, and ventilation costs a lot of money.”

Byrns said converting to electric vehicles provides operators with almost a blank cheque for how many vehicles they can put underground.

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[Deltion Innovations] Sudbury company works to develop space drill (CBC News Sudbury – October 20, 2014)

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

Deltion Innovations is working to develop drill that would prospect for water and ice on the moon

A Greater Sudbury mining innovation company is getting to literally take some of its equipment out of this world. Deltion Innovations Limited is in the process of developing a drill for the Canadian Space Agency and the goal is to have the drill mine for water and ice on the moon.

CEO Dale Boucher said the drill is being developed in the company’s test facility in Capreol. Testing is being done by using a liquid nitrogen tank that is used to cool down the sample, filled with simulated moon dirt and water, he said.

This test phase involves trying to drill through material at liquid nitrogen temperatures — about minus 180 degrees Celsius. “The moon is a little bit cooler than that,” he said. “The moon is actually about minus 220 Celsius.”

Benefits of space mining

Boucher said the prospecting tool will look for water and ice near the south pole of the moon. “Water is kind of the ore of choice for space mining right now,” he said.

“Water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen using a very simple solar cell system. So, if you break it into hydrogen and oxygen you have a couple of things: you have oxygen to breathe, you have hydrogen and oxygen which is the most powerful rocket propellant that we know of.”

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Management innovation may be game changer for mining productivity – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – October 20, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

According to a new study by EY and The Sustainable Minerals Institute, passion for innovation in the mining sector has not been lost.

RENO (MINEWEB) – Productivity is the number one challenge in the mining sector, says a new study by EY Global Mining & Metals and The Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia.

During boom times, many mines expanded quickly to meet greater demand, ironically generating a decline in productivity levels, “primarily due to the challenge of managing complexity, compounded by the talent challenge, and lack of appropriate skills development,” observes their study titled Productivity in mining: now comes the hard part.

The report is based on more than 60 in-depth interviews with senior mining executives globally. The document assesses the key productivity challenges, initiatives being developed to overcome these challenges and opportunities to better focus productivity-improvement initiatives in the post-supercycle environment.

Among these are depleting reserves and falling grades, which have caused and continue to contribute to declining mining productivity. Meanwhile, the mining sector is also suffering from an aging workforce with retirement rates expected to increase over the next 10 years.

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BHP won’t rush to follow Rio to automate as its manned trucks beat robots – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – October 20, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

BHP Billiton’s mining truck drivers are outpacing their robotic counterparts when it comes to efficiency and loading at West Australian iron ore mines, indicating the miner is a long way from any decision to follow rival Rio Tinto in a large-scale driverless truck rollout.

For a little more than a year, BHP has been trialling Caterpillar autonomous trucks at its newest Pilbara region iron ore mine, Jimblebar.

The trial was recently extended to March and a decision to add three more trucks to the nine-truck fleet was taken.

But despite autonomous Caterpillar trucks making up a little over a third of the 25 trucks at the overperforming Jimblebar — the mine came on early, ramped up quicker than expected and will now produce more than flagged — they are only moving 16 per cent of the dirt and ore.

The fact annual truck hours in the manned fleet across BHP iron ore have grown from 4500 to more than 6000, a one-third improvement, is a big factor.

“We’ve seen a very material improvement in the manned truck productivity level,” BHP iron ore mines boss Eduard Haegel said at the company’s Perth office last week.

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BHP Billiton leads miners’ retreat from supersizing – by James Wilson (Financial Times – October 19, 2014)

 http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

More trucks, more shovels, bigger holes in the ground: the mining sector has been supersizing itself for years, convinced that going large was also the way to earn outsized profits.

But the conviction that size alone matters may no longer hold true, with “diseconomies of scale” a significant factor in mining’s waning productivity, according to a report based on interviews with industry leaders.

The problems caused by growing corporate complexity were among the factors that BHP Billiton, the world’s most valuable mining group by market capitalisation, pointed to when it decided on a big company break-up this year.

Andrew Mackenzie, chief executive, said he was worried by diseconomies of scale at BHP, which is to spin off about $15bn of non-core assets into a separate company. BHP will subsequently run just seven mining projects and five petroleum fields.

However, it is not just unwieldy companies that are a concern, according to the report by EY, the consultancy. It finds that individual mining operations are sometimes getting too large to manage as effectively as companies would like, thereby contributing to the productivity problems plaguing the sector.

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