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Mining Education and Innovation

2.5 kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface is the next frontier for space-suited miners [CEMI Mining Research] (National Post – May 20, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

https://www.miningexcellence.ca/

As mining activities go deeper beneath the surface of the Earth, the harsher the environment becomes for people and machines. Intense heat, lack of fresh air, contaminants and structural instability is driving researchers’ efforts at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) to design protective equipment that can stand up to the realities of a deep mining environment.

The next generation of integrated personal protective equipment (IPPE) will represent a remarkable feat of integration and collaboration by multiple industry partners. The suits and helmets will embody everything from thermal controls and air supply to communications and heads-up display capabilities. They will filter, cool, protect and monitor vital signs, while providing lighting, power supply and recording functions.

“All mines will have the same issues as we go deeper,” says Douglas Morrison, CEMI president and chief executive officer. “Many are at that Rubicon we call 2.5 kilometers. That’s typically the point where it becomes difficult to push cool air from the surface and keep it cool when it arrives. It’s a significant line in the sand.”

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ThoroughTec joins the NORCAT Global Centre of Excellence in Training and Development / Health and Safety

http://www.norcat.org/

Wednesday, May 28th, 2014 – Timmins, ON. – NORCAT is excited to announce the addition of ThoroughTec, the world’s leading mining equipment simulation provider, to the NORCAT Global Centre of Excellence in Training and Development / Health and Safety. This collaborative Centre is focused on developing and providing world-class programs, services and resources to reduce injuries, save lives and enhance productivity in the workplace.

The Centre will leverage and build on NORCAT’s 20-year history as a leader in health and safety program development
and administration for the skilled labour industries around the world. Don Duval, NORCAT’s CEO says, “The addition of
ThoroughTec’s CYBERMINE4 simulator demonstrates our continued focus on investing in innovative and complementary
training techniques for the global mining industry, pushing NORCAT to a new level of excellence and capability. In
addition, our partnership with ThoroughTec demonstrates our focus on both domestic and international market
opportunities for skilled labour training and development.”

As part of the Centre, NORCAT will utilize ThoroughTec’s CYBERMINE4 mobile, state-of-the-art mining equipment training
simulator that will complement and be integrated with NORCAT’s existing in-person and on-line training programs.

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New technologies enable miners to go deeper in northern Ontario – by Angela Harmantas (GBR Reports – May 22, 2014)

http://gbreports.com/industry.php?i=2

Overcoming the challenges associated with ultra-deep mining in northern Ontario.

TORONOTO, CANADA – Ontario is known for its long history in hard rock, underground metal extraction. Home to world-class gold and base metal deposits located deep underneath the earth’s surface, decades of mining means that those metals that are easily reached are now gone. Rather than shuttering their mines, companies in northern Ontario are working at depths of between 2 km and 3 km underground to extract high-grade material from previously inaccessible deposits.

Deep mining presents huge technical challenges. Heavy equipment must be modified to fit tight, confined spaces. Sinking a 2,500 m shaft requires stronger materials and vigilant safety protocols. Water management is critical, as is ventilation. Working conditions at nearly 3,000 m are hot, wet and cramped.

Cementation Canada, based in North Bay, Ontario, dealt with one of the world’s deepest mines at GlencoreXstrata’s Kidd project in Timmins. The Kidd copper-zinc mine is the deepest base metals mine in the world, and the company was tasked to design its No. 4 shaft. “It was a winze where the collar started at 4,700 ft (1,433 m) below surface,” explained Roy Slack, president of Cementation Canada. “Instead of constructing it incrementally, we built both simultaneously, which took a year off the project schedule.” By the time it was finished, the shaft bottom was 3,014 m below surface.

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Fully automated mines ‘a distinct possibility’ – by Shawn Conner (Vancouver Sun – May 13, 2014)

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

Safety concerns drive mining industry to embrace mechanized performance of repetitive tasks

Increasingly, the mining industry is turning to robotics. In some parts of the world, drones and driverless trucks are being used for mining operations. In B.C., most of the robotics so far are used in drilling. “Underground, we are further ahead than across Canada in terms of either using robotic or semi-autonomous-type pieces of equipment, particularly with drills,” said John Thompson.

A part-time professor at Cornell University, Thompson is the founder of PetraScience Consultants Inc. and is a Chair at the Canada Mining Innovation Council. Many of the machines used for drilling at the New Afton copper-gold mine west of Kamloops are automated or partly robotic.

“Our jumbo drills are semirobotic,” said Sean Masse, mine manager for New Afton, which has both open pit and underground operations. The big Sandvik drills are 12.5 metres long, two metres high and three metres tall. The 21.8-tonne drills bore the holes for the explosives that blast ore free.

“Our surveyors will draw up a design for how the drilling should go, and then we put that card into the jumbo’s computer, and the jumbo will automatically take the drill-bit to where the hole is supposed to be on that pattern. The only thing the operator does is make sure it’s not going to drill into where there’s a remnant of the last (explosive) round.”

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Opinion: Change is challenge for mining – by Phil Hopwood (Vancouver Sun – May 12, 2014)

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

Phil Hopwood is the Canadian mining sector leader at Deloitte.

Canada’s mining companies must embrace innovation and improve productivity to ensure their future success

As we enter BC Mining Week, it is an appropriate time to take an honest look at the state of the industry in the province. Mining is one of British Columbia’s vital resource industries. It contributed $9.2 billion to the provincial economy in 2012 and it is very much an industry in flux.

Historically, mining companies have waited out the storm as markets have swung, but this time it is different. We are seeing it is imperative for these companies to adjust their way of doing business if they want to survive and thrive. Mining firms continue to be confronted with the compounding challenges of cost inflation, falling commodity prices, supply-demand imbalances and decreased productivity levels.

As skilled workers retire from the workforce, and we continue to see the number of graduates in degrees such as mining engineering decline, mining companies, especially in B.C., need to embrace innovation and revise their core systems and processes while applying new approaches to financial, safety and talent management programs as well as external relations with communities, governments, shareholders and regulators.

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Miners using microbes – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – May 6, 2014)

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

The marriage of life sciences and mining goes back 2,000 years and yet it’s a relatively new relationship. Miners in 20 A.D. used microorganisms in the Red River to dissolve and separate copper from copper sulphate, and mining companies in Sudbury today use similar bacteria in bioremediation projects.

But it’s an inexact science that could be improved upon, and progress toward that end is expected to be made today (Tuesday) at the Life Sciences and Mining Workshop at the Vale Living With Lakes Centre.

Dr. Mark Poznansky, president and chief executive officer of the Ontario Genomics Institute, which is hosting the workshop, said the goal is for his institute to better understand the challenges of the mining industry. Some of the solutions to those problems may be found in life sciences.

Miners around the world are using microbes to clean up tailings to increase the yield of whatever they are mining. Microbes are being used in bioremediation, natural and through human interaction, said Poznansky, pointing to the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where he said as much as 80% of the cleanup was done without human intervention.

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Genomic tools offer vision of a cleaner industry – by Randy Shore (Vancouver Sun – April 24, 2014)

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

Bacteria may be small, but they do heavy lifting in remediation and extraction

A few key microbes are on the verge of becoming key players in B.C.’s mining industry. Engineering professor Sue Baldwin has spent much of the past 15 years farming various combinations of anaerobic bacteria that have the ability to consume or remove heavy metals from mine tailings.

Tailings are ground up rock and chemical pollutants left over from the extraction of metals from ore. Baldwin has her toes in the water of several important cleanup projects, including the Teck Resources smelter near Trail, the Imperial Metals Mount Polley Mine, and analysis of the selenium-contaminated run-off from coal mine waste in the Elk Valley.

Imperial Metals has been operating a 450-litre-a-minute anaerobic biological reactor at Mount Polley since 2009, according to project engineer Luke Moger. The researchers are working to find the optimal environment and combination of microbes in which sulphate-reducing bacteria mitigate acid mine drainage and metal pollution by consuming sulfates in the tailings pond and water that has come in contact with waste rock. This creates sulphides that react with metals in the water to form harmless solids.

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DST, NRF launch holistic collaborative mining research centre at University of Johannesburg – by Natalie Greve (MiningWeekly.com – April 24, 2014)

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Advancing South Africa’s ambitions of evolving from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) on Thursday launched a specialised academic institute that will focus on holistic research into the country’s profusion of mineral resources and look to stimulate the creation of a cohort of skilled South African economic geologists.

The Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Integrated Minerals and Energy Resource Analysis (Cimera) would be hosted by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and would see the collaboration of South African economic geology research units the Palaeoproterozoic Mineralisation Centre, at UJ, and the Economic Geology Research Institute, at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

This was the fifth DST-NRF CoE to be launched this month, following the official opening of four other research units focusing on food security, scientometrics and science, technology and innovation policy, mathematical and statistical sciences, and human development respectively.

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The robot is ready – so when will deep sea mining start? – by Stephen Eisenhammer and Silvia Antonioli (Reuters U.S. – April 18, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

NEWCASTLE, England/LONDON – (Reuters) – The world’s first deep sea mining robot sits idle on a British factory floor, waiting to claw up high grade copper and gold from the seabed off Papua New Guinea (PNG) – when a wrangle over terms is solved.

Beyond PNG, in international waters, regulation and royalty terms for mining the planet’s subsea wealth have also yet to be finalized. The world waits for the judgment of a United Nations agency based in Jamaica.

“If we can take care of the environment we have a brand new day ahead of us. The marine area beyond national jurisdiction is 50 percent of the Ocean,” said Nii Odunton, secretary general of the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA).

“I believe the grades look good, the abundance looks good, I believe that money will be made,” Odunton said from the ISA offices in Kingston.

High-tech advances, depleted easy-to-reach minerals onshore and historically high prices have boosted the idea of mining offshore, where metals can be fifteen times the quality of land deposits.

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NEWS RELEASE: IMII, Mitacs and U of S Partner to Lead Minerals Industry Innovation in Canada

SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN–(Marketwired – April 11, 2014) – Saskatchewan’s International Minerals Innovation Institute (IMII), the national research and training organization Mitacs, and University of Saskatchewan are partnering on a novel research and training initiative through an investment valued at more than $600,000.

The Mitacs Industry Executive in Residence-Minerals (MIER-Minerals) will identify and create new research initiatives that will lead to innovation in the minerals sector, strengthening companies and enhancing Canada’s economy.

The MIER-Minerals is the first of several such positions Mitacs will support nationally across various industry sectors. The goal is to support innovation, research and training to enhance the global competitiveness of these industries and encourage collaboration between companies and universities across Canada.

Engin Özberk, IMII Executive Director and Senior Technical Advisor, will assume the role of the MIER-Minerals at the U of S.

“With more than 40 years of experience and national leadership in the minerals research and innovation sector and strong relationships with Saskatchewan’s leading potash, uranium and other minerals companies, Özberk is ideally positioned to catalyze industry-researcher collaborations for a world-class minerals industry,” said Karen Chad, U of S Vice-President Research.

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CFMEU slams Rio Tinto’s warning on robots replacing Aussie workers – by Ben Hagemann (Ferret.com – March 31, 2014)

http://www.ferret.com.au/

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has struck back after Rio Tinto’s warned that Australian mining labour forces could be replaced by robots.

Rio Tinto CEO Sam Walsh has cautioned Australia against allowing resource projects to shut because of local cost pressures, and warned that Australian society and Australian workers had to ensure they didn’t price themselves out of the market.

He said that the carbon and mining taxes were an issue, and that Rio Tinto is banking on the repeal of both the mining and carbon taxes. “It’s awfully important Australia maintains its competitiveness,” Walsh said.

He said Rio Tinto’s push into the “robotisation” of mining was partly due to the massive wages the company has been forced to pay in Australia. Walsh first introduced automated workshops when he headed Nissan’s manufacturing operations, and said that was done because Australians didn’t want to do the hard, dirty work.

“Some people have expressed concern about automation but quite frankly it’s getting harder and harder to attract young people to remote areas,” he said.

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Going deep underground in Canada in search of dark matter – by Ivan Semeniuk (Globe and Mail – March 22, 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.

SUDBURY, Ont. — The deeper you go, the higher you fly. The Beatles lyric seems apt while I’m plunging down a mine shaft at 10 metres a second. My ears pop as the open-air elevator descends and the bare rock walls rush past in a blur.

After three minutes we’re two kilometres below ground, and the elevator stops. We’ve finally reached the level of SNOLAB. Located near Sudbury, Ont., it’s one of the world’s deepest laboratories and a place where scientists are hoping to answer a riddle of cosmic proportions: What is dark matter?

Unseen but ever present, dark matter makes up 85 per cent of all the stuff in the universe. Like an invisible conductor, its gravity guides the motions of galaxies and stars. When the universe began, dark matter helped to shepherd atoms together, ultimately making it possible for planets to form and life to emerge. Until we understand dark matter, we won’t really understand why we exist.

Like the Higgs boson, which was confirmed last year, or the gravitational echoes from the Big Bang reported earlier this week, the detection of dark matter would be a Nobel Prize-worthy find – one that would offer a genuinely new piece of information about the nature of reality.

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The next age of mining? – by Cole Latimer (Australian Mining – March 21, 2014)

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/home

Are we entering the last age of the open cut mine? Is the end of open pit mining near? Speaking to a number of sources, the answer is clearly no, but as grades decrease and deposits become deeper, the increase of underground mining will continue apace as older open cut mines are worked out and new, deeper deposits are discovered.

Underground mining will soon count for a much larger proportion of total mining. According to a Rio Tinto seminar in 2010, in 2009 underground operations accounted for 26 per cent of all copper production, however Rio forecast that by 2025 underground operations would account for 40 per cent of global copper production.

This included major copper producers such as Chile and Australia, where massive open cut pits are the norm. But this is not to say open cut mining has been uneconomical. Surface mining has been, for some time, the most economical form of mining in Australia.

Underground contract mining specialist Pybar’s group business development manager David Noort told Australian Mining “open cut mines have been, economically, the most viable, which has been due to relatively near surface expressions”.

With wide open spaces and often remote locations, it has been the more cost effective form of mining, but globally it has already started coming to an end, with Noort explaining that “many of these higher grade expressions close to the surface have already been discovered, so we are left chasing ore down”.

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New tech to help gold miners tackle tough veins – by Geoff Candy (Mineweb.com – March 19, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

As mines get deeper and costs and safety concerns ratchet upwards so, increasingly, gold and platinum miners are looking for new technological ideas to help solve their problems.

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) – New technologies look set to provide some solace to deep level gold and platinum miners that continue to struggle with rapidly increasing costs, narrow veins and significant safety issues.

Speaking to Mineweb on the sidelines of this year’s the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Conference earlier this month, Jean-Yves Therien, VP Development at Rocmec Mining, said that right now is the “best time” for the company, because its patented thermal fragmentation process solves many of the problems currently being faced by the sector.

“This technology has the potential to have the same impact on the mining sector as shale gas fracking has had on the oil and gas sector,” he says. Adding, “We will be the Apple of the mining industry, I think one day everyone will be proud to have a Dragon [the name of the machine that actually does the thermal fragmentation] in their mine, it is just a matter of time and I think that right now is the best time for it.”

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Miners: It’s innovation time – by Anthony Vaccaro (Northern Miner – March 14, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. 

Chrysalix Global Network, a venture capital fund based in Vancouver, is looking to spearhead the next wave of innovation in the mining industry.

One of the fund’s partners, Charles Haythornthwaite, was in Toronto for the Prospectors Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and sat down with The Northern Miner to explain why Chrysalix has decided to target the mining industry and what sort of opportunities it sees.

Miners should pay heed as Chrysalix represents one of the first forays of venture capital into the industry — and it is a fund with the expertise and the capital to drive the sort of early stage technologies that may be standard process in the mines of the future.

“We are looking for transformation breakthrough ideas that could really move the needle in an energy intensive industry,” he says.

The two veins along which the fund is pursuing new technologies are ones that can deliver an environmentally cleaner process and ones that make the industrial process as efficient as possible. Two aims that clearly compliment one another.

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