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Information and links on a variety of technical aspects of mining & mineral exploration.
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 WVU Dedicates Simulated Underground Mine for TrainingMonay, October 19, 2009West Virginia University today dedicated a state-of-the-art, simulated underground coal mine for training new and experienced miners. read more » Managing Costs - Core DrillingWednesday, September 30, 2009Sometimes the smallest products can make the biggest impact. While they don't carry $1 million price tags like some of the high technology capital equipment available on the market, coring consumables represent incremental cost over the life of a project that can save or lose a drilling contractor hundreds of thousands of dollars in ... read more » Supporting a remote mining fleetWednesday, September 30, 2009The importance of the Sandvik operation headquartered in the city of Timika on the south coast of Papua (Irian Jaya),Indonesia, is such that it is an incorporated company, PT Sandvik SMC. This company was established purely for the Freeport business,which roughly splits 50/50 between underground and surface equipment. read more » Cost breakingWednesday, September 30, 2009Fragmentation within the mine is often overlooked as a critical element in the process and can be used to provide essential process control information. SPLIT digital fragmentation technology has been available for some time, with applications from the mine with post-blast analysis at the muck pile face through to the mechanical comminution circuit with ... read more » Human Error PreventionFriday, August 07, 2009Preventing human error can be the biggest contributor to the productivity, safety, and quality of any project. A new easy to read book can help you tackle the causes of human error and how to prevent them. read more » Principles of Mine PlanningMonday, June 29, 2009Principles of Mine Planning is a must-read for mining engineering and geoscience professionals and students. Some of the major topics covered in this book include the determination of technical factors in mine planning read more » Mining salaries in Australia & New ZealandMonday, June 29, 2009Hays Resources & Mining published a new salary survey pertaining to the Australian mining industry: market changes, positions in demand, salary movements, changes to employer recruitment practices. read more » Electronic Journal on California Gold Rush and Gold MiningThursday, May 14, 2009The Sierra College Press has published an electronic journal on the California Gold Rush and Gold Mining. This eJournal is the latest edition of Snowy Range Reflections: A Journal of Sierra Nevada History and Biography. read more » Coal through a microscopeMonday, May 11, 2009If you think that coal is a boring black rock then you have never seen it through a transmitted light microscope. The microscope reveals coal's hidden beauty as well as its composition. read more » Crandall Canyon RevisitedWednesday, March 04, 2009A review of a 2009 SME session on coal mine bumps and what happened in Utah at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in 2007. read more » Rapid Mining According to Rio Tinto Thursday, February 26, 2009A review of the 2009 SME conference session on rapid mining comparing tunnel advance rates in the civil and mining industries. read more » Underground Tailings DisposalMonday, February 02, 2009Here is an interesting discussion of underground disposal of tailings at the Doris North Project: Tailings is often disposed of in underground mines as backfill to provide ground or wall support read more » Paste Backfill Bulkhead Failures and Pressure Monitoring at Cayeli MineTuesday, October 21, 2008The following piece is repeated from an AMC Consultants newsletter. I post it here in its entirety as, in my opinion, it deals with a significant technical approach of interest to all involved in underground mine backfilling. read more » Giant Inflatable Airbag Designed to Seal Off Transportation System Tunnels in EmergenciesWednesday, October 01, 2008The researchers from WVU's College of Engineering and Mineral Resources have designed a giant inflatable airbag they believe has the potential to seal off tunnels to help prevent the spread of smoke, toxic fumes, gases or flooding read more » New Zealand Coal Mine H&S Update Tuesday, September 30, 2008New Zealand has an estimated six underground coal mines and three underground metaliferous mines. In the period 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2005 the New Zealand Department of Labor received 51 notificaitons of serious harm to employees working in underground mines. read more » Wings Iron OreThursday, September 25, 2008Mining Plus is “technical people servicing the mining industry.” They hail from Australia, but now are involved in re-starting an iron ore mine in Missouri. read more » Ventilation Book By Malcolm McPhersonTuesday, September 16, 2008The most-readily-available book on ventilation is one by Malcolm J. McPherson called "Subsurface Ventilation and Environmental Engineering" read more » TWP ConsultantsFriday, August 22, 2008TWP promises “complete solutions for the mining and mineral industry.” With 1,500 people in Johannesburg and elsewhere all the way to Australia, they probably can deliver. read more » Senator McCain and MiningThursday, June 05, 2008U.S. Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain have introduced legislation for the third year in a row that would allow a new copper mine to be developed over a huge mineral deposit outside Superior, Arizona. read more » Paste Fill FencesTuesday, May 13, 2008The Red Lake Mine in eastern Ontario currently does nearly sixty percent of its mining using overhand cut and fill, twenty-five percent using underhand cut and fill, and about fifteen percent using pillar recovery. read more » Compromise Reached Between Mining Company and Conservation GroupsMonday, April 21, 2008An accord was reached between conservation groups and mining interests, ending an 18-year effort to stop the development of a large gold mine on Buckhorn Mountain in north central Washington State. read more » Pillar SoftwareMonday, March 10, 2008Two software codes from NIOSH that are in the news. They were used to analyze conditions at the Crandall canyon Mine prior to the disaster that killed 6 miners and 3 rescue workers. read more » Micromine Launches PITRAM 3Wednesday, February 27, 2008Micromine, leading provider of mining and exploration software products and services, has announced that the highly-anticipated official global launch of PITRAM 3 will take place on 3 March at PDAC International Convention, Trade Show & Investors Exchange 2008. read more » Shaft DesignTuesday, February 19, 2008One of the better technical papers on the design of mine shafts is by Isadore Irvin Matunhire, previously of the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and now working for TWP Consulting. read more » Liberty Mining ConsultantsTuesday, January 15, 2008Every so often a new company lists on InfoMine as a consultant. I generally examine the websites of these new listers. Here is one that caught my attention. read more » Giant Mine Ground FreezingMonday, January 14, 2008An extreme example of ground freezing to control groundwater pollution from a closed mine, is the Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories, Canada. read more » New Mexico Ventilation ShaftWednesday, January 3, 2007In the 2006 SME conference proceedings is a paper, Installation of a state-of-the-art ventilation shaft at a New Mexico coal mine by S. Bessinger of the San Juan Coal Company, T. Palm of Mencon, and A. Zeni of Shaft Drillers, Inc. read more » Case Studies in Mine ManagementThursday, December 20, 2007Here are two case studies I copy from the newly discovered website of element CMC, a Perth-based management consulting company serving the mining industry. read more » Backfill ThesisTuesday, December 18, 2007Trent Weatherwax, a Masters student at the University of British Columbia, sent me a copy of his paper, A Conceptual Design of a Backfill System for Underground Preconcentration Facility. read more » Structural Health MonitoringTuesday, November 13, 2007I have always been fascinated by the underground mine headgear, or headframe as it is called in North America. Thus I was intrigued when Wardrop provided this brief Project Description entitled Structural Health Monitoring read more » Wardrop Mine DewateringTuesday, November 06, 2007I have recently posted two EduMine courses: Surface Water Management at Mines and Groundwater in Mining. Here is something from Wardrop that I wish I had added to the course on groundwater. read more » Montana Mining MagazineTuesday, October 23, 2007The best value for my mining money on the web right now is the new magazine called Montana Mining. Actually it is free for download. Governor Brian Schweitzer summarizes the current mining situation in the state in his opening editorial. read more » Mine BackfillTuesday, August 14, 2007Available from the Australian Centre for Geomechanics is the Handbook on Mine Fill (2005). They sent me a copy and I have just spent a while reading it. Here are my impressions. read more » Agapito and Huntington MineTuesday, August 14, 2007Let me do something sure to be unpopular. Let me defend Bob Murray who owns the Crandall Mine in Huntington, Utah. read more » CIM BackfillFriday, August 10, 2007Only the abstracts of the papers presented at Minefill 2007 –the 9th International Symposium on Mining with Backfill in Montreal are available to CIM members. read more » Water Management in BackfillMonday, July 30, 2007Water management in hydraulic fill operations by M. Helinski and A.G. Grice is a paper presented in Montreal at the 2007 Mine Backfill symposium. read more » Mine Ventilation Software IITuesday, June 12, 2007Here are a few of the codes you may choose to use to design, analyze, and operate you ventilation system. I include some information about the capabilities of each code read more » SpookWednesday, April 04, 2007Filling old open pit mines with mining wastes has many advantages. I recognize there are many disadvantages too, mostly to do with the cost. read more » Groundwater BookTuesday, April 03, 2007Recent flooding of the shaft and underground mine workings at the Cigar Lake uranium deposit in Saskatchewan reminds us of the significance of groundwater in mining. read more » RavenRoadWednesday, March 21, 2007One of the benefits of writing for this site is the occasional really different and interesting contacts that pop up in the e-mail. Here is a summary of one of the most intriguing in a while. read more » RedpathFriday, March 16, 2007More useful news from a mining contractor. But first two quick confessions: (1) I had not previously known of them until (2) they chose to advertise on TechnoMine. read more » Mining ReporterTuesday, March 13, 2007How do you find your way around the never-ending stream of paper magazines devoted to the mining industry? At the 2007 SME I picked up two I had never seen before read more » Total Robot StationsWednesday, March 07, 2007David Cook writes in the December issue of Geotechnical News of Total Robotic Stations and Remote Data Capture in civil engineering construction. He defines a Total Robot Station thus read more » Mining for the FutureTuesday, March 06, 2007There is no mining without human resources. People are ultimately what mining is all about. People to plan and run the mines. read more » Grout TerminologiesMonday, March 05, 2007Grout terminology is as specialized a language as any dialect or in-group-speak. Luckily for us the terminology is readily available at this link read more » Stone to NuclearWednesday, February 28, 2007Bomvu Ridge 40,000 years ago may have been the first large-scale underground mine anywhere. Australia well populated 60,000 years ago? read more » Mine FloodingThursday, February 22, 2007Ground freezing is on way to control the inflow of water to a mining operation. If flow quantities are low, it may be easier to pump from dewatering wells, of from the mine workings themselves read more » Coal Mine DeathsTuesday, February 20, 2007From the Charleston Gazette: Twenty-four West Virginia coal miners died on the job in 2006, the most in any single year for a quarter-century, according to state records.
read more » South African Gold PiratesMonday, February 19, 2007I copy and present this news report from the Washington Post Foreign Service because it is so bizarre and disturbing and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it except shake our heads. read more » ShotcreteThursday, February 15, 2007The January 2007 Mining Magazine has a comprehensive article on Scaling to Shotcrete. An electronic version of the magazine is available on their site read more » Roof Support EquipmentThursday, February 15, 2007If you had any doubts about the meaning of the multiplicity of terms used to hold up the roof of a mine, go no further than the Dywidag-Systems International site read more » Room and Pillar Roof SupportWednesday, February 14, 2007Here are ways to improve productivity in underground coal mines. The suggestions are well documented in a seminal paper Roof bolting and mining: are your cycles in tune? read more » Underground Loading in Tight SpotsFriday, February 02, 2007Not all underground trucks are made equally. This is particularly true when getting into those tight spots. This is the job of an ejector truck. read more » I Think Mining BlogWednesday, January 31, 2007Some paper magazines will never die. They are the ones with high quality, thoughtful, well-written articles. The rest are doomed to fade and wither. Part of their problem is the competition of Blogs read more » Aditya Birla Minerals and IndiaWednesday, January 31, 2007The moral of this story is that news reports and Annual Reports can tell the curious engineers and technicians amongst us interesting tales of the trials and tribulations of mining read more » Sago and AfterFriday, January 26, 2007About eighty to ninety percent of TechnoMine’s readers are not in the USA and/or not involved in coal mining. Nevertheless, the outlines of the Sago mine story are there like the every present Greek Gods of yore read more » AMC Consultants PublicationsTuesday, January 23, 2007Digging Deeper is a quarterly newsletter from AMC Consultants of Australia and England. I recommend you sign up for a free e-copy read more » Grouting Confined AreasFriday, January 19, 2007The closest thing I’ve come to grout is a summer spent emptying bags of cement into a huge hopper, which was eventually transported to off shore North Sea oil rigs to be used by Halliburton on “cement jobs”. read more » Grouting CourseTuesday, January 16, 2007Grouting is difficult; but it will be much easier if you attend a course planned in Denver in April 2007. The course is for owners, engineers, and contractors read more » BHP on SubsidenceThursday, December 14, 2006A quick and useful explanation of longwall mining and associated subsidence is to be found in two four-page information sheets put out by BHP Billiton. read more » Stream UnderminingWednesday, December 13, 2006Subsidence on underground mine workings can disrupt surface water flow and impact groundwater. This simple fact is brought home simply and starkly by a fine brochure from Hatch Mott MacDonald read more » Vatukoula Mine, FijiWednesday, December 06, 2006There must be a story about the failure of mining technology lurking in this press release—or is it a story of human nature—or maybe a story of prudent business/politics? read more » Keeping Underground Roads SmoothMonday, December 04, 2006The first thing that caught my attention about the PAUS Dinting Machine PSF 200, is the word “dinting” attached to its name. read more » Underground Mining with Simul8Friday, November 24, 2006Can’t afford the latest CIM collection of technical papers? It’s now on sale for $150. Here is how I got the information from a paper, the title of which caught my eye. read more » Aventurine and the Sherpa SoftwareFriday, November 24, 2006If you have not previously seen the Aventurine site, you have a treat awaiting you. If you need to estimate the cost of a mining activity, you have to get Sherpa software. read more » Idaho Maryland GoldMonday, November 20, 2006The best news I have had today is that somebody is trying to reopen a mine in California. I have traveled often through the area and was talking to a friend who lives in Grass Valley. read more » Science Fair Project on MiningFriday, November 17, 2006Here is an example to hold before the kids. Here is an opportunity to show ‘em what can be done. Here is the piece to send them to when they ask for help with their homework. read more » 50-Year PerspectiveThursday, November 02, 2006What will mining be like in fifty and five hundred years? We can only guess at five hundred, but for fifty, we can extrapolate current trends to venture a prediction. read more » China Health & SafetyTuesday, October 24, 2006Any act that improves mine safety and saves lives is to be supported and learnt from. read more » Sustainability DialogueMonday, September 11, 2006On a late summer Sunday, I stopped my bicycle at the apex of the Lions Gate Bridge (Vancouver, Canada) and paused to take in the view and wave at the cruise ships as they cleared the bridge en route to Alaska. read more » Slusher MiningThursday, September 21, 2006Here is a short article about an underground mining method and/or piece of equipment used to move ores. read more » New Engineering CompanyFriday, July 28, 2006Miller Engineering recently posted their name on the InfoMine consultants roster. I was intrigued by the range of their skills, namely mine, tunnel and construction dewatering systems read more » Underground Document StorageMonday, July 31, 2006The use of worked-out underground mines to store documents? Does this represent progress? read more » Artificial Ground FreezingThursday, August 17, 2006The 2003 Geotechnical News paper Case Study: Thermal Analysis of Artificial Ground Freezing at the McArthur River Uranium Mine describes a case study of the engineering carried out to artificially freeze the underground ore body at the mine prior to read more » |
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