The Copper Mining Process

Longwall mining was introduced and began in the 1960s. Longwall mining uses a mechanical shearer to cut the coal away although the hydraulic-powered holds up and supports roof of the underground mine. When the coal is removed from the work site, the supports that are on the roof of the underground mine are moved forward and the roof collapse behind them, which actually can result in subsidence. Longwall mining are much better than the Bord-and-pillar. This is because that it does not leave the pillars of coal behind. It is because that mineral resource can be removed out more.

Miners systematically removed the resource and ship it to the surface. Subsurface mining is generally done for metals such as zinc, lead, nickel, tin, gold, copper and uranium. Subsurface mining is extremely dangerous due to natural gas explosions, which can cause shafts and tunnels to collapse.

Traditional mining involves the sinking of a vertical shaft into the Earth to an appropriate depth. Then the shafts are driven into horizontal tunnels into the chalcopyrite ore. There is an open pit, as seen in Figure

The Copper Cycle is a popular experiment used to determine if an element, in this instance, copper, reverts to its elemental form after a chain of reactions. This experiment is very dangerous because of the reactions between the strong acids and bases. In this experiment I performed a series of reactions starting with copper metal and nitric acid to form copper (II) nitrate. Then I reacted copper and several other solutions such as, sodium hydroxide, sulfuric acid, ammonium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid to form precipitates. In conclusion my percent recovery

This method is called Fracking (Hydraulic fracking, for the proper term…). Fracking is the process that allows natural gas to be extracted from rock deposits deeper within the earth. This process is carried out by injecting a fracking liquid into the earth and this

One positive impact of copper mining is that it has a great impact on the economy, as it is a multi-purpose metal. It can be used for infrastructure, motor vehicle radiators and heating systems as well as electrical generators and motors for electrical wiring. Furthermore, various establishments will purchase the metal. Although it’s not as costly as gold, copper is sought out for its versatility.

Metal ores (unpurified metal) are extracted through open pit mining if they are near the surface.

Nautilus’ system starts with the Seafloor Production Tools (SPTs) which are located at the bottom of the sea floor approximately 1600 meters deep (about 1 mile). These SPTs are the “nozzles” of this system as they agitate the seafloor, allowing the extraction of nearly everything that the SPTs dislodge, creating this slurry filled with multiple precious and non-precious metals. The SPTs are connected by large pipes to a Subsea Slurry Lift Pump (SSLP), which is basically a big pump that sends the slurry up the Riser and Lifting System (RALS) and into the ship on the ocean surface. The ship, known as the Production Support Vessel (PSV), is heart of the operation and where production starts. The slurry mixture, comprised of copper, gold, silver, zinc, and sand is separated on the vessel and all of the material in the slurry are used or sold. The precious metals are used or sold to buyers throughout the world, and the sand and other non-precious minerals are used for concrete production. This type of operation is nearly one hundred percent efficient as every part of the slurry is used and sold [3]. Although this form of mining is profitable and nearly one hundred percent effective, this process may greatly disturb the ocean floor.

Silica mines the sand looks and feels like baking flour. They also have kaolin which is a white type of clay. They try to stay away from working with the kaolin because it’s sticky and hard to deal with. They also do very little frac mining. The frac mining process has several steps. Before frac mining can began all vegetation must be removed from the area. Then to reach the target sandstone, all unwanted rock layers has to be removed. Thirdly the top of the sandstone has to be exposed and since frac sand is cemented together explosive charges has to be placed inside holes drilled near the edge of the mine so the sandstone can break into small pieces. Then loaders are driven in to scoop up sandstones from near the wall of the mine pit. After the loaders scoop up the sandstones they send the sandstones to a crusher which breaks down the large chunks into individual sand grains. Sand grains are then washed to remove any unwanted particles. Once it has been washed, it is stockpiled for drying, sorting, and the final shipment. After the final shipment mine reclamation is started which is when the mined pit is filled back up with rocks and other materials that were not used from the sandstones and the new surface eventually be replanted. Regular sand mining at the U.S. silica is similar to this process except that there is no need for the explosives process because the sand is already soft and comes apart

For this, copper will be determined at the beginning of the study in treated samples which will be reserved for ICP analysis. The samples which are exposed to fungus will be analyzed to determine the percentage copper release after extraction. These exposed samples will be microwave-digested depending on the AWPA standard A7 method (AWPA 2012b). For extraction, the samples (around 1g) will be weighed into a microwave digestion tube and nitric acid will be added on to that. Digestion tubes will be sealed into digestion vessels and placed into a microwave oven for a pre-programmed digestion sequence. After the digestion was complete, each vessel will be quantitatively brought up to 100 ml volume with DI-water. The digested samples will be analyzed using a Perkin Elmer Optima 2100 DV Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometer (ICP)-OES to determine percentage Cu release after bioremediation. The percent reduction of Cu in the treated ground wood will be calculated based on the initial amount of Cu in the ground wood before

Underground mining accounted for 96% of the coal produced each year when it was done manually, and this was fifty years ago. Most underground mines are located to the east of the Mississippi River; however there are some in Utah and Colorado. More than two-thirds of the coal mined underground is done so using continuous mining machines in the room-pillar method. The continuous miner breaks the coal with tungsten bits on a revolving cylinder, and then conveys it to waiting shuttles which then take the coal to the

carried out vertically or, more commonly, by drilling horizontally to the rock layer and can create

Underground mining is what people use to extract hard minerals from underground some of those are Gold, Copper, Iron, Metal and Zinc, and many more minerals found underground. The two methods used for underground mining is cut and fill and room and pillar. Cut and fill is when the material extracted from underground is then used to fill another space. Room and pillar is when the ore is extracted in a horizontal line. There are two phases to extracting a mineral using the room and pillar method. Surface mining is when you find minerals either above the surface or on the surface in soil etc. The two most popular ways to do surface mining is open-pit mining and strip-mining. Open-pit mining is when you extract rocks from the earth’s surface in open pits, the minerals found using open-pit mining are Ores, copper and aluminium. Strip mining is when you get rid of soil and rocks above a layer of coal normally and you then extract the mineral, coal is the only mineral normally extracted using the strip mining method. Mining can be very dangerous and have been many accidents in the past, if you are mining you are told to wear a helmet, gloves, protective shoes, padding and eye protection.

Coal is found in deeper layers of earth. To retrieve coal from those layers, underground tunnels need to build. These underground tunnels tend to fill with

In underground hard rock mining, drill and blast continues to be the dominant method of fragmenting rock. Blast hole deviation is an inevitable yet undesirable outcome of small diameter, long hole drilling. The objective of drill and blast is to unlock a targeted volume of rock for removal and further downstream processing. However, if poor drill hole accuracy is observed, outcomes may be significantly different to that which are planned and expected, resulting in additional cost and time implications. A hole is considered to have deviated if it has not been collared at the correct location, has not followed the projected path or has not broken through at the intended position (Kangwa, 2000). Underground mining uses a cyclical methodology with repetitive steps carried out on a daily basis. As drill and blast is the first stage of extraction, the accuracy of this step can significantly impact the cost of downstream operations including secondary drilling, mucking, transportation, ground control, milling, development requirements and crew requirements (Corcoran, n.d.). This report intends to investigate the common sources of drill hole deviation, address the cost and design implications of poor drill accuracy and outline control measures that may be effective in reducing blast hole deviation. Different drilling technologies will also be examined to understand their impact on drilling accuracy.