UNIVERSITY OF KOLWEZI

TECHNICAL MINING ENGLISH CLASS FOR GRADE 1 MINING STUDENTS

OUTLINE
CHAP I. MINING FIXED PLANT & MACHINERY
 Pumps & Dewatering systems
 Fans and ventilation system
 Electrical Substation & electricity into mines
CHAP II. ORE PROCESSING
 Crushing
 Grinding
 Sizing
CHAP III. MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT
 Objective of Maintenance
 Need For Replacement
 Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)

By Patrick Ngosa Nzweba

Mining Engineer
 CHAP I.MINING FIXED PLANT & MACHINERY

I.1. Pumps & Dewatering systems

Mine dewatering is the action of taking unwanted water from any type of mine using
different techniques.
Pumping station
Pumping stations are facilities including pumps and equipment for pumping fluids from
one place to another. They are used for a variety of infrastructure.

I.1.2 Problems with mine dewatering

Dewatering a totally or partially flooded mine, or even as a normal procedure in normal

mine activity, may carry an amount of problems, most of which are environmentally
related. This can happen in open pit mines as well as in underground mines.

The most relevant concerns with mine dewatering are related to acid mine drainage and
the dispersal of contaminated water into other water fonts and the general environment
becoming a serious source of pollution

I.1.3Types of dewatering techniques and systems

Dewatering open pit mines and underground mines is different. Each method relies in
different apparel and techniques.

For dewatering of surface mines, following technics are used:

 Filter wells
 Disposal wells
 Inverted wells
 Vacuum drainage
 Horizontal drains
 Sealing walls
 Cut off walls
 Guard wells

In the other hand, for underground these methods are used:

 Addits
 sump pumps
I.1.4 Pumps
Pumps are equipment used for moving fluids from one place to another.
I.2. Fans and ventilation system
Airflow through the large underground mechanized mining operations of today, could
not exist in the quantities required, unless there was sufficient pressure difference to
overcome the resistances in the circuit. This requires mechanical energy input provided
by fans.
Fans are named according to the type of impeller fitted into the casing. In mining
applications
the main fan types are:

1. Axial-flow. - In an axial fan the air flows through the impeller parallel to
and at a constant distance from the axis. The pressure rise is provided by
the direct action of the blades.

2. Centrifugal or Radial-flow. - In centrifugal fans the air enters parallel to the axis of the
fan turns through 90º and is discharged radially through the blades. The blade force is
tangential causing the air to spin with the blades and the main pressure rise is attributed
to the centrifugal force.
 3. Mixed flow. – in this type of fans , the working principle combine the two
previous above mentioned.

Exemple of fans working on underground shaft mines

I.3.Electrical Substation & electricity into mines

Electricity is one of main power supply for mining machinery and equipment. Electrical
power is produced from different sources such as; solar, thermal, nuclear, hydraulic…
Hydro-electric power supply, is the most used for both surfaces mining and
underground mining in DRC.
Below is hydroelectric power production diagram;
Below is an electrical power network flowsheet

Electrical power is the main source used to supply various machineries and
equipment, in both surface and underground mining, for ;dewatering system, drilling
machinery, crushing machinery, ventilation system ,hauling-loading equipment
(electrical shovels and trucks,…)
CHAP II. ORE PROCESSING
Ore is an aggregate of minerals and contains valuable and gangue minerals .
The mineral beneficiation involves separation of gangue minerals from ore.
It has three steps
Liberation ,
Separation,
Concentration.
1) Liberation of valuable mineral by size reduction.
2) Separation of coarse and fine particles.
3) Concentration to separate the gangue minerals to increase the metal grade.
If the first step is not done correctly, the second step will be incomplete.

Comminution

Communiation is one of the primary operations in mineral dressing; takes place in a

sequence of crushing and grinding processes.
The whole operation of reducing the raw ore to the size required for mechanical
separation or metallurgical processing. It is used to
- create particles in a certain size and shape,
- increase the surface area available for next process
-liberate valuable minerals held within particles.
Difference between crushing and grinding
 Crushing ( dry) - Size reduction occurs preferentially on large fragments.
 Grinding (wet) - Size reduction is less selective- all pieces get ground to fine
particles.
CRUSHING

PRIMARY CRUSHING - Reduction of ore = as mined size ~1m to ~ 100 mm size. The
objects of crushing are
1) size reduction
2) production of a minimum amount of fines. Primary crushing is done on dry material.
The basic equipments for primary crushing- 1) Jaw crushers. 2) Gyratory crushers. 3)
Roll crushers.
1-Jaw crusher can take larger size than gyratory & is better adopted to handle clayey &
spongy rocks.
2-Gyartory crusher consume more power for the same feed as produces more new
surfaces than jaw crusher.
3-Installation and housing costs will be more compared to jaw crushers.

SECONDARY CRUSHING
is done to reduce the ore size suitable for ( wet ) grinding. The feed size will be less
than 150 mm avg. dia & product size – 12 mm av.dia.
Secondary crushers are arranged in series with the primary crushers.
GRINDING
Breaking down of relatively COARSE CRUSHED ore to ULTIMATE FINENESS.

Hence, grinding should produce finer particles for satisfactory CONCENTRATION.

OBJECTIVES.
1) produces new surfaces
2) provides specified sizes.
Different concentration methods need different sizes of feed. Concentration methods
need any of the following grinding preparations.
1. For gravity/magnetic/electrostatic concentration – the feed should be coarse,
overgrinding and slime should be avoided.

2. For froth flotation- upper limit of particles 200-300 μs, lower limit – 5-10 μs .

3. For chemical treatment- ( leaching ) – over grinding improves the recovery (

constituent to be dissolved should be exposed to the surface of the particles) , cost will
be high.

DRY AND WET GRINDING. Material is ground either in totally dry or wet ( slurry )
condition. Grinding in moist / sticky state consumes lot of energy – grinding should not
be done in this state.

DRY GRINDING.
1.Feed material should have low ( < 1 % ) moisture content.
2.The feed should be in less contact with air ( it may absorb moisture during grinding ).
3.The grinding media and the liner inside the mill should not wear off.
4.Costly filtering equipments are not needed.
5.Dust control during grinding is needed.

WET GRINDING.
1.Needs less power.
2.Needs less space.
3.Minimum dust control only needed.
4.Needs large quantities of water and good , continuous pumping system.
5.Generally cheaper than a dry grinding installation.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY GRINDING. Grinding can be done in stages – primary

and secondary. Primary mills work faster and shatter the feed. Secondary mills work
gently and uniformly finer products are formed.
OPEN CIRCUIT GRINDING.

CLOSED CIRCUIT GRINDING

TUMBLING MILL - Grinding occurs during tumbling action of the mill. Large pieces of
ore are used as grinding medium in Autogenous grinding. Type of tumbling mills; Ball
mill, Pebble mill, Rod mill, Autogenous / Semi autogenous mills, Tube mill.
SIZING
The screen is a surface with many apertures or holes, usually with uniform dimensions.
Particles of different sizes are presented to that surface . The undersize material will
pass through and oversize materials will be retained. Thus the incoming material is
sorted out according to aperture size of the screen.
Further processing depends on the size of ore.

WHAT IS THE NEED FOR SCREENING?

SIZING OR CLASSIFYING - to separate particles by size, usually to provide a
downstream unit process with the particle size range suited to that unit operation;

SCALPING - to remove the coarsest size fractions in the feed material, usually so that
they can be crushed or removed from the process;

GRADING - to prepare a number of products within specified size ranges. This is

important in quarrying and iron ore, where the final product size is an important part of
the specification;

MEDIA RECOVERY - for washing magnetic media from ore in dense medium circuits;
DEWATERING - to drain free moisture from a wet sand slurry;

DE-SLIMING OR DE-DUSTING - to remove fine material, generally below 0.5 mm from

a wet or dry feed; and

TRASH REMOVAL - usually to remove wood fibres from a fine slurry stream.
CHAP III. MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

Introduction

Modern maintenance management is not to repair broken equipment rapidly. Modern

maintenance management is to keep the equipment running at high capacity and
produce quality products at lowest cost possible.

Meaning of Maintenance & Maintenance Management

Maintenance is defined as “any action that restores failed units to an operational
condition or retains non-failed units in an operational state”.
Maintenance Management is concerned with the direction and organization of
resources in order to control the availability and performance of industrial plant to some
specific level.

Objective of Maintenance

 Minimizing the loss of productive time because of equipment failure.

 Minimizing the repair time and repair cost.
 To keep all productive assets in good working condition.
 Efficient uses of maintenance personnel and equipment.
 To improve the quality of the products and to improve productivity.
 To maximize efficiency and economic in production through optimum use of
facilities.
Importance of Maintenance Management
 Dependability of services
 Quality Assurance
 Help in not Loosing Market Share
 Cost Context Induction
 Organizations depend upon Equipment
Types Of Maintenance
 Breakdown/Corrective Maintenance
 Preventive Maintenance
 Predictive Maintenance/Condition Maintenance
Preventive Maintenance:
Periodic inspection is carried out to anticipate breakdowns and to prevent them before
they occur, instead of allowing the breakdown to happen and then to take action.
Breakdown Maintenance:
It occurs, when there is a work stoppage because of machine breakdown. In this sense
maintenance become repair work.
Repair are made after the equipment is out of order.

Need For Replacement

There are two basic reason for replacement of machine:
 First and foremost is safety.
 Another legitimate reason for replacing equipment is that it is no longer cost
effective to maintain.
The machine are to be periodically replaced.
The replacement study can be classified into two categories:
 Deterministic types of items that deteriorate with time[Replacement due to
gradual failure]
 Simple probabilistic model for items which fail completely[Replacement due to
sudden failure]

Replacement Policies
Individual Replacement Policy
If a particular light is beyond repairs, then it is replaced. This kind of policy of
replacement is called as „replacement of items as-and-when they fail‟ or „Individual
Replacement‟.
Group Replacement Policy
There are certain items which do not deteriorate but fail completely after certain amount
of use. These kinds of failures are analyzed by the method called as group replacement
theory. Here, large numbers of items are failing at their average life expectancy.

Reliability Performance
The ability of an item, under stated Conditions of use, to perform a required function
under stated conditions for a stated period of time.
Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)
 A CMMS software package maintains a computer database of information about
an organization‟s maintenance operations, i.e. CMMIS – computerized
maintenance management information system.
 This information is intended to help maintenance workers do their jobs more
effectively (for example, determining which machines require maintenance and
which storerooms contain the spare parts they need).
 To help management make informed decisions (for example, calculating the cost
of machine breakdown repair versus preventive maintenance for each machine,
possibly leading to better allocation of resources).
 CMMS data may also be used to verify regulatory compliance.