| Aitik | ||
Located near Gällivare in Norrbotten, northern Sweden, Aitik is one of the largest copper concentrate producers in Europe. |
The Aitik open pit is scheduled to reach an ultimate depth of 400m in the northern section by 2012. |
Succesful operation of trucks in Aitik’s Arctic climate requires thorough grading of the haul roads. |
The two Rammer pedestal-mounted hydraulic breakers reduce large chunks of the difficult-to-blast Aitik ore. |
Aitik is a major employer in the Galliväre municipality. |
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| Boliden Area Operations (BAO) | ||
Location map for Boliden Area Operations. |
Surface facilities at Kristineberg. |
The tunnel between the Petiknäs and Renström mines. |
Possibly the world’s most sophisticated scaling machine, a Jama Mekaniska, in use at Petiknäs. |
Underground mining equipment at Petiknäs. |
Swedish-built Gia locomotives haul ore on the 800m level rail system. |
| Boulby | ||
The Boulby mine, located in north-east England, is one of the world’s major potash producers. |
The design of the surface facilities was carried out by the architect, Sir Frederick Gibberd. |
A cross-section through the deposit and overlying strata, showing the aquifers above the potash horizon and the special shaft construction needed. |
One of the continuous miners underground at Boulby. |
Stress-relief mining techniques have helped CPL to produce potash from greater depths. |
Joy shuttle cars are used to move the run-of-mine potash from the continuous miners to the main conveyors. |
A simplified version of the potash production flowsheet. |
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| Galmoy Lead / Zinc Mine | ||
Aerial view of the Galmoy surface facilities. |
The access to the underground workings is through a decline. All of the orebodies are less than 100m below surface. |
The geology of the Galmoy deposits. The CW orebody was the first to be discovered, with the others found by subsequent exploration. |
One of Galmoy's Tamrock rockbolting rigs. |
Run-of-mine ore is stored in the 'teepee' before being reclaimed for milling. |
Galmoy's concentrator. |
Loading concentrates into a truck for transport by road to the port at New Ross. |
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| Garpenberg | ||
Location of the Garpenberg mine in the Bergslagen mining district. |
Underground development at Garpenberg North. |
Development at Garpenberg North reaches the 1000m level. |
One of the Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer 352S jumbos. |
Boliden’s Rönnskär smelter. |
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| Hard Coal Mining | ||
The location of Germany’s hard coal basins. |
The Ruhr and Saar coalfields, showing the location of active mining areas and areas containing future deep-mine reserves. |
One of the main hoisting shafts at Prosper-Haniel. |
An Eickhoff shearer operating on a DSK longwall. |
Arched development in an underground haulage. |
One of the man-rider trains used to transport personnel underground at the Niederberg mine |
An innovative, enclosed circular stockpile provides intermediate storage for part of DSK’s output. |
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| Kemi | ||
Aerial view of the Main Pit, with adjacent processing plant and office complex. |
To load and transport waste and chromite from the Main Pit’s five orebodies, the contractor uses Caterpillar backhoe excavators loading 60t and 90t-payload haul trucks. |
Roxon screens are used in the heavy medium separation plant to sort the crushed ore by size. |
Cavex classifiers, used in the concentrating plant to handle fine-milled chromite ore before the separation process. |
Reichert cones separate fine chromite from waste material, recovering about 90% of chromite from the classifier feed. |
Outokumpu Mintec Beltcon 100 analysers are used to measure the Cr2O3 content of the feed conveyed to the HMS plant and of the final product of the concentrating plant. |
| KGHM Copper | ||
The Lower Silesian copper ore field, centred on the town of Lubin in southwestern Poland. |
An Atlas-Copco production drill rig in one of the underground mines |
A low-profile drill rig developed specifically for KGHM by Boart-Longyear. |
A BTZ hydraulic roofbolting rig. |
KGHM has purchased feeder units for handling run-of-mine ore underground from the US company, Oldenburg Stamler. |
Surface installations at the Rudna mine. |
Coiled copper wire rod, produced at KGHM's Cedynia metallurgical plant. |
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| Kiruna | ||
Kiruna overview. |
SIAB using Indau 500 raise borers for the vent shaft drilling program. |
Kimit pump charging explosive at Kiruna. |
Automatic locomotives are being upgraded to handle 500Mt per train on the new main level. |
Remote control of trains on the 1045m level from the control centre on the 775m level. |
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| Kittila Gold Mine | ||
The Kittila gold mine was constructed in 2006 and has an approximate gold reserve of 3.2 million ounces. |
The mine was found within the Kittila Greenstone belt, beneath mafic, volcanic and sedimentary rocks. |
Gold is mined through open-pit method. Two open pits, measuring 150m in depth are being initially mined to extract the ore bodies. |
Gold is obtained from the solution through electro-winning, before it is poured into dore bars using an electric induction furnace. |
Named after the community that resides nearby, Kittila is poised to become one of the largest gold-producing mines in Europe. |
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| Kupol Gold and Silver Mine | ||
The Kupol mine is situated in the Cretaceous Okhotsk-Chukotka volcanogenic belt. |
When it starts production Kinross expects that Kupol will become one of the lowest-cost gold and silver mines in the world. |
The Kupol mill is designed to process about 3,000t of ore per day. |
| Kuriskova Uranium Deposit | ||
The Kuriskova deposit contains 14.65 million pounds of uranium. |
Highly enriched uranium. |
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| Laisvall | ||
Location of the Laisvall lead mine in north-western Sweden. |
Boliden makes major efforts to minimise its environmental impact. |
Schematic of one of the twin-boom, electric-powered Atlas Copco drilling jumbos. |
An Åkerman mechanised scaler, used to remove loose rock from the mine roof and walls. |
Stringent water quality controls are needed before water is pumped back into the environment. |
Lead ingots awaiting shipment from Boliden’s Rönnskär smelter. |
Lead ingots being forged at Boliden’s Rönnskär smelter. |
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| Los Frailes | ||
Los Frailes zinc, copper, lead and silver mine is approximately 45km west of Seville in southern Spain, on the south-east edge of the Iberian Pyrite Belt. |
Los Frailes uses conventional open-pit mining methods to produce ore at a rate of 4Mt/y. Blasted ore is loaded using mining shovels into haul trucks for transport to the primary crusher. |
The Los Frailes open-pit mine. Los Frailes has a design capacity of 125,000t/y of zinc, 48,000t/y of lead, 4,700t/y of copper and 90.8t/y of silver. Output in both 1998 and 1999 was affected by the mine’s suspension, but had reached around 90% of design capacity by late 1999. |
| Malmberget | ||
Location map of Malmberget iron ore mine. |
Malmberget at night. |
Mining process diagram. |
To move the ore, the Malmberget mine uses Finnish built Sisu Mammut trucks. |
Bison electric wheel drive loaders, the buckets of which are also made of Hardox 400. |
All of the ore mined at Malmberget is upgraded to pellets or sinter fines. |
New loading and servicing facilities for transportation to Lulea. |
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| Norilsk Mining Centre | ||
Norilsk Nickel has operations at Norilsk in northern Russia and on the Kola Peninsula. |
One of the main squares in the city of Norilsk, home to around 300,000 people. |
Traffic in Norilsk city. Plans are in hand to move around 50,000 people to other areas of Russia where the cost of living is lower. |
An Atlas Copco Wagner load-haul-dump unit used for ore haulage at one of the Norilsk mines. |
An open stope underground at the Taymirskiy operation. |
Servicing an Atlas Copco drill jumbo underground. |
| Omagh Gold Project | ||
The Omagh open pit. |
The Omagh gold project site plan. |
Exploration drilling. |
Aerial view of Kearney. |
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| Rhineland Lignite Mining | ||
Map of the Rhineland lignite basin. |
Geological section. |
One of RWE Power's lignite refining plants. |
Opencast mining equipment at the Hambach operation. |
Twin high-capacity belt conveyors between the Hambach and Fortuna mine sites. |
Moving rolls of conveyor belting requires specialist vehicles. |
One of RWE’s five lignite-fuelled power stations. |
A reclaimed mining area. |
The resettled community of Garzweiler, one of several developed by RWE Power. |
| Talvivaara Bioheapleach | ||
Talvivaara’s bioheapleach project – the world’s first for nickel – is centred on two polymetallic deposits, Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi, about 30km southwest Sotkamo, eastern Finland. |
The host rocks of the Talvivaara deposit consist of variably re-crystallised carbon and sulphide-rich black metasediments (black schists) bounded by medium-grained mica schist and Jatulian quartzites. |
As well as nickel, the open-pit mine is also expected to produce copper, zinc and cobalt as by-products of the process. |
The site is well connected to the highway network via the local roads in all directions and is close to the main railway network. |
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| Tara | ||
Tara is located around 50km north west of Dublin, close to the town of Navan. |
An overview of the surface facilities at Tara. |
Cross-section through the Tara orebody, showing the mine infrastructure. |
Installing roof support from a utility vehicle basket. |
One of the remote-controlled LHDs used extensively at Tara. |
Two LHDs tipping into an orepass equipped with a hydraulic secondary breaker. |
Tara’s pioneering environmental programmes have received recognition with an award from the Irish Government. |
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| Zarafshan-Newmont | ||
The Zarafshan-Newmont joint venture is situated immediately next to the major primary gold producer, Muruntau, in central Uzbekistan. |
Construction of the processing plant involved the supply of parts and equipment from different sources worldwide, the US$225 million project being carried out by Bateman. |
Located in the dry Kyzlkum Desert, the Zarafshan-Newmont recovery plant is optimising gold recovery from the Muruntau resource. |
One of the radial stacking units supplied to Zarafshan-Newmont by the US firm, Laurel Engineering. |
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| Zinkgruvan Zinc-Lead-Silver Mine | ||
The Zinkgruvan mine is located near Akersund on Lake Vattern in central Sweden. |
Using new Svedala RCS flotation cells has expanded concentrator capacity at Zinkgruvan. |
The Zinkgruvan mine, 240km west of Stockholm, has been in operation since 1857. |
A drilling jumbo underground at Zinkgruvan. |
Zinkgruvan’s first Kiruna Electric truck was this K1050E with 50t payload. |
In 1995, Zinkgruvan acquired a smaller Kiruna Electric truck, the K635E, for the deepest part of the mine. |
Both the K1050E and the later K635E haul ore from mining areas below the main haulage level to the underground crusher. |
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