The contamination of ores with wastes or materials of lower than the cut-off grade is referred to as dilution. Dilution is an undesirable phenomenon that, on one hand, reduces the product grade and, consequently, reduces the sales prices and, on the other hand, adds an extra cost to waste production. Therefore, studying and evaluating the dilution risk is important in mining, and especially in ...

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) is a federal government department specializing in the sustainable development and use of natural resources—energy, minerals and metals, forests—and in Earth sciences. NRCan deals with natural resource issues that are important to Canadians. These issues are examined from both a national and international perspective, our expertise in science and technology, pol...

The most important aspect of the MINER Act is providing reliable communication for miners before and after tragic accidents. Reliable communication has always been a challenge in underground mines due to changing topologies and harsh environment. In addition, disasters disable electricity and communications cables, block tunnels and cause fire. These may damage the communication infrastructure ...

Absfmcf-This paper describec the implementation of an autonomous navigation system onto a 30 tonne Load-Haul. Dump truck. The control architecture is based on a robust reactive wall-following behaviour. To make it purposeful we provide driving hints derived from an approximate nodal. map. For most of the time, the vehicle is driven with weak localization (odometry). This need only be improved a...

This paper presents the results of a field experiment in the Kvarntorp mine outside of Örebro in Sweden. 3D mapping of the underground mine has been used to compare two scan matching methods, namely the iterative closest point algorithm (ICP [1], [3], [5]) and the normal distributions transform (NDT [2], [4]). The experimental results of the algorithm are compared in terms of robustness and spe...

Saline waters from underground coal mines in Poland often contain natural radioactive isotopes, mainly 226Ra from the uranium decay series and 228Ra from the thorium series. More than 70% of the total amount of radium remains underground as radioactive deposits due to spontaneous co-precipitation or water treatment technologies, but several tens of MBq of 226Ra and even higher activity of 228Ra...

Understanding coal mine rib behavior is important for inferring pillar loading conditions as well as ensuring the safety of miners who are regularly exposed to ribs. Due to the variability in the geometry of underground openings and ground behavior, point measurements often fail to capture the true movement of mine workings. Photogrammetry is a potentially fast, cheap, and precise supplemental ...