Three independent tracer experiments were conducted to quantify the through-flow of water from Herman Pit, an abandoned mercury (Hg) mine pit adjacent to Clear Lake, California, USA. The tracers used were Rhodamine-WT, sulfur hexafluoride, and a mixture of sulfur hexafluoride and neon-22. The tracers were injected into Herman Pit, a generally well-mixed water body of approximately 81,000 m2, an...

Caving is a mass mining method that is normally applied to large, low grade orebodies because of its low production cost and high capacity. However, equipment breakdown and poor draw management can cause mining costs to exceed that of all other mining methods. One way to minimize the effect of disruptions in the mining cycle is to use Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) for long-term schedu...

In open-pit mining operations, there are several levels of planning, each of which passes down restrictions to the level below. Each planning task is to determine the order in which material should be mined and how it should be processed, such that blending and utilisation targets are met. The mining operations are subject to various constraints on equipment use, maintenance and other resources...

One of the most important issues in all stages of mining study is capital cost estimation. Determination of capital expenditure is a challenging issue for mine designers. In recent decade, quite a few number of studies have focused on proposing estimation models to predict mining capital cost. However, these efforts have not achieved to a predictor model with reliable range of error. Both of ov...

The forecasting slope deformation potential is required to evaluate slope safety during open-pit mining, allowing us to formulate and promote effective emergency strategies in advance to prevent slope failure disasters. Although fractal models have been used to predict slope deformation, such limitations as low prediction accuracy, poor stability and the requirement for large amounts of data mu...

The groundwater inflow into a mine during its life and after ceasing operations is one of the most important concerns of the mining industry. This paper presents a hydrogeological assessment of the Irankuh Zn-Pb mine at 20 km south of Esfahan and 1 km northeast of Abnil in west-Central Iran. During mine excavation, the upper impervious bed of a confined aquifer was broken and water at high-pres...

To effectively manage the stability of in-pit dumps with an underlying weak layer, a new plan for treatment staged floor during life mine was proposed in this study. Based on direct shear test results, properties contact surfaces between dumped spoil, and mudstone were determined. Taking Baiyinhua No.1 Open-pit Mine as example, surface spoil determined its cohesion to be 25.78 kPa, internal fri...