February 4, 2013
The Melbourne branch of the AusIMM will be holding a technical session on Tuesday 12th of February where Peter McCarthy will be giving his thoughts on the state of feasibility studies for new projects and generally why they fail.
January 17, 2013
MinAssist was delighted to have our paper, "The use of QEMSCAN in practical gold deportment studies", included in this special issue. We encouraged anyone interested in the Australian gold industry to have a look at the content of the special issue and see the excellent work that is being done to advance gold processing and our understanding of gold deposits in Australia.
November 29, 2012
It is really great to see that MEI's Process Mineralogy '12 conference in Cape Town, South Africa was such a great success. Unfortunately MinAssist was unable to attend but Barry Will's has provided a great summary on the MEI Blog. Congratulations to the MEI team and all the presenters.
June 3, 2010
The deportment of gold in plant feed, product or tailing samples is the primary driver behind how we can best recover that gold or in the case of tailings, why it was lost. As the gold price climbs, recovery of every available ounce of gold becomes more desirable and consequently developing a fundamental understanding of gold deportment should be the first action of anyone involved in gold processing.
May 20, 2010
Today I wanted to share some more thoughts on the usefullness of ore typing to mining and mineral processing operations. I have recently been working on a the beginnings of a geometallurgical program for an open pit operation where the whole processing chain from mining, through processing and to smelting is included. This has given me a unique opportunity to view ore typing from the perspective that although the mill is the direct customer of the mines ore types, consideration must be made for the effect that changing ore type can have on products fed to a smelter.
January 8, 2010
Welcome to another exciting year for the minerals industry. Compared to this time last year optimism is high and the drive to make the most of what appears to be a continuing boom in the mining industry is certainly there. At MinAssist we have seen increased confidence and optimism since the middle of last year and it seems that forward thinking mining companies are continuing to embrace mineralogy as a driver in many process optimisation and development projects.
October 26, 2009
The theoretical grade-recovery curve for an ore is a definition of the maximum expected recovery by flotation of a mineral or element at a given grade. This is defined by the surface area liberation of the value minerals and is consequently directly related to the grind size utilised in the process. The theoretical grade-recovery can be readily used to quickly identify potential recovery increases that can be gained through optimisation of flotation circuits and whether the process is running efficiently.
August 5, 2009
Ore characterisation is a very broad term that is viewed differently by geologists, mineralogists and metallurgists. It does however fundamentally cover the concept of defining the building blocks of an ore, giving insight into how best to deal with it.
July 24, 2009
For those readers familiar with setup of QEMSCAN test programs a standard test is preliminary analysis of the bulk sample by XRD. In combination with elemental analysis this is a vital step, especially for unknown samples. It develops a level of understanding about the material that can focus the QEMSCAN analysis and help give sufficient information for important processes such as SIP development.
