Conventional gold mining methods are clearly not the ones that should take South Africa into the future. In fact, if they continue, gold mining will end long before the Witwatersrand’s three-billion ounces of gold are extracted and more than one billion ounces of gold will remain in the ground. Against that background, gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti has been going all out to introduce a safer and a more efficient way of mining deep narrow-reef orebodies and is now targeting the production of a ton of high-grade gold next year using its new reef-boring method, which dispenses with the need for conventional drilling and blasting. Read on page 8 of this edition of Mining Weekly of 39 reef-bored holes delivering 1 962 oz (61.026 kg) and of the scheduled visit of the company’s board of directors to test sites ahead of the next budget vote cycle. The technology backfills the bored cavities with a material with as much compressive strength as the rock itself to prevent movement and keep seismicity at bay. Near-term work is also being undertaken to evolve towards a form of gold liberation using chemicals, thermal energy or other methods to free the gold for hydraulic transport back to surface and achieve the original vision of having gold on tap 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
India is reportedly facing a shortage of manganese by 2020, which authorities fear will constrain Indian steel production. Read on page 16 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the call by the Indian Bureau of Mines for immediate remedial action, on concerns that the country will only be producing half of its expected nine-million-ton demand in six years’ time. As India’s manganese industry is fragmented, the bureau is advocating a consortium approach with local manganese pooling their production ahead of processing. As recycling of manganese is not possible, steelmakers are dependent on fresh resources and to encourage small miners to adopt a cooperative approach, the bureau wants the Indian government to incentivise manganese producers by offering them lower power and water tariffs and reduced royalties and duty-free importation of technology and equipment needed for sintering and beneficiation.
Powering platinum mining with platinum fuel cells is under way. The November 7 edition of Mining Weekly’s associate publication Engineering News reports that local companies Trident and Battery Electric are involved in putting platinum-fuel-celled underground mining locomotives through their paces at Anglo American Platinum’s (Amplats’) Dishaba mine, in Limpopo, after trials at Rustenburg’s North West School of Mines. The plan is for fuel cells to replace the lead-acid batteries that currently power locomotives. Amplats is doing what its products do by acting as a catalyst to create a demand reaction for platinum, which is not substitutable in fuel cells. Amplats is also collaborating with US fuel cell company Altergy as well as South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology to encourage greater platinum beneficiation. Fuel cells already play a significant role in stationary, portable and auxiliary power, as well as materials handling. Unlike batteries, fuel cells do not need to be changed, recharged or replaced, which means less downtime and increased productivity.