13 minute read
PH DUCKS THRIVE IN TVIRD’S SULPHIDE DAM
Tailings impoundment facility serves as sanctuary, breeding ground for vulnerable wild ducks
Philippine ducks thrive in TVIRD’s sulphide dam
SIOCON, Zamboanga del Norte – Oftentimes, the silence of TVIRD’s Sulphide Dam is broken only by the loud and successive quacking of the waterbirds that made the company’s Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) its sanctuary for the last seven years. The quacking is then followed by splashing on the calm waters – and one can only surmise that the Philippine Ducks (Anas Luzonica) are thriving!
Visitors of the company are always in awe of the dam’s size – some 34 hectares wide and120 meters deep. The TSF, which was used during the company’s copper-zinc mining operations, is a structural beauty in itself. Surrounded by lush and cool Mt. Canatuan, it looks like a lake with clear, green water. And the presence of the Philippine Ducks makes the man-made lake even more interesting.
Migratory birds
Muhammad Faz Ur Rahman J. Werble, Ecosystem Management Specialist of the DENR’s Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) in Siocon, confirmed the presence of the Philippine Ducks at the Sulphide Dam.
“The Philippine Ducks are migratory birds and are endemic to the Philippines,” he said.
Werble has been heading a team of CENRO personnel in conducting the Annual Asian Waterbirds Census for three consecutive years now. He said the reason it is conducted annually is because of the presence of a large number of threatened endemic Philippine Ducks.
“It is possible that the ducks come from nearby areas and chose to stay there because the Sulphide Dam is protected and no hunting is allowed,” he added.
Werble also disclosed that the Philippine Ducks are dependent on wetlands for its food, shelter and breeding ground. It feeds on shrimp, fish, insects, and vegetation, which he believes are abundant in the area.
Vulnerable
According to online sources, Philippine Ducks are large dabbling ducks that “feed mainly at the surface rather than by diving.” They are classified as “vulnerable” because it has a small population and undergoing a rapid continuing decline due to extensive overhunting and loss of habitats. As few as an estimated 5,000 remain
Finding sanctuary.
Philippine Ducks (Anas Luzonica), though not classified as “endangered,” are a vulnerable indigenous species that found sanctuary in TVIRD’s tailings dam. At its peak, close to 20 percent of these waterbirds’ total population may have been in Canatuan.
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all over the country.
“The Annual Asian Waterbird Census is done every month of January of the year by CENRO Siocon to monitor the number and migration of bird species, including the Philippine Ducks at TVIRD’s dam,” said Werble.
During the first census that he conducted in 2019, Werble said he was happy to count more than 500 Philippine Ducks at the tailings facility. In 2020, its population reached 950 but came down to around 700 in 2021 due to migration. “These birds are a migratory specie. It migrates from one place to another.”
At its peak, close to 20 percent of these waterbirds’ total population may have been in Canatuan. It is also likely that this figure will rise during the next migration.
Other inhabitants
Aside from Philippine Ducks, the TVIRD’s tailings storage facility is often visited by Kingfishers (Alcedo atthis) and Hawk Eagles (Nisaetus Cirrhatus) – which like the Philippine Ducks, also hunt for food there. Different kinds of bats, birds and snakes like the Philippine Cobra also found their home in the surrounding forest area.
Even during the copperzinc mining operation, the Sulphide Dam is laden with freshwater fish that the Canatuan locals identified as hito (cat fish), kasili (eel) and halwan (mudfish), to name a few.
Tribal leaders in Canatuan agree on the observations of visitors that at the foot of the lush Mt. Canatuan lies a beautiful lake – a refreshing view to anyone who wants to savor the silence of the mountain and its surrounding.
A silence that can only be disturbed by the vigorous quacking sound of the Philippine Ducks that continue to thrive in its new habitat.
Surrounded by a lush forest, TVIRD’s Sulphide Dam (above)has been home to almost 1,000 Philippine Ducks since the company concluded its operations in 2014. The area is also home to different kinds of birds, bats and snakes, including the Philippine Cobra.
Philippine minerals have a wide range of ores from nickel laterite, copper ore, iron ore, chromite ore, limestone and more. Thus, when daily operations require elemental analysis of a wide range of inorganic/ geological samples, it is often cumbersome, or not possible to setup and maintain a large number of dedicated calibrations to handle such range. In these cases, a widely applicable, but accurate solution is highly desirable. In this application note we demonstrate Malvern Panalytical’s unique solution WROXI in combination with Epsilon 4 and Leneo sample preparation, is capable to handle a wide range of sample types. This is the valueadded offerings by Malvern Panalytical to enhance precision elemental analysis, by way of in-house affordable traceability guaranteed CRMs
WROXI solution
The WROXI BASE application module comprises 15 synthetic multi-elements standards, containing in total 11 different inorganic oxides. Made from traceable compounds WROXI is a primary analytical solution. The standards are delivered as powders to be prepared as fused beads on-site, using the customer’s flux, dilution ratios and methodology. Each set of WROXI standards is supplied with 15 bottles containing 10 g of powdered standards each, packed under nitrogen, in air-tight plastic bottles. Each set is supplied with drift monitors to maintain the application. WROXI offers good calibration especially when doing shipment of ores and exploration thus following tolerance and penalty elements. It eliminates the use of different calibration in every ores and provides good accuracy and repeatability.
Instrumentation
A Claisse LeNEO automatic fusion instrument was used to make all the fused glass beads. LeNEO
Requiring only an electrical connection and fume exhaust, the LeNEO can prepare glass disks for XRF analysis with high reproducibility. In addition to being easy to use, his fully automatic instrument guarantees safety for the operator as well as superior analytical performance in the laboratory. Its muffle furnace and excellent insulation properties ensure uniform heating conditions providing excellent repeatability and reproducibility. 40 mm fused beads were produced by mixing 0.9 g of sample material and 9 g of flux (66 % lithium tetraborate / 34 % lithium metaborate). WROXI standards used to set up the calibration were prepared in duplicate. Measurements were performed using a Malvern Panalytical Epsilon 4 EDXRF spectrometer, equipped with a 15W, 50 kV silver anode X-ray tube, a high-resolution SDD30 silicon drift detector, 6 beam filters, a helium purge facility, a sample spinner and a 10-position removable sample changer. Epsilon 4 has an option to use in air mode, no vacuum system and no film consumables. To test the accuracy of the method 12 certified reference materials (CRM) of different geological matrices were prepared as fused beads. The results for the 11 compounds in the CRMs are shown in Table 2. For a wide range of sample types, the measured concentrations show excellent agreement with the certified values.
Calibration results
The calibration was set up using all 15 WROXI standards. The concentration ranges of the 11 compounds in the WROXI standards are shown in Table 1.
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Validation
To illustrate the quality of the application graphically, the measured concentrations are plotted against certified values (Figure 1). An excellent agreement between the values is evidenced by the correlation factor of the regression line (R2=0.9997).
The results of the validation measurements are summarized and evaluated in Table 3. The results are shown for two groups for all majors with concentrations above 1%, and for all minors with concentrations between 0.1% and 1%. The WROXI application in combination with the Epsilon 4 is capable of analyzing most majors with a high accuracy, typically better than 3% relative.
Table 3. Absolute and relative errors for a selection of oxides calculated from the set of CRMs. Data are presented for two concentration ranges: >1 % and between 0.1 and 1 %. To keep data representative a threshold was set so
Table 1. Concentration ranges of the 11 compounds in WROXI standards.
Table 3. Absolute and relative errors for a selection of oxides calculated from
the set of CRMs. Data are presented for two concentration ranges: >1 % and between 0.1 and 1 %. To keep data representative a threshold was set so that data per evaluated compounds was defined by at least two samples in the relevant concentration ranges.
Figure 1. Accuracy overview: comparison of measured and certified concentration for all compounds present in the 12 standards.
Table 2. Analytical accuracy: comparison of certified
and measured values for 11 major and minor oxides in 12
CRMs of various types.
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that data per evaluated compounds was defined by at least two samples in the relevant concentration ranges.
Summary
The data in this application note shows the versatility and power of the WROXI application for the analysis of 11 compounds in a variety of sample types. The combination of WROXI, Epsilon 4 and LeNEO offers a unique versatile solution for elemental analysis of minerals. Users will save time setting up and maintaining a set of different calibrations to handle a wide range of sample types. This reduces the need to purchase a large set of certified reference materials. And best of all, the solution gives highly accurate results independent of sample type. Users can start analyzing directly, with minimal knowledge about the expected composition. Learn more at https://www.malvernpanalytical.com/ and see more at https:// www.youtube.com/c/MalvernPanalytical/featured.
Manageable Mine Management
By Engr. Jeffrey Q. Geronimo
Mining companies are always challenged by the tight deadlines and targets to timely satisfy the production requirements of the mine. This has often translated to numerous changes in mining strategies and plans which necessitates adoption of concurrent engineering methods. However, this also increases complexity due to the parallel activity of various functional teams. This is not an easy task for project managers and only shows how critical coordination is to prevent overloaded tasks and bottlenecks that may lead to further delays.
The ENOVIA Project Manager role on the highly acclaimed 3DEXPERIENCE Mine platform uniquely gives the potential to accomplish zero delays by linking each team member’s mine data to project execution. In effect, mine project management becomes data-driven by being linked with the production targets. The implications of production targets can be quickly assessed against the project schedule. As a result, a project manager is taking action to resolve issues with a full understanding of the impact to the targets.
Deliverables Planning
Project Manager enables users to organize and manage a mining company’s long and short-term targets and execute projects related to the planning and introduction of future targets. Users can associate the plans into projects and organize them into portfolios. A portfolio provides visibility into a project’s road map, individual tasks, and real-time status of milestones to share with other teams or departments.
Project Planning
The Project Manager supports all phases of the project. Once each target is approved, it is updated to a formal project and can be distributed in detail into tasks. Users can then define a task’s hierarchy to help identify which plans to approve based on how they impact the mine strategy.
Users can decompose complex activities into smaller manageable sub-projects. They can define schedules to organize and assign project members’ roles, nonworking days, and shift turnovers. Tasks can be copied from projects or from project templates, including copying partial task structures. Project Manager also provides bidirectional support and integration to Microsoft Project for project managers that prefer using a Microsoft Project user interface for editing schedule information
Visual Overviews
Users can also view and edit the project schedule graphically via a Gantt Chart. The phases and tasks are displayed as bar charts based on the timelines, and the milestones and gates are marked on it as well. It illustrates the start and end dates, and displays the dependencies between tasks. It provides for an easy way to study the whole project schedule.
Flexible Work Calendars
Being the undisputed global leader in mining software solutions, Dassault Systèmes understands that the mining industry has diverse workforce – most especially when you have multiple mine sites, shift handovers or roster breaks. The work week, working hours and holidays vary across the globe. It also varies based on the type of task being executed and across departments or even the work hours per day in a week. As the 3DEXPERIENCE Mine platform enables “zero-distance”, the ENOVIA Project Manager provides the ability to create flexible work calendars based on organizational and regional factors.
Exceptions can be created on a calendar which be customized for holidays or for workdays and can recur on daily/weekly/ monthly/ annual basis. There can be a start and end effectivity date for each exception. A practical use of exceptions is for handling mine production cutovers that require extra work longer than usual hours for a set period. The same use of exceptions may be required if a certain task is behind schedule.
