CIM Magazine December 2023/January 2024

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DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | DÉCEMBRE 2023/JANVIER 2024

38

Feature

38 The final mining frontiers From the deep sea to space, new frontiers with vast mineral resources are opening up

By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco

Project profile

42 From coal pit to prairieland The Sheerness coal mine in Alberta is well on its way to reclamation, while a mineral lying on top of its coal provides an opportunity for growth

By Silvia Pikal

Technology

46 Streamlining comminution

42

Techniques like artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionizing SAG milling

By Graham Chandler

Partner spotlight

49 Leadership in practice 64 New frontiers In 1971, John L. Mero, president of Ocean Resources, Inc., argued that the seabed could be a significant resource for fulfilling the world’s mineral requirements

The knowledge, leading practices and innovations of CIM’s partners accelerate a common goal to advance responsible and sustainable mineral extraction in Canada and internationally

Compiled by Ailbhe Goodbody

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 5

DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | DÉCEMBRE 2023/JANVIER 2024

11 12

In each issue 8 Editor’s letter 10 President’s notes Tools of the trade 11 The best in new technology

34

Compiled by Zachary Parsons

Contenu francophone 57 Table des matières 57 Lettre de l’éditeur

Developments 12 First Nation appeals court

59 Mot du président

decision

Les actualités

By Kelsey Rolfe

60 Promouvoir l’électrification

25 Powering forward

Par Tijana Mitrovic

By Tijana Mitrovic

Minéralurgie

Column 28 It is time for a new cybersecurity strategy

By Rob Labbé

Modern miner 30 Sekai Musoki defies what is typical in the mining industry and provides valuable representation and support for other women looking to advance in their roles

By Alice Martin

62 L’avenir électrique Mineral processing 32 Sedgman details how it designed a fully electric gold processing plant for Artemis Gold’s Blackwater mine in central B.C.

By Lynn Greiner

34 SRK Consulting’s Adrian Dance says there is a place for preconcentration testing for heterogenous ore deposits

By Ailbhe Goodbody

CIM news 56 In memoriam Compiled by Michele Beacom

6 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Sedgman explique en détail sa conception de l’usine entièrement électrique de traitement de l’or pour le projet d’exploitation aurifère de Blackwater d’Artemis Gold, dans le centre de la ColombieBritannique Par Lynn Greiner

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR ADVERTISERS We at CIM Magazine are grateful to our advertising partners for the role they play in the industry and for supporting us as we share stories of the Canadian mining industry and beyond.

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Editor’s letter

Big projects, big questions

C

IM’s Capital Projects Symposium is a new addition to

the Institute’s roster of events. Despite the first event in November 2020 being forced online by the pandemic, the concept—a small conference focused on case studies on, and strategies for, successful project execution—gathered momentum. As it should for an industry with an unspectacular track record in completing projects on time and on budget. The third edition was held in November, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have attended (see p. 15 for more). It opened doors to future editorial exploration from case studies to existential questions.

Those case studies included Anglo American’s Quellaveco project in Peru, Champion Iron Ore’s continued Bloom Lake expansion in Quebec and The Mosaic Company’s potash shaft decommissioning in Saskatchewan, each of which earned a place as exemplary projects, and all of which had to contend with the pandemic during their execution. The common thread that ran through these presentations as well as others was the combination of experience, technical knowledge and soft skills—many learned through trial and error—required for success.

The topic that echoed throughout the discussions and will also demand attention is the role artificial intelligence (AI) will play in mining projects and our daily lives. George Greer, of Pan American Silver Corp., was skeptical of its utility in project management: “It’s all about people: getting the best people, treating them right and getting everybody pumped up.” An AI-based model, he maintained, cannot help with that.

While others, including John Gravel of Bedrock-Service Group, argued AI is poised to become a valuable tool, Stefan Gueorguiev, director of studies and engineering at Vale, said he believes the application of generative AI and language models to

Featured modern miner Sekai Musoki, principal of construction for digital systems at BHP’s Jansen mine.

Published 8 times a year by: Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum 1040 – 3500 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West Westmount, QC H3Z 3C1 Tel.: 514.939.2710; Fax: 514.939.2714 www.cim.org; magazine@cim.org

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8 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

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Subscriptions Online version included in CIM Membership ($197/yr). Print version for institutions or agencies – Canada: $275/yr (AB, BC, MB, NT, NU, SK, YT add 5% GST; ON add 13% HST; QC add 5% GST + 9.975% PST; NB, NL, NS, PE add 15% HST).

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The Institute, as a body, is not responsible for statements made or opinions advanced either in articles or in any discussion appearing in its publications.

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Gold Winner

Ryan Bergen, Editor-in-chief editor@cim.org @Ryan_CIM_Mag

Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen, rbergen@cim.org Managing editor Michele Beacom, mbeacom@cim.org Senior editor Ailbhe Goodbody, agoodbody@cim.org Section editor Silvia Pikal, spikal@cim.org Editorial intern Noel Ormita, normita@cim.org Contributors Graham Chandler, Lynn Greiner, Rob Labbé, Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco, Alice Martin, Tijana Mitrovic, Zachary Parsons, Mackenzie Patterson, Kelsey Rolfe Editorial advisory board Mohammad Babaei Khorzhoughi, Vic Pakalnis, Steve Rusk, Nathan Stubina Translations Karen Rolland, karen.g.rolland@gmail.com Layout and design Clò Communications Inc., communications.clo@gmail.com

This issue’s cover

AGAZINE A AL M WA ON RD TI S NA

knowledge and risk management will remake the mining industry much more, and soon. “Really the horizon that we’re talking about is about three to five years. Anything beyond five to seven years is anybody’s guess. It [will be] a step change,” he said.

To his point, a week prior to the event, a Chinese research team published a paper in Nature Synthesis detailing how an AI chemist developed a formula for producing oxygen using materials available on Mars. The task, which reportedly would have taken scientists 2,000 years, took the AI just six weeks. The breakthrough advances the aim of supporting human life on Mars and deep space exploration, and the process for that breakthrough represents the kind of disruptive step change that Gueorguiev sees on the horizon.

What implications, for example, might this have for the development of new chemistries for batteries, and in turn the minerals required to manufacture them?

That is just a single line of inquiry for a technology that could generate an incredible number of discoveries.

It will be fascinating to see if and how this proves out, and just how far-reaching the impacts could be on how we do our jobs—whether it be in mining or in magazines.

2020

2021

2022

Printed in Canada

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Courtesy of Mike Cinnamond

President’s notes

Today’s students and young mining professionals are the future stewards of our industry, ensuring it continues to thrive

Optimistic for the next 125 years

T

he year is almost at a close and CIM’s birthday celebra-

tions are wrapping up. Its first 125 years have seen an industry that has flourished here in Canada, North America and around the world. That got me thinking about some of the things that are needed to make the mining industry just as successful over the next 125 years.

One of the most important is the people who will lead it.

In early November, I was able to celebrate with the Vancouver Branch at its Annual Student Night. It was a packed event and I saw a lot of CIM stalwarts there, as well as many students from Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. We welcomed the students to the CIM community and toasted to their future success.

Those students, and the many others like them across the country, are the future of both our mining industry and of CIM. They will own the industry and lead how it operates around the world. They will carry CIM’s Brand Canada with them wherever they go—and go they must.

10 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Mining is a global business and it is not getting any easier.

Finding new deposits is becoming increasingly difficult and we are facing a geopolitical storm. The regions that are the most prospective are also the ones that are going through the growing pains of determining what their domestic mining regime should look like and how it treats foreign investment or foreign operating companies. Our new mining leaders will have to be openminded as to where they go and how they adapt to changes in host states’ needs. They will need to be flexible in how they finance opportunities and include host states as partners in their ventures. They will have to focus on training local workforces and developing local supply chains.

Another key element of future success is innovation. How will we find new economic deposits and where will we find them? You will see in this edition of CIM Magazine that mining on the sea floor and in space are featured. That makes sense as new locations mean new opportunities, but we must also be innovative in assessing the opportunities in existing mining jurisdictions.

How can we make our existing operations more economic and sustainable? Energy must be a key focus. Harnessing sustainable green power from solar or wind sources can help us to lower costs and achieve our lower emission goals. Ultimately, global-scale electrification will be needed if lower emission goals are to be a reality. Like Donald Sadoway suggested at MetSoc’s Conference of Metallurgists opening plenary in August, we need to think big and use the base metals available in large volumes to both construct electrolytic cells and store energy on a large scale.

These are just a few of the many challenges our industry must address to be successful—but that means there are also lots of opportunities. As we wish CIM a happy 125th anniversary for the last time, let’s not just look back but also look forward to the next 125 years with optimism. It will be a time for our students and young mining professionals to shine and make sure our industry continues to thrive.

Mike Cinnamond CIM President

Courtesy of Point Laz

Tools of the trade: Underground equipment

Automated mine shaft inspector

Courtesy of Master Builders Solutions

Point Laz’s Lazaruss scanner automates mine shaft inspections, which the company said saves labour hours, improves safety and increases reliability. Lazaruss has a 360-degree video capability using seven high-resolution cameras operating at 21 megapixels at 10 frames per second and creates an accurate 3D model of each mine compartment in less than 15 minutes. The system comes with real-time adaptive lighting, 5,590 lumens at 38.3 watts, and sensors positioned to optimize mine shaft configurations. The sensors have 1.5-centimetre light detection and ranging (LiDAR).

The company stated its scanner can be set up in less than 10 minutes. The aluminum casing for the IP67-certified system is both waterproof and dustproof. Lazaruss also helps with predictive maintenance through processed data output and reports, so companies can enact preventive precautions and minimize expensive unplanned downtime. The system is controlled autonomously by a web app and is compatible with Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.

Easier to spray ready-mix concrete The MasterEase 3820 admixture from Master Builders Solutions is described as a superplasticizer that uses a blend of polymers to improve concrete rheology in ready-mix concrete. It can be used by miners for their underground structural needs. The company stated that products in the MasterEase line can reduce plastic viscosity by up to 30 per cent, which lessens the pumping pressure required to spray the concrete. The enhanced rheology of the mixed concrete allows low water-cement ratios to be achieved, while avoiding an increase in stickiness. The recommended dosage of MasterEase 3820 is 0.3 to 2.00 litres per 100 kilograms of cement and it can be used with all types of EN 197 cements.

Courtesy of Normet

Underground concrete agitator with optimized fuel performance Normet has launched its new ElectroDynamic technology and XL ED fleet of carrier vehicles, which are powered by direct-drive electric motors. The technology uses a low-emission engine-generator set that drives the electric motors at the axles, decoupling engine RPM from the speed of the vehicle. This development eliminates the need for a drive shaft, which the company said allows for increased payload capacity, while also optimizing fuel performance and providing a longer-lasting component that reduces the need for maintenance. The first application of the technology is the XL 1100 Agitator ED, which is designed for underground concrete transportation and can be plugged directly into the mine’s power grid, allowing for mixing and unloading to be controlled electrically, which Normet said reduces heat output and noise, as well as underground emissions.

Compiled by Zachary Parsons December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 11

Courtesy of Tony Fogarassy

Developments

First Nation appeals court decision B.C. Supreme Court ruling could transform the mining claims system in Canada

By Kelsey Rolfe Leaders of the Gitxaała Nation

applauded a British Columbia Supreme Court ruling that the province’s online claim staking system violates the Crown’s duty to consult Indigenous peoples.

But the Nation is pursuing a partial appeal of the decision, arguing that the court should have prevented further staking on Gitxaała (continued on page 13)

12 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Fly camp with Lindquist Peak in the distance on the Deer Horn property, 120 kilometres south of Smithers, B.C.

Developments territory while the province develops a new approach to mineral tenure.

In late September, Justice Alan Ross ruled on claims from two separate petitions by the Gitxaała Nation and the Ehattesaht First Nation. Ross found that the province’s automatic online claim staking system violates the Aboriginal and treaty rights set out in section 35 of the federal Constitution. However, Ross suspended his declaration for a period of 18 months to give the provincial government time to update the current process to include the duty to consult; during that window, the current staking system will remain in effect.

The case also marked the first legal test of B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which the government introduced in 2019 to enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) into B.C. law. But Ross found that the court did not have a role in enforcing the application of DRIPA. The ruling is set to transform B.C.’s mineral staking regime at a time when the province is developing a strategy to become a major global supplier of critical minerals.

“We are at a nexus for First Nations rights generally, but also for the exploration mining sector. The critical minerals gold rush has brought into focus some of these issues of how [to] deal with Indigenous peoples’ lands,” said Tony Fogarassy, chair of the board of directors of Vancouverbased junior exploration company First Tellurium Corp, in an interview with CIM Magazine. First Tellurium and Kingston Geoscience Ltd. were co-intervenors in the case, with a submission that supported consultation at the staking stage.

Mineral claim triggers consultation obligation Legal experts say the ruling could also have implications for provinces that have similar free staking systems, or where Indigenous nations have not signed treaties.

But the Gitxaała Nation believes that the ruling is inadequate. The Nation is appealing the court’s refusal to quash specific claims on Gitxaała territory and to prevent further automatic claim-staking on Gitxaała lands. It is not, however, appealing the court’s central decision on

Connecting People.

Powering Communities.

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the claim staking system, and in an Oct. 25 press release, Hereditary Chief Sm’ooygit Nees Hiwaas (Matthew Hill) called it an “important win” for the Nation.

The court declined to quash the identified claims because they had been staked under a presumptively valid regulatory scheme, and out of concern that they could call into question the validity of other mineral claims.

Linda Innes, chief councillor with the Gitxaała Nation, said in an interview with CIM Magazine that the Nation had never ceded its territory or hereditary system of governance. Yet despite this, the Nation has never been consulted when mineral claims were staked on its land.

The five claims in question are located on Lax k’naga dzol (Banks Island), an area at the heart of Gitxaała territory, which Innes said has traditional villages, is used for harvesting and has spiritual importance. “It’s very significant in terms of what it offers to our people as a way of life, and it speaks to what our hereditary chiefs, matriarchs and governing council want to leave behind for future generations,” she said.

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Roughly 16 per cent of Banks Island has been staked, or 160 square kilometres—and one claim was staked while the case was being heard.

James Herbert, senior advisor to the Gitxaała Nation, who runs the Nation’s territorial management agency, told CIM Magazine that the Nation is concerned about “re-staking [of existing claims] and staking of more [claims]” over the 18-month transition period “as people pick up on critical minerals strategies.

We’ve also been in a lot of conversations with other nations and…that fear is very much alive.”

The Nation is also seeking a declaration that the DRIPA applies to all B.C. laws, and that the court has a role in enforcing it. In his decision, Ross wrote that the section of the act that sets out DRIPA’s purposes, including “to affirm the application of [UNDRIP] to the laws of British Columbia,” did not have the effect of law, and the section that instructs the provincial government to take “all measures necessary” to

From the wire Compiled by Noel Ormita Canadian Gold Corp. appointed Edward Huebert as president and chief executive officer, succeeding Ian Ball, who was in the interim role. Huebert has an extensive background in mining and government relations, including previous positions as Yukon’s deputy minister of environment, the executive vice-president of the Mining Association of Manitoba and the acting mine manager of De Beers’ Snap Lake mine in the Northwest Territories. Most recently, he served as a special advisor on mining to the cabinet secretary on economic development for Manitoba.

Trojan Gold Inc. announced Jon Li as the company’s new chief financial officer, after Vic Hugo resigned from the role. Li joins the executive team with more than 20 years of finance experience, with a specialization in mining, technology and financial services industries.

Magna Mining appointed Jeff Huffman as COO. He joined the company after serving as president and COO of Dumas Contracting Ltd. During his time with Dumas, he led the company into a growth cycle, and the achievement of its best safety record since the company was founded in 1994.

14 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

ensure provincial laws are consistent with UNDRIP, “in consultation and cooperation with the Indigenous peoples in British Columbia” did not grant the courts the authority to rule on such disputes.

In the case, the court sought to determine whether B.C. “drew the line” on when consultation becomes necessary in the appropriate place. Currently, consultation is only triggered when a company or prospector wants to undertake exploration that would involve land disturbance. But Ross found that a mineral claim meets the threshold of having potential adverse impacts on Aboriginal title, due to its potential to impact areas of cultural and spiritual significance, as well as physical impacts, such as the loss of minerals, physical disturbance and loss of potential financial benefit from the minerals.

Ross also concluded that the Mineral Tenure Act (MTA) itself did not breach Aboriginal title rights, and the fault was instead with chief gold commissioner, who has the latitude to introduce consultation before the registration of a claim.

Currently, certified individuals can access the ministry’s online claim staking system and receive the mineral rights to plots of land for $1.75 per hectare. The claims take effect immediately, and give the holder the right to explore the area with handheld tools. According to evidence submitted by the province in the case, between 5,000 and 6,000 new mineral claims are made each year.

Keerit Jutla, president and chief executive officer of the B.C.-based Association for Mineral Exploration (AME), told CIM Magazine that work was already under way to modernize the MTA prior to the ruling, and said the 18-month time frame will allow government, industry and Indigenous people to work together on a new regime while providing certainty to mineral explorers. The AME, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and the Mining Association of BC (MABC) were intervenors in the case, and their submission argued that activities that have material impact on asserted Aboriginal rights and title cannot occur until after consultation at the permitting stage.

“This outcome is specifically why we decided to intervene. We need to look at this holistically, in terms of how we ensure there’s no impact to local communities that rely on mineral exploration and ensure that what we build is respectful of Indigenous rights,” Jutla said.

He said the association encourages its members to engage early and often with First Nations.

Indigenous engagement Kevin O’Callaghan, partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and leader of the firm’s Indigenous law group, told CIM Magazine that concerns about what the ruling means for the mineral exploration industry are somewhat exaggerated. “Some people have said the sky is falling, but the sky is not falling,” he said. O’Callaghan represented AME, PDAC and MABC. He noted the “vast majority” of mineral exploration activity is permitted, and thus can only occur after consultation. “The idea that consultation before you can do something [will be] difficult is not true,” he said. “The important aspects of a mineral claim—the ability to be first in line and not have the intellectual property you’re creating on that property be taken by somebody else without you being able to access it—can all be maintained while asserting some consultation at the beginning.”

O’Callaghan noted B.C. is a unique case, as the vast majority of Indigenous nations never signed treaties that would have ceded their land to the Crown. While most of the Prairie provinces and Ontario are covered by the numbered treaties, he said the ruling may have implications for provinces and territories with First Nations who assert Aboriginal title.

In a blog post, a group of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt lawyers suggested the case “could apply to other similar [mineral rights] regimes across Canada.” In addition to B.C., Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Saskatchewan and all three territories have some version of a free staking system, according to a 2021 analysis by law firm Cassels. Alberta, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have a “Crown discretion” system.

For years now, Fogarassy said he has sought consent from First Nations before staking on their territory. Only two nations have said they were not interested, and in both cases, he said, he backed off. He added that he expects end users of metals and minerals will soon come to expect that from miners.

“They all want to source minerals sustainably, ethically and responsibly,” he said. “If those minerals come from unceded territories where a mining proposal is opposed, that’s unsustainable and unethical.” CIM

Jon Benjamin Photography

Developments

CIM Capital Projects Symposium conference chair Ian Pearce.

Strategies for capital projects Financiers, consultants, project proponents and management professionals came together in Vancouver Nov. 19 to

21 to detail the current project landscape

and leading practices at the third edition of CIM’s Capital Projects Symposium.

Keynote speaker Sam Houston, principal and founder of Strategist Solutions, explained to the 250 attendees that the aim of the event was “to develop resilient growth strategies from the outset of project conception to the development phases.”

Speakers addressed the fundamentals of project execution, intervention when things do not go according to plan, as well as the risk that trust earned by early engagement with local communities can be lost during the essential planning and study phases.

“We aren’t an industry that can build [projects] in two days like a coffee shop— it takes years. Ownership changes, management changes, there are cultural changes. Communities resent that,” said Monica Ospina, owner of O Trade and Market Access, in the first session of the conference. She advocated for groundwork to map out local capacity to support the eventual development and operation that is key during such periods. Do not ask communities what they need; ask what they can do, she advised. This

request, in Ospina’s experience, is always well received because it recognizes “the dignity of work, which is the pride of every single individual to provide and be useful.”

A day of workshops preceded the twoday main event. Garth Kirkham, co-chair of CIM’s Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves committee, addressed “NI 43101 and project development” and Troy Dunow, director of mining and metals at Turner & Townsend, led a session on “Construction estimating for nonestimators.” The symposium itself was divided into four sessions, each with its own keynote, presentations and panel discussion, and focused on distinct themes: “How major projects can change the future of mining;” “Development and project financing;” “Project execution (Case studies)” and “Contracting models.”

On financing, Candace MacGibbon, who sits on multiple boards including Osisko Gold Royalties, highlighted new sources of capital for junior miners beyond major and mid-sized miners.

“This really has changed in the past couple of years to include OEMs, because

Optimize Whether you’re improving energy e ciency or optimizing water use, we’re here to support your journey to Net Zero Mining. stantec.com/net-zero-mining

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as the demand for minerals continues to grow and relatively few projects are being built, the squeeze will be on the industry to improve its project delivery track record.

“I think back to my time in the oil sands and four oil sands producers were all going to build their projects, but at the same time, and nobody was going to blink,” Pearce said. “And you saw what happened to those projects; they were way, way over budget. And they were way, way, way late.

“There is going to be pressure put on us to bring metals to the market. That’s going to be a real challenge for us.”

Presentations from the 2023 Capital Projects Symposium will be made available for viewing on CIM Academy in early 2024. The next symposium will be held in Toronto in the fall of 2024.

– Ryan Bergen

PDAC 2024 award recipients revealed Each year since 1977, the Prospectors and

Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) has recognized outstanding groups in the mining industry in five award categories: the Bill Dennis Award, the Skookum Jim Award, the Sustainability Award, the Thayer Lindsley Award and the Viola R. MacMillan Award. PDAC has announced the 2024 award recipients, which will be formally recognized during its Awards Gala in Toronto on March 5, 2024, during the PDAC 2024 Convention.

“Their successes are an inspiration and demonstrate the expertise, ingenuity and determination needed to find the minerals that are essential to modern life,” said PDAC president Raymond Goldie in a Nov. 9 press release. “Our awards recipients also show that, both in Canada and worldwide, mineral explorers and developers are practising innovative and effective approaches to community engagement and sustainability.”

The 2024 PDAC Award winners are as follows: The Bill Dennis Award, which recognizes individuals who have made a significant mineral discovery or contributed to the progression of the mining industry in Canada, will go to John Burzynski and the Osisko Mining Inc. exploration team for their discovery and expansion of the Windfall deposit’s Lynx gold zones in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, Quebec.

From 2016 to 2022, upon unearthing one of Quebec’s most significant gold discoveries, Osisko completed a 35-rig drilling campaign at the Lynx deposit, which is considered to be among the largest drilling campaigns in the world. In addition to featuring Canada’s longest diamond drill hole that exceeds 3,400 metres, the Lynx deposit gained worldwide attention as the volcanic belt area was not known as an area with significant deposits. A $1.2 billion investment at Windfall was announced in May 2023 to fund the mine’s future potential.

The Skookum Jim Award, which is given to an Indigenous group that has demonstrated exceptional achievement Courtesy of PDAC

your car manufacturers are looking for critical minerals and they may actually be a source of financing,” she said. She also suggested that governments may be more likely to fund critical minerals projects. “It may take years and years and there’s some debate as to whether or not those governments will actually distribute those funds and to whom they will, but nonetheless it is exciting that they’re possibly available to us.”

The second day of the event zeroed in on project execution. Christian Cloutier, projects general manager for Quebec Iron Ore, emphasized the need for team building. “I always have a line item in my budget called the fun fund,” he said, noting that is something he is prepared to go overbudget on. Trust and team spirit makes for better communication and accountability, he added.

Inevitably, some projects go into the ditch and need to be pulled back out.

George Greer, senior vice-president of project development at Pan American Silver Corp., offered several strategies learned from his decades in the industry, including freezing the work completely to understand everyone’s place in the project. “What I’ve always done is have everybody write half a page and post their roles and responsibilities to make sure they know what their role in the project team is,” he explained. “It’s amazing what you get back from those sheets of paper, and then, through cross-matching, you can identify a need for a little bit of reorganization.”

Discussion of contracting models included an overview of alliance contracts, a more collaborative model for megaprojects that is meant to help reduce the risk of litigation, and which has not yet been widely applied to mining projects. Augusto Patmore, managing director for the construction advisory firm Alvarez and Marsal, explained how the alliance model applies a different lens in evaluating potential partners that focuses on criteria beyond credentials and technical know-how: “The interview process that takes place could also rank bidders based on their communication style; based on their ability to collaborate; based on their ability to listen and their level of empathy in a discussion.”

Applying the leading practices discussed in the symposium will be essential, noted Ian Pearce, a mining industry veteran, and the conference chair, in closing the conference. He pointed out that

The 2023 PDAC Awards Gala in Toronto.

Developments and/or service to Canadian Indigenous exploration or the mining industry, will go to the Wabun Tribal Council (WTC), which represents six First Nations including Beaverhouse, Brunswick House, Chapleau Ojibwe, Flying Post, Matachewan and Mattagami, which host several of Ontario’s mining camps on their land.

WTC is known for its engagement approach towards the mining industry through a company-community collaboration model called the Wabun Model.

This model aids First Nation communities by offering support with negotiations and partnerships with the mining industry through equitable and consistent consultation, from exploration to development.

O3 Mining will be awarded the Sustainability Award, which is given to an organization that showcased leadership, initiative and achievement in conservation work during mine exploration or operations. O3 is being recognized for its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, including its achievement of the Environmental Choice (ECOLOGO) certificate for mineral exploration

companies, a voluntary environmental certification that sets a standard for ESG practices.

Founded in 2019, O3 Mining has demonstrated a strong commitment to ESG targets, and last year invested $2.3 million to implement best practices that exceed regulatory targets. An example is the company’s use of biodegradable oils in heavy machinery on sites, and not just in drilling equipment, as required by the certification. The company also formed a sustainable development department and a committee within the board of directors to oversee corporate social responsibility.

The Thayer Lindsley Award, a recognition given to a significant mineral discovery anywhere in the world, will go to the Lundin Group Vicuña exploration team for pioneering the creation of a new mineral district on the border of Chile and Argentina in a remote area of the Andes where the Maricunga and El Indio gold-silver belts are located.

The expansion potential for the company’s key resources at the Filo del Sol, Josemaria and Los Helados deposits

collectively amount to 38 billion pounds of copper, 28 million equivalent ounces of gold and 356 million ounces of silver.

Recent preliminary projections of high yields in the Lunahuasi location, formerly known as Potro Cliffs, is reinforcing the Vicuña district to be a vital global hub for copper, gold and silver production in Argentina and Chile using the latest geological concepts and models.

The Viola R. MacMillan Award will go to John McConnell and the Victoria Gold Corp. team for outstanding leadership in management and financing for overcoming multiple challenges, including economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, to secure $500 million for the construction and development of the Eagle gold mine in Yukon’s Mayo mining district.

Despite shareholder doubts and critics, McConnell and the Victoria Gold Corporation team managed to lower capital costs after the mine’s completion.

McConnell and his team’s commitment to safety operations and a financially strategic approach did not falter throughout the process.

– Noel Ormita

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Photo by Paul-Alain Hunt via Unsplash

Comet Lithium Corporation announced new appointments to its senior management team, including Vincent Metcalfe as a director of the company and executive chairman of the board of directors, Vincent Cardin-Tremblay as vice-president of exploration and Joseph de la Plante as strategic advisor. All three founded Nomad Royalty Company Ltd., which was acquired by Sandstorm Gold Ltd. for $755 million in 2022.

Taseko Mines Limited announced the appointments of Richard Tremblay and Terry Morris as chief operating officer and vice-president of operations, respectively. Tremblay, who joined Taseko in 2014 and was instrumental in the development of the company’s Florence Copper project in Arizona, has more than 30 years of mining industry experience.

Morris is a mining engineer who has held previous senior roles at Peabody Australia, Westmoreland Coal and Teck Resources.

Anglo American announced the retirement of Stephen Pearce, who has served as finance director since 2017; John Heasley will step into the role and also serve as an executive director to the company’s board. Pearce will stay on with the company during the transition period until Feb. 29, 2024.

Teck Resources Ltd. announced the retirement of president and COO Harry “Red” Conger, who stepped down from his board of director duties at the same time. CEO Jonathan Price will also take on the role of president in the interim, while a search is being conducted to fill the COO role.

Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. announced Sean Roosen has resigned as a director of the corporation, so that he can transition into the role of CEO and board chair of Osisko Development Corp. Jason Attew will become the president and CEO of Osisko Gold Royalties, effective Jan. 2, 2024, while Norman MacDonald will step into the role of chair of the company’s board.

Rio Tinto promoted Matthew Breen, previous general manager of operations at Rio Tinto’s Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, to COO. He succeeds Angela Bigg, who was president and COO of the Diavik mine since 2021, and will return in a different leadership role with the company after a leave of absence.

Eldorado Gold appointed Ryan Swedburg to senior vice-president of finance.

He has held previous CFO roles at Newmont Corporation and Goldcorp. Inc.

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Ore containing copper, cobalt and nickel at the Andover mine in Western Australia.

Report: The top risks and opportunities for mining and metals companies in 2024 For the third consecutive year, mining

executives have identified environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues as one of the key risks facing the industry, according to EY. Released in October of this year, the professional services firm’s “Top 10 business risks and opportunities for mining and metals in 2024” report found that ESG issues are the number one concern for mining executives heading into 2024 for several reasons, not the least of which involves winning over stakeholders and investors.

For the report, EY consulted more than 150 mining executives from major mining regions across various roles including sustainability, technology and human resources. Paul Mitchell, EY global mining and metals leader, said in an Oct. 12 press release that mining executives who strengthen their focus on ESG in 2024 will see major business benefits.

“Many miners are focused on achieving a net-positive impact,” he said in the release. “For those who get this right, there are significant benefits, including improved access to capital, a healthier talent pipeline and stronger licence to operate.”

The report added that prioritizing ESG issues and achieving a net-positive impact are no longer considered nice-to-haves

but must-haves. Investors and communities are becoming increasingly cognizant of ESG considerations, so it is not enough to simply toe the regulatory line— mining companies hoping to secure capital will need to go above and beyond the current policies set in place by governments to prove their commitments.

After ESG issues, capital came in as the second key concern for the mining sector in 2024, according to the report.

With capital ranking as the eighth biggest issue for miners in the previous year’s report, it is clear that capital is quickly becoming a hot-button issue as the sector struggles to fund the expansions needed to meet the demand for critical minerals that are essential to the energy transition.

“The race to support the energy transition is accelerating, with the surge in demand for critical minerals underscoring the mining sector’s pivotal role,” Mitchell said. “The intertwining of sectors, such as automotive and battery manufacturing, with mining signals a transformative phase where collaborative efforts will be the cornerstone of sustainable progress.”

The report found that the third biggest risk facing mining and metals companies in 2024 is cybersecurity, which has become a key concern again for the first time since 2020 due to a more complex threat landscape (see page 28 for cybersecurity expert Rob Labbé’s thoughts on why mining companies need to take cyber risks more seriously). According to the 2023 EY Global Board Risk Survey, only

40 per cent of mining and metals boards feel confident that they understand the biggest cyber threats facing their organization, signalling that cybersecurity should be a key consideration for business leaders in planning for the next year.

With several real-time threats looming over the mining industry, the “Top 10 business risks and opportunities for mining and metals in 2024” report stated it is more important than ever that leaders operate with transparency and clearly communicate the value they bring to investors and communities, aside from financial benefits alone.

“Miners need to get better at articulating the nonfinancial value they bring to communities and investors, beyond merely meeting regulatory expectations,” the report stated. “Creating and communicating a bigger, bolder vision of legacy beyond life of mine can demonstrate a company’s societal commitment.”

Although the sector is in a state of massive transition and change, Mitchell said he believes the industry will persevere despite the many potential pitfalls.

“This year’s ranking highlights the complex operating environment miners face,” he said. “The risks are numerous, but history proves the resilience and the inventiveness of the sector to turn these into opportunities. We expect to see more transparency, innovation, collaboration and agility over the next 12 months as mining and metals companies embrace the upside of change.”

– Mackenzie Patterson

Courtesy of BHP

Developments

The South Flank iron ore mine, owned by BHP, is Australia’s largest new iron ore mine in more than 50 years. Iron ore mines could benefit from a new process that uses microbes to break down tailings.

From tailings to soil Research from the University of Queensland in Australia, in cooperation with the

Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron facility, shows that microbes could be used to accelerate the weathering of iron ore tailings and convert them into soil that is healthy enough to grow crops and native plants.

According to research published on Aug. 13 in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology, the process involves encouraging specific microbes

to colonize tailings that have been amended with organic matter (such as mulch). Then, the microbes decompose the organic materials and dissolve minerals in the tailings to form soil crumbs (namely aggregates)—the building blocks of soil quality.

“Tailings have no functional soil structure. They are massive, compacted, finetextured byproducts from the mining process,” said Longbin Huang, a professor at the University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute and one of the

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1,800 Number of tailings storage facilities located around the world

1,000 Cubic metres of tailings that have been converted into healthy soil at CLS

12 Number of months microbes spent weathering tailings into healthy soil during the trial

co-authors of the research paper, in an interview with CIM Magazine. “That’s why we want to produce these aggregates, so [they develop] stable structure and porosity [in the tailings].”

The porosity, once it has developed in the tailings, creates space between otherwise compacted tailings particles, which allows roots, water, microbes and gas—like oxygen—to proliferate, just like in arable soil.

In the research, native microbes carried in the organic matter were inoculated in magnetite tailings collected from an iron ore mine in Western Australia. Huang explained that the research focused on iron ore tailings so that the team could acquire fundamental knowledge on the process and limit the variables of the research while they studied it. “Therefore, we can have a robust conclusion and we can extrapolate the process [to other types of tailings],” he added.

For its research, the team used Canada’s only synchrotron—a type of cyclic particle accelerator—at CLS in Saskatoon, because of its soft X-ray spectromicroscopy (SM) beamline. The research paper explained that the SM beamline was used “to investigate organic molecules and mineral phases at organomineral interfaces in tailings.” This beamline helped researchers understand carbon, nitrogen, iron, aluminum and silicon abundance and speciation in aggregates, yielding key information about the process of organo-mineral association leading to soil aggregation.

The natural weathering of tailings could take thousands of years, according to Huang. However, results from the trial found that the new process could weather minerals in as little as 12 months. “One to three years, no problem,” said Huang, who noted that the time frame is influenced by climate conditions, as freezing 20 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

weather makes the microbes slower and less effective.

Compared to other processes for remediating mine waste, the new method is also inexpensive to use and has the potential to convert “colossal volumes” of tailings into healthy soil, according to a Sept.

28 press release from CLS. So far, the researchers have completed a field trial and an extensive greenhouse trial using the rehabilitated tailings to grow crops and native plants like sorghum and maize. An estimated maximum of 1,000 cubic metres of tailings has been converted into healthy soil.

Huang said the most expensive part of the process is obtaining organic matter, but to reduce costs, it could be sourced through agricultural waste or marginal land—land that would not be profitable for agriculture. He added that mining companies could also hire people in local communities to grow biomass.

“The beauty of this technology, compared to conventional engineering-based technology, is that it has a very low socioeconomic threshold,” said Huang. “Local communities can easily participate in the supply chain.”

The team of researchers is hopeful that its solution could reduce costs and prevent risks associated with tailings storage facilities. Currently, there are more than 1,800 tailings storage facilities around the world, according to the release, many of which contain iron ore tailings.

“If they can start to [use this process], then it means they can rehabilitate the tailings much cheaper, earlier and faster,” Huang explained. “They can shorten the risk window of exposing the tailings to natural rainfall.”

The researchers stated that the process could also be applied to restore soils damaged by over-farming, overuse of fertilizers and climate change.

While no commercial applications have been developed at this point, and the researchers do not yet have industrial partners, Huang said the next step is to partner with iron ore mines willing to work with them to scale up trials for the technology.

Huang said that the team would collaborate with mining companies to scale up the process and adopt it into field operations for cost-effective reclamation of tailings. “We can educate and train the local operations team, so they can use it going forward and they can train other people,” he said.

– Alice Martin

Critical conversations In the inaugural episode of the Mission

Critical webinar series, Ryan Bergen, CIM Magazine editor-in-chief, and David Anonychuk, global vice-president of metallurgy and consulting at SGS Natural Resources, hosted a discussion with Marcella Munro, head of government and regulatory affairs at Teck Resources and co-chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Critical Minerals Council, and Chris Evans, managing director at Winsome Resources, to hear their perspectives on the progress and obstacles in developing Canada’s critical mineral resources.

“This series is focused on the development of Canada’s store of critical minerals,” Bergen said. “It will bring in industry leaders to dig into the practical, political and financial questions around what it will take to make good on this generational opportunity.”

A dire gap In December 2022, the federal government announced its critical minerals strategy, with the aim of increasing the supply of critical minerals sourced ethically from Canada to meet the global demands of the green energy transition.

Referencing figures released by Natural Resources Canada, the speakers highlighted the need to increase the number of mining operations in the country to match the ambitious national goals and policies set out in the strategy, which are targeted at increasing domestic electric vehicle (EV) battery production.

“If we look at the past 15 years, we’ve only seen about four mines being developed,” Anonychuk said. “Going forward, there’s 22 [mines] that need to be developed in the next 15 years.”

The speakers stated that the country must also address its dire infrastructure gap. According to a 2023 report from the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), a large investment from the federal government is needed to address this deficit, as it makes Canada one of the most expensive countries to mine in.

Munro emphasized that transportation issues continuously prevent access to remote areas that are rich in natural resources and could be a key source of supplying critical minerals, citing Newmont’s projects in B.C.’s Golden Triangle as an example.

Developments Photo via Adobe Stock

With recent federal and provincial government incentives for the EV industry announced in Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s supply has the potential to meet demand in battery production, but it is still behind compared to other countries. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the overall demand for critical minerals is projected to increase by six times by 2040.

“The government’s recognized that this probably isn’t a one- or two-year project…it’s more of a generational challenge,” Munro said.

To further address this gap, the speakers highlighted the need to increase international cooperation, workforce capacity and to grow a broader awareness of the high standards of mining practices in Canada.

International cooperation Nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper, rare earth elements and lithium are among the shortlisted critical minerals with the most potential for growth in Canada, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Evans of Winsome Resources, which is headquartered in Australia and owns lithium assets in Quebec, said there is a

Canada is a key producer of copper, but more mines need to be developed to meet the global demand for critical minerals, according to Natural Resources Canada.

big gap to be filled in the market for the metal, which could be filled by global collaborations between mining companies. Australian mining companies, for

example, are rushing into Canada to take advantage of its natural resources—and Canada has the opportunity to get in on the action.

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“The world is now looking around for another source of hard rock lithium outside of western Australia,” he said. “Quebec and Ontario in particular have a large resource—hard rock lithium—although largely unexplored at this point.”

leadership role in battery production, it could result in a contribution of $5.7 billion to $24 billion to Canada’s GDP by 2030 annually and supply more than 80,000 industry jobs.

The complete webinar can be viewed on CIM’s YouTube channel.

Inclusivity in action With the exponential increase in global interest, and demand for, critical minerals for net-zero goals, the speakers agreed that Canada’s mining industry must invest in building a more diverse workforce as its current one ages and mining engineering graduates are dropping off. A key way to do that, the speakers said, is by partnering with Indigenous communities.

“The human resource challenge that we’re all facing in mining is real,” said Munro.

Munro highlighted the need for government policy to incentivize and support Indigenous communities to partner with the mining industry to not only develop more mining projects on Indigenousowned land, but also to boost Indigenous participation in the workforce.

Munro added that diverse workforces are essential to operations for Teck.

Approximately 24 per cent of its employees are female, while women made up 16.4 per cent of the Canadian mining workforce in 2021, according to Canada’s most recent census data.

Addressing the skills shortage must go beyond only focusing on recruiting a technical workforce of engineers, but also engage with tradespeople and young people in general to get them interested in mining engineering, Evans added.

– Noel Ormita

What the GlencoreTeck coal deal means for the Canadian mining industry Teck Resources announced on Nov. 13

the sale of the majority of its steelmaking coal operations to Swiss mining giant Glencore in a US$6.9 billion cash deal, with the remaining amount to be acquired by two steelmakers, totaling a US$9 billion deal.

In addition, Glencore has made commitments to Teck that it will retain a Canadian workforce and continue to operate the newly formed company, called Elk Valley Resources (EVR), in Canada through a head office in Vancouver and regional offices in Calgary, Alberta and Sparwood, B.C. It also committed to honour current Indigenous partnerships and work with other local Indigenous Nations to increase participation in its activities.

The ownership of EVR will be divided into three: 77 per cent of the company will be acquired by Glencore, while 20 per cent will be owned by Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation and the remaining three per cent by South Korean steel giant POSCO.

A higher standard of practice

The road ahead

The industry has continued to evolve in providing safer workplaces, and meeting sustainable standards in mining exploration and production, the speakers stated. Accreditations like the Copper Mark and Safemark ensure quality operation standards are met for the workforce and the environment.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Munro said.

“We’re very proud of our ESG goals and think it’s a business prerogative.”

Teck operates through these standards not for monetary gains, said Munro, but for other benefits that come from integrating policies into company practices, such as better investor relations.

According to a 2022 Clean Energy Canada report, if the country takes a

While the companies have agreed on the sale, the closure of the deal is pending federal government approval as a review under the Investment Canada Act (ICA) may take a long time.

The deal has received vocal opposition. In a video interview with BNN Bloomberg, Pierre Lassonde, chair emeritus at Franco-Nevada Mining, raised concerns over what this could mean for the Canadian mining industry.

“I’m very disappointed, not for myself, but for Canada. For British Columbia, for the employees,” Lassonde told BNN Bloomberg. “Elk Valley Resources is a great Canadian company, it’s 11 per cent of British Columbia’s economy, it’s 11,000 jobs.”

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A TIMELINE OF THE GLENCORE-TECK BID February 21, 2023 Teck announced intentions to split its business into two: Teck Metals Corp. for its copper-focused, base metals production, and EVR, a spin-off of its steelmaking coal business into a publicly traded company.

April 3, 2023 Teck rejected a 76 per cent Glencore merger proposal that would see Glencore acquire the entirety of Teck’s business and create two standalone businesses, one metals-focused (MetalsCo) and a thermal and metallurgical coal miner (CoalCo).

The unsolicited deal was priced at US$23.1 billion and Teck turned the deal down, stating that it ran contrary to the company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments and put shareholders at “significant jurisdictional risk” due to exposure to thermal coal and Glencore’s oil trading.

April 11, 2023 Glencore added an additional US$8.2 billion cash component and 24 per cent ownership of MetalsCo to its offer in a second attempt to acquire Teck, eight days after its rejection of the first deal.

April 13, 2023 Teck rejected the new deal, citing a lack of change in Glencore’s bid, other than the cash component.

April 19, 2023 Frustrations rose as Glencore CEO Gary Nagle wrote an open letter appealing to Teck’s Class B shareholders, writing that Teck’s board “consistently refused any engagement” with Glencore. Nagle urged Class B shareholders, who owned a majority of the company’s equity, to support Glencore’s mergerdemerger attempts amid looming share price value decline.

April 20, 2023 Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. (SMM), which held 18.9 per cent of Teck’s Class A shares, part of the controlling shareholder group, announced that it would vote in favour of Teck’s plans of separating its business into two independent companies.

April 26, 2023 Only hours before its annual shareholder meeting, Teck withdrew its separation plans to split the company but said it would pursue a “simple and more direct approach” in separating its companies. Glencore’s proposal was still not being considered, Teck said in a press release.

Courtesy of Teck Resources

Developments

Reclamation work at Teck’s Coal Mountain mine site located near Sparwood, BC.

June 11, 2023 After several months behind closed doors, Teck confirmed it was engaging in non-binding preliminary negotiations with Glencore to acquire Teck’s steelmaking coal business.

November 13, 2023 Teck announced the full sale of its steelmaking coal business.

Back in May, Lassonde offered to invest in Teck himself to save the company from Glencore’s hostile takeover bid.

Scott Lunny, director of the United Steelworkers (USW) Western Canada

union, which represents more than 4,000 Teck employees, highlighted the B.C. mining industry’s leadership in ESG and sustainability goals and stated it will not support the deal without further commitments from Glencore.

“We need specific assurances and details about future plans for the Elk Valley operations from Glencore, including its commitment to the Fording River Expansion (FRX), before we can consider support for this sale,” Lunny said in a Nov. 15 news release.

While Glencore has released details on promises to encourage the federal government to give the deal the green light, Lassonde questioned if the company will follow through given its track record.

“Glencore, last year, paid US$1.75 billion in penalties to the U.S., U.K. and to Brazil for bribery, market manipulation and corruption,” Lassonde told BNN Bloomberg in the video interview. “They’re not exactly choir boys.”

Glencore plans to move ahead to combine Teck’s coal business with its coal assets when the acquisition is closed in the thirdquarter of next year.

– Noel Ormita

New children’s book aims to engage young people with the mining industry Based in Toronto, Ana Gabriela Juárez is

the president of Canadian operations at CTA Environmental Consultants and the founder of Women in Mining Central America. She has worked in the mining industry with a focus on environmental sustainability for more than 20 years.

In her new book, a young girl named Ana is celebrating a shared birthday with her grandmother when she discovers a mysterious map in the attic of her house, which whisks her and two friends on a magical adventure to a mining realm.

Ana’s Adventures at the Mine: The Secret of La Esperanza has been on Amazon’s best sellers list in 38 categories since its mid-September release and has been published in English, Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish. CIM Magazine connected with Juárez by email to discuss the book.

Your partner in the field and beyond

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 23

“Seeing someone like yourself in a role you aspire to can be incredibly powerful.”

– Ana Gabriela Juárez, author of Ana’s Adventures at the Mine

CIM: Walk us through what inspired you to write this book and how you approached the writing process.

Juárez: I was born in Guatemala, a land rich in natural beauty and resources, yet often entangled in misconceptions about mining and its impact. I realized there was a significant gap in how the industry was perceived and the reality of its potential for positive impact, especially in terms of environmental stewardship and community development.

The idea for Ana’s Adventures at the Mine is rooted from when I noticed a distinct lack of resources that could introduce children, especially girls, to mining in a way that was both educational and inspiring. I wanted to dismantle the stereotype of mining being solely a man’s world and show it as a realm of endless possibilities, where sustainability and technology meet.

As a writer, my approach was to blend reality with elements of magic and adventure. I wanted to capture the imagination of young readers, to take them on a journey that was not only fascinating but also enlightening. The character of Ana is reflective of many young girls—curious, brave and ready to explore. Her adventures 24 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

CIM: Tell me more about what happens in the book and your favourite part of the story.

Juárez: In the book we journey with Ana, a young, curious girl, who discovers a magical map together with her friends, leading them to a mining village. This map [sparks] her adventure into the world of mining, where she learns not only about the industry, but also about her family’s connection to it, especially through her grandmother, Maureen Jensen, a renowned geologist. Ana, alongside her friends Juana and Raksha, embarks on a quest within the mine, unravelling its secrets and learning about various aspects of mining.

My favourite part of the story is the moment when Ana and her friends discover a hidden chamber within the mine, revealing an array of sparkling gems and minerals. This discovery is not just about the beauty and wealth beneath our feet; it symbolizes the hidden potential and opportunities within the mining industry, especially for women. This scene is pivotal as it marks Ana’s realization of her love for geology and her desire to pursue a career in mining, similar to her grandmother’s.

This part of the book is particularly dear to me because it encapsulates the essence of the story—discovery, empowerment and the bridging of generations through a shared passion for the Earth’s treasures. It’s a celebration of the wonder that mining holds, a tribute to the women who have paved the way in this field and a beacon of encouragement for

the young girls who will read it and dare to dream big.

CIM: Take me back to moments in your career that challenged you—why is it important to have women represented in the mining industry?

Juárez: When I have found myself presenting in meetings—surrounded predominantly by men—the challenge wasn’t just in presenting my ideas but in ensuring they were taken seriously in a room where I was the only woman, and the youngest [person].

The presence of women in mining challenges and changes the industry’s traditional narratives. It opens up opportunities for mentorship and role modelling, which are vital for encouraging more young women to pursue careers in STEM and mining. Seeing someone like yourself in a role you aspire to can be incredibly powerful. It breaks down barriers and fosters an environment where talent and ambition are the primary drivers, not gender.

For me, the goal is not just to have women in mining, but to create an industry where women can thrive, lead and effect change. It’s about building an inclusive culture that values and leverages the unique contributions of all its members.

CIM: What would you like your young audience to learn most from your book?

Juárez: The most important lesson I want my young audience to learn is the power of curiosity, the importance of exploration and the value of perseverance. I want them to see that their dreams and ambitions are valid and achievable, regardless of their gender or background.

Courtesy of Ana Gabriela Juárez

Courtesy of Ana Gabriela Juárez

in the book mirror the journey of discovery—both of oneself and the world of mining. My goal was to create a story that resonates not just with children but also with adults, encouraging them to think differently about the world beneath our feet and the people who work in it.

I took great care in weaving real-life scenarios and environmental themes into the narrative, ensuring that while the story was fun and engaging, it also imparted key lessons about responsible mining practices and the importance of STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields. To lend authenticity, the book includes characters inspired by real women in mining—role models who embody strength, intelligence and compassion. This was crucial in showing that a career in mining can be both fulfilling and impactful.

Developments disciplines, from geology and engineering to environmental science and community relations. The mining industry plays a crucial role in our daily lives, providing materials for everything from smartphones to houses.

I hope that Ana’s Adventures at the Mine will open their eyes to a world of possibilities, encouraging them to consider careers in STEM fields and to be part of an industry that is vital to our future.

– Noel Ormita Courtesy of NMG

CIM: What would you like your audience to know about the mining industry?

Juárez: I want young readers to know that it’s much more than just digging up minerals from the ground. It’s a complex, dynamic field that involves a range of

NMG’s Matawinie mine (left) is located 120 km north of Montréal, Quebec. An eight-km access road (right) links the mining site directly to Highway 131.

Powering forward Nouveau Monde Graphite will begin piloting an electric loader at its graphite mine

By Tijana Mitrovic Quebec-based Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) recently shared an update on its

electrification program at its Matawinie mine, an open-pit graphite mine near the village of Saint-Michel-des-Saints, Quebec.

The company has committed to fully electrifying its equipment used for mining operations, along with ore concentration and processing activities, in Matawinie’s first five years of operation, which it said would make it the world’s first all-electric open-pit mine. To reach this goal, NMG has partnered with Caterpillar, which will

be the miner’s supplier of heavy mining equipment in the transition from dieselpowered to all-electric machines.

In an Oct. 6 press release, NMG stated the two companies have finalized a partnership and established a calendar to pilot and test the equipment on-site, and to map the transition to future zeroexhaust-emission production models.

The first machine the companies will pilot at the Matawinie mine is a battery-electric Cat 950 GC-wheel loader.

“These developments also support planning for the site’s charging infrastructure,” NMG stated in the release.

“Modelling and simulating the location of charging stations, equipment operations on site, as well as charging cycles in relation to operational schedules and the mining plan, help optimize site design and technology choices. The simulation of charging needs helps identify peak power demand and defining energy management strategies.”

“We now have a clear plan that we both agreed to execute,” said NMG president and CEO Eric Desaulniers in an

interview with CIM Magazine. “We have a lot of different equipment on our fleets, from tow trucks to wheel loaders to excavators, [and] they all have a very precise timeline to be electrified. The idea is to have [first] the diesel equivalent, receive a prototype and ensure productivity, and then switch gradually to an electrified version.”

He added that the electrification project is unique in the industry. “Caterpillar is developing the first open-pit full solution. It’s not only the equipment, but also all the charging stations, all the infrastructure around the project and the job site solution [which will be fully electrified],” Desaulniers said.

Desaulniers also believes that through its more active role at the Matawinie mining project, Caterpillar will show other miners the value of adopting sustainable equipment. “The idea was to engage Caterpillar and [other equipment manufacturers] with the transition,” Desaulniers explained. “I think the biggest progress we’ve made is to interest a large corporation like Caterpillar.”

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 25

More graphite needed The mine is projected to produce up to 103,000 tonnes of high-grade graphite concentrate per year when it is operational and has the potential to turn into the largest graphite mine in both North America and Europe.

“We have great deposits here,” Desaulniers said. “We feel it’s our opportunity and duty to develop those projects for the North American market.”

The pressure to secure new streams of graphite production in North America and Europe is higher than ever. As of Dec. 1, 2023, China, the world’s largest producer of graphite, will limit the amount of graphite it exports by requiring foreign companies to apply for permits to receive shipments of raw and synthetic graphite.

NMG is looking to establish itself as a leader in anode material outside of China and is set to become the largest fully integrated producer of natural graphite in North America. “[It’s about] demonstrating that we're very good at making the right product and the right solution for a variety of customers,” Desaulniers said.

“So, really establishing ourselves as a very trusted supplier of this anode material.”

Building social licence As described in the Oct. 6 press release, NMG’s motivation to go all-electric at the Matawinie mine was driven by several factors: to limit its carbon footprint, commercially engage with battery/EV manufacturers and get buy-in for the development from the nearby community.

David Francis Lyon, president of engineering company Zero Nexus, which has previously worked with NMG as a consultant, said NMG’s electrification program is groundbreaking not just for its development of an all-electric open-pit mine, but also due to its emphasis on social licence.

“If you remove diesel, there’s a lot of noise that’s gone, there’s a lot of dust that’s gone, and a whole lot of pollution that’s gone from that local community,” Lyon said.

Moving to fully electric equipment can make a big impact for miners looking to reduce CO2 emissions. According to Lyon, there has been a lot of activity around electric solutions for open-pit mining in the last nine to 12 months, especially for ultra-class haul trucks, which have the potential for big dividends.

“They are the biggest emitter on a mine site,” he said. “And if you look at the big[gest] mining companies, if there’s a 26 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

solution for those haul trucks, then that is going to take a lot of pressure off of them for their decarbonization goals.”

From mine to market NMG is leveraging Quebec’s hydroelectric power grid at its Matawinie mine and Bécancour battery material plant, which will take the graphite from the mine and process it into high-purity, battery-grade material. Hydro-Québec recently allocated a 77-megawatt electricity block for the battery material plant, where NMG plans to establish a fully integrated advanced manufacturing platform for refining its graphite concentrate into active anode material for batteries. “We have everything we need right there [in Bécancour], and we’re planning to produce 42,000 tonnes of finished handled material in that location,” Desaulniers said. “We are in the process of applying for all the permits for building a 14-kilometre hydroelectricity line [for the Matawinie mine] with HydroQuébec to bring on-site… bringing electricity on site is progressing as planned.”

Earlier this year, NMG and Caterpillar also signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to establish a fullcircular value chain that would take NMG’s graphite from ore to battery materials and would power the electric fleet at Matawinie.

Next steps Desaulniers noted that NMG is still looking to achieve key milestones, particularly around financing such a complex project. “If it were only the mine, it would be done already,” he said. “[But] it’s also the transformation of this product into a battery material where you go from a blast and a mining operation that is usually very dirty, and then you go to a surgical-grade level of cleanliness where quality is super important.”

Early construction work is under way at the mine site, and NMG has completed an eight-kilometre access road and most of the groundwork on the industrial platform. According to Desaulniers, the company has also completed all primary environmental works, including a collector basin to manage water and ensure the site is environmentally compliant. It also recently appointed Canadian construction company Pomerleau as the construction manager for the preconstruction stage of the two sites. “[Our] next big step is really to erect the building and make the foundation, [and then] focus

#ICYMI In case you missed it, here’s some notable news since the last issue of CIM Magazine, which is just a sample of the news you’ll find in our weekly recap emailed to our newsletter subscribers.

Northvolt (pictured) has announced plans for a multibillion-dollar electric vehicle battery plant 30 kilometres east of Montreal, as reported by CBC. The first phase investment totals $7 billion and would have a battery cell manufacturing capacity of up to 30 GWh annually, while the second phase is expected to double that output. Alongside promises to match American Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, the federal government and Quebec will invest a total of

on building the concentrator,” Desaulniers explained. “Then the [next] big milestone is raising $1 billion-plus to start the fullscale construction of both projects.”

Once project financing for the Matawinie mine is complete, Desaulniers said that the company will also accelerate work at its Uatnan mining project, which is located on Mason Graphite’s Lac Guéret graphite deposit in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec.

This separate and much larger project is expected to produce approximately 500,000 tonnes of graphite concentrate annually over the course of 24 years, according to its latest preliminary economic assessment, and would be the largest natural graphite mine in the world, including China. The company also plans to conduct a feasibility study on the project in 2024.

For Lyon, NMG’s continued progress on electrification is not just a positive sign for electrification in the mining space, but also a positive for the Canadian mining industry as a whole. “Most of this electrification is, by far, taking place in Canada, and I think that puts Canadian mining in a unique position,” he said.

“We get to be leaders in [this] technology…[the] lessons learned [are] something that Canadian mining can share with the rest of the world.” CIM

Developments

$2.7 billion to build the factory, and then provide production incentives of up to $4.6 billion afterwards. The plant is expected to be finished by 2026.

Sweden-based H2 Green Steel has begun talks with the Canadian federal government to potentially build a €3-6 billion (approx. $4.3-8.7 billion) plant that would produce green steel from Quebec iron ore, as reported by Bloomberg. The proposed steel plant near Sept-Îles, Quebec, would begin construction in 2026, start production in 2030, and would employ up to 2,000 workers if a full steel mill was implemented. Founded in 2021, H2 Green Steel is building a factory in Boden, Sweden, that is slated to begin production in late 2025. Vargas Holding is a major backer of H2 Green Steel, and also owns Northvolt.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal Impact Assessment Act is on balance unconstitutional, as reported

by CTV News. The ruling stated that it was too broad in its assessment of environmental impacts, and provinces had raised concerns that Parliament was acting outside of its federal scope. Alberta had previ-

ously filed a constitutional challenge, supported by Ontario, Saskatchewan, three First Nations groups and the Indian Resources Council. Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault responded that the federal government would work to tighten the law.

The federal government has officially opened up applications to the first round of its critical minerals infrastructure fund. Eligible mining companies can now apply online through Natural Resources Canada for up to $50 million per project. The government is releasing a total of $300 million in the first round from the $1.5 billion fund, which can be used for clean energy and transportation projects and will be allocated over a seven-year period.

Ontario has increased workplace safety fines for convicted companies under new legislation, as reported by Northern Ontario Business. Ontario has become the

A $1 billion lithium-ion battery plant that will be built in B.C. was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier David Eby in November, as reported by CBC. The federal government will fund up to $204.5 million of the project and the province will contribute up to $80 million, while Taiwanese battery manufacturer E-One Moli Energy and other investors are set to foot the rest of the bill for the new facility in Maple Ridge. One citizen advocacy group criticized the announcement as another handout, while the plant is projected to create 450 permanent jobs after the facility is operational, which is anticipated to be sometime in 2028.

Sign up for our newsletter Stay up to date on the latest mining developments with our weekly news recap, where we catch you up on the most relevant and topical mining news from CIM Magazine and elsewhere you might have missed.

province with the highest maximum workplace safety fines, of up to $2 million, for companies that are convicted under the revised Occupational Health and Safety Act, which received Royal Assent in November.

ELEVATE YOUR CAREER

Created by the Metallurgy and Materials Society of CIM

Join MetSoc's Emerging Professionals Development Program!

Connect with MetSoc members, contribute to the community, expand your network and gain inspiration from field experts.

If you are in the first five years of your career or returning after an absence, seize this opportunity to make a lasting impact!

Application deadline: February 2024

ACHIEVE YOUR POTENTIAL

2023-2024 Emerging Professionals From top left to bottom right: Navid Abaeian, Sima Alidokht, Aya Benotmane, Konstantina Chalastara, Maéva Chrzaszcz, Linda Qin, Takshi Sachdeva, Candice Simms, Ashok Srinivasan, Matthew Tutty

Find out how you can apply at metsoc.org/EP

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 27

Courtesy of Rob Labbé

Cybersecurity has failed us It is time for a new strategy

By Rob Labbé

Part 1 of a four-part series on cyber resilience in the mining and metals industry

L

ooking back at the year in cybersecurity for the mining

and metals industry, and more broadly across all industries, there have been some clear lessons learned. The approach we have been applying to protecting our organizations has, at best, proven ineffective; at worst, it may be doing more harm than good.

In 2023, security and IT professionals responded to the increased risks cybersecurity incidents have posed by spending increasingly more money, time and cognitive resources on progressively more complex and expensive security controls. The past year saw 10 times more reported cybersecurity incidents involving mining and metals companies and critical suppliers than in 2022, as recorded by the Mining and Metals-Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (MM-ISAC), a not-for-profit organization committed to improving the cyber resiliency of mining and metals companies. These incidents have had significant impacts for the affected organizations in terms of multi-week production outages, multi-million-dollar response costs, regulatory investigations and stakeholder relationship challenges.

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28 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Unclear control objectives and value: Many security controls

are implemented based on a vague best practice, in response to a perceived need to mitigate a high risk, or because of their appearance in a control framework the organization has adopted. Often, a control is implemented because it might have prevented a breach at another organization in the past. However, rarely is an analysis completed on the actual risk reduction the control will provide an organization in its own unique context, balanced against all costs of the control, including costs beyond implementation—such as productivity, change management and ongoing operational cost impacts across the organization.

Do the proposed controls mitigate a cyberattack from an attacker likely to target the company? Is the risk reduction the proposed control provides worth the cost? What will the impact of that control be on current business processes, production systems or upstream/downstream partners? Can the risk be mitigated by non-technical business process adjustments at a lower cost?

Ever-increasing cognitive loads: Recognizing the reality that

Lorem um

controlchem.com/mining

In my role with MM-ISAC, I have been in a unique position to observe the results of these investments. In discussing the impacts of these security investments with the senior leadership teams and boards, operators and IT/security professionals of many mining organizations, I have identified several issues.

many cybersecurity incidents start at the end user through phishing or other social engineering methods, more and more in-depth and mandatory training is conducted with all end users across the organization. What was once an annual online class is now often supplemented by ineffective targeted quarterly or even monthly phishing exercises, targeted training and other demands—all implemented to somehow train our end users not to respond to social engineering attacks as humans do—basically to teach the human nature out of them.

Mismatch in objectives: Many security leaders talk of a “healthy

tension” between an organization’s security teams and operational groups. This tension is anything but healthy—it is reflective of a mismatch of objectives. In examining the objectives of functional groups in mining, those objectives speak of safety, sustainability and production. These objectives are directly in line with and contribute to the organizational objectives and mission.

However, the objectives of security teams (or the objectives contained in contracts with managed providers, in the case of outsourced security) generally speak to increased cyber maturity scores, increased control effectiveness in the prevention of cybersecurity incidents and improvement in cybersecurity metrics (phishing test performance, time-to-contain and time-toremediate, etc.). This disconnect can lead to security teams over-implementing security controls to help them meet their objectives. In contrast, operational teams look for ways around

Column those controls to minimize the impact on their production/cost objectives. This mismatch will, at best, lead to tension and distrust—at worst, open hostility.

Worst of all…it is not working This significant burden of increased cybersecurity placed on an organization, and most of all the people working within it, might be justifiable if the organization was effectively protected.

Unfortunately, it is not. There was a significant increase in impactful cybersecurity incidents affecting the mining industry in 2023.

The impacts of these incidents have been significant and, in some cases, very public—ranging from the loss of thousands of business servers to complete, multi-week production outages.

It is no wonder that boards and management teams have started pushing back and denying the requested budget increases that security teams and outsourcers have been asking for. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, while expecting a different outcome—doubling down and doing more of the same thing we have been doing for years—it looks like a poor business investment.

If we do not change our approach to cybersecurity, we will continue to see an increase in material cybersecurity incidents, increased business impacts from ever-increasing numbers of security controls, out-of-control costs and increased stress on our people.

The good news is that there is a solution to the problem—a shift in approach from control-based cybersecurity to organizational risk-based cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience differs from cybersecurity in focus and objectivity and is defined as: “the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources.”

This approach focuses on ensuring the business objectives of the organization are met, regardless of what may happen to the critical technology resources and systems we now depend on. Cyber resilience, by necessity, requires an organizational focus that is tightly aligned with the objectives and goals of the entire organization.

Cyber resilience is centred on the maintenance of system availability and integrity as needed to maintain safe production, with the potential sacrifice of confidentiality in some cases, as opposed to cybersecurity, which generally falls on the technical or security leadership of the organization and is highly focused on the protection of data.

It consists of three domains, which are of equal importance to its development: • Operational cyber resilience • Resilient cybersecurity • Resilient cyber communications Each of these domains will be looked at in depth in three subsequent columns in this four-part series.

We can do better The current controls-focused approach to cybersecurity is not only proving ineffective at stopping highly impactful breaches, but is also acting as an obstacle to the ability of the mining industry to transform.

Control deployment and control effectiveness measurements have had little correlation to minimizing the frequency and impact of cybersecurity incidents. Only by shifting away from

those and towards reducing the impact of breaches through resilient controls, layered with operational resilience and effective communication, can we finally begin to not only manage risk to the operation, but also reduce the impact of security controls on the organization and the people within it and manage runaway security budgets. CIM Rob Labbé is the CEO and CISO (chief information security officer)-in-Residence at MM-ISAC.

Strategic Mine Planning with New Digital Technologies, Risk Management and Mineral Value Chains INSTRUCTORS Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada, and (tentatively) Ryan Goodfellow, Newmont, USA • PLACE Montreal, QC • DATE (TBC) September 2024

Geostatistical Evaluation of Mineral Resources and their Uncertainty under the New Regulatory Environment INSTRUCTORS David F. Machuca, SRK Consulting, Canada, and Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada • PLACE Montreal, QC • DATE (TBC) October 2024

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 29

Courtesy of Sekai Musoki

modern miner

The persistent engineer Sekai Musoki defies what is typical in the mining industry and provides valuable representation and support for other women looking to advance in their roles

By Alice Martin

Sekai Musoki Principal construction – digital systems BHP, Jansen project B. Eng. Civil Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland Certificate Indigenous Canada, University of Alberta

What is your proudest career highlight?

That I’m able to follow in [my father’s] footsteps. It makes me really proud that I’ve been able to keep up the family tradition. There’s so much more that I understand about him now.

What is your most recent accomplishment?

Starting up the employee resource group (ERG) at BHP. It will hopefully be in the organization long after I’m gone.

30 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

S

ekai Musoki, principal of construction for digital systems at BHP’s Jansen project, knew she would have to smash the glass ceiling throughout her career.

Today, she uses her own experience to help other women break through barriers in engineering.

Musoki was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Her father was a mining engineer who worked as a general manager and director for a gold mine operated by RioZim, which was owned by parent company Rio Tinto until 2004.

Musoki had always hoped her life would circle back to mining so that she could follow in her father’s footsteps.

However, she wanted to do it her own way. Musoki’s family encouraged studying abroad to gain a broader worldview, so in 2008 she moved to Canada, where she studied civil engineering at Memorial University in Newfoundland. According to Musoki, both Canada and the program she attended were cost-effective options.

After graduating in 2013, she began applying to engineering positions in mining, oil and gas and construction, but finding the role she wanted was challenging. “At the time, it was harder for someone with a name like mine to get a call back from mining companies,” she said. She then turned to construction, where she worked for several years as a project coordinator for construction companies, including Manshield Construction and Stuart Olson Inc.

Modern miner After working in construction for so long, Musoki had given up on her dream of following the mining family tradition. As fate would have it, however, she was finally put back on the mining track when she was contacted by BHP about a job opening after the company found her on LinkedIn, and she successfully applied for the position. In October 2020, Musoki was hired as a construction specialist at BHP’s Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan in a construction assurance role related to the completion of Jansen’s first stage of construction.

In December 2022, she was promoted to principal of construction for digital systems. In this role, she manages a team that deals with the digital aspects of field engineering at the Jansen project.

The Jansen project recently achieved gender balance at the end of its June 2023 fiscal year, with women making up 43.8 per cent of the workforce. For Musoki, this gender-balanced environment was a breath of fresh air compared to her previous workplace experiences.

“I don’t think I knew how bad it was until I came to BHP,” said Musoki. “All of a sudden, the barriers were removed. They were finally acknowledging me and giving me the space to grow my career, to learn. Once I got into that ecosystem—where I’m given all of these things—it made me perform at my best.”

She explained that in previous male-dominated workplaces, it was fatiguing trying to fit in.

“There was so much energy that I was using just to make the ecosystem work for me,” she said. “That’s one of the barriers that I didn’t see. I didn’t realize how much work I was doing to [mask].

All of a sudden, you’re in a place where you can bring your full self to work.”

Musoki said that she hopes the Jansen project’s focus on gender balance will put pressure on other mining companies to implement similar initiatives.

However, Musoki pointed out there is still a lot of work to be done in the mining industry to not only recruit women, but also to retain them once they enter the workforce. She referenced a 2021 article from management consulting firm McKinsey & Company's metal and minings practice, which highlighted that while women are gaining entry into the mining industry, they are not being promoted to C-suite positions, and lack of advancement is one of the factors causing them to eventually leave the industry.

“They also showed how BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of colour] women, in particular, were challenged,” she said. “When they were surveying and talking to them in the research, they were able to identify that there is still a lot of work to be done for women, but that there was still a[n even greater] gap with BIPOC women.”

Musoki added that there is not enough research being done on the problems women face in the industry, and that most of the information the Canadian mining industry has collected about sexism and racism is still anecdotal.

As a board member and research lead at Women in Mining (WIM) Canada, Musoki awards grants of up to $5,000 per year to female-identifying researchers that are studying topics related to gender equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in mining. Musoki added that in the future, WIM will also be releasing grants for female-identifying researchers that are doing any type of research related to mining.

“Being at WIM, you get to rub shoulders with a lot of women that are doing so well in their careers,” she said. “Sometimes we hear in the hallways of the industry at large, ‘There’s no women,

because there’s no talent pool to draw from.’ But, at WIM, you get to see that there’s lots of opportunity to hire women.”

Musoki recalled that way back when her father worked in the industry in Zimbabwe, there was only one woman on his team, a geologist. Now, almost half of Musoki’s colleagues at BHP are female.

In 2022, Musoki co-founded a women’s employee resource group (ERG) at BHP. “I saw it as an opportunity to influence and support the aggressive EDI goals that [BHP] had as a business,” Musoki said.

She added that the ERG supports BHP’s talent pipeline, from entry-level positions to C-suite, by creating a space for women to network, discuss how to grow their careers and have camaraderie.

For Musoki, helping women succeed in mining goes beyond working at BHP. Since March 2022, Musoki has been a mentor for Women in Mining and Women in Nuclear Saskatchewan (WIM/WiN-SK).

A few months before she began mentoring for WIM/WiN-SK, Musoki recalled a conversation with a white, male colleague about her unique experience as a Black female immigrant. She described how it can be difficult for colleagues like him to empathize with the problems she has faced in the workplace. Her colleague brushed off her comment and said that her demographic is too small to be able to accommodate and solve its unique problems.

“When I left the conversation, I felt I was being a bit dramatic.

How many of me [Black immigrant women] are there really [in the mining industry]?” she asked. However, when Musoki met her first mentee, she realized she was not alone. She had been paired with a Ghanaian woman who had also immigrated to the Maritimes to study engineering.

“It’s like the penny dropped in my head,” said Musoki. “That person was telling me, ‘That’s too small a box,’ and then I got teamed up with this woman, and it was just life-changing. After we’d gotten to know each other and we had a few meetings, she said to me, ‘You don’t understand how much this means to me that you were my mentor.’”

It is of the utmost importance for Musoki to be seen by women who can relate to her lived experience. “I think that representation matters, and not just representation, but visibility,” she said, adding that anyone who can spare time in their day to mentor, should do so.

Wherever Musoki’s career leads her next, she said that her dedication to staying in the industry so that women see themselves represented at a higher-level position in a company will never waver.

“There are so many women or girls that are like me, who look like me and have a similar experience to me, that are sitting somewhere and thinking, ‘Maybe I can’t do it,’” she said. “My hope is that they’ll see me doing it and be like, ‘Of course I can do it.” CIM

Mining is a varied, multi-faceted industry and the people who work in the sector are equally diverse. Modern Miner has run throughout 2023 and has showcased mining professionals from a range of backgrounds and highlighted the ways they are leading, innovating and pushing the industry forward. A new series, Mining and Mental Health, will run throughout 2024 and showcase the people, programs and initiatives that are prioritizing the mental health of mining workers. If you have a story tip, email editor@cim.org.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 31

Courtesy of Artemis Gold

The processing plant area at the Blackwater mine in May 2023.

The electric future Sedgman details how it designed a fully electric gold processing plant for Artemis Gold’s Blackwater mine in central B.C.

By Lynn Greiner

M

ines that are looking to decarbonize their operations

often focus on the fuel used in their vehicle fleets, but eliminating the use of fossil fuels in mineral processing plants can also help in achieving companies’ net-zero emissions targets.

The mineral processing solutions provider Sedgman took on that electrification challenge in its design and construction of the six million tonne per year plant at Artemis Gold’s Blackwater mine, which is currently under construction in central British Columbia, a jurisdiction with access to affordable, renewable hydroelectricity.

The idea, said Karl Haase, director of engineering at Sedgman, was a collaborative one between his company and Artemis Gold.

“They really had a strong environmental focus,” he explained. “When they were building the [Blackwater] mine and when they went for consultation, it was one of the key things that they really wanted to be on top of—essentially working with us on a mandate for best environmental practices.”

The plant will consist of a three-stage dry crushing circuit, and a 14-megawatt (MW) single-stage ball mill and gravity gold comminution circuit, combined with a carbon-in-leach circuit processing 16,000 tonnes per day. Sedgman’s plant design included electric elution heating, electric kiln and electric smelting, instead of the typical use of natural gas or diesel as a heat source.

32 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Construction began in 2023, and Artemis Gold plans to begin commissioning the plant in the second half of 2024. It is planned to be in use for 22 years.

“Putting [fossil-fuel free] into [the design] mandate was really great for our engineers, because it removed the decision a little bit,” Haase said. “We’re looking at which electric technology [to use], not which technologies in general.”

Challenges of plant electrification Going all-electric was not straightforward, however. As any cook knows, while heat from the burning of fossil fuels stops as soon as you turn off the burner, electric elements cool down gradually. That, Haase said, presented some operational challenges.

For example, Artemis Gold decided it wanted a prilled sulfur burning system to create the sulfur dioxide to detoxify the reagents used in gold extraction.

“Typically, [sulfur burning] is started on fossil fuels, and then the sulfur will actually be burnt itself,” Haase said. “We had to approach a partner to get a design that would be fully electric for the startup. There has to be a standby electric system to keep the refractory brick hot [at all times], so that it doesn’t crack or cause any damage to the system while you’re not burning sulfur.”

To address this problem, he said, Sedgman designed two separate backup heating systems. But, Haase noted, that meant

Courtesy of Sedgman

Mineral processing

A model of the processing plant under construction at the Blackwater mine. No fossil fuels will be used in any of these buildings or areas.

a lot of heat was being created that was not always needed to burn the sulfur. As a result, Sedgman also created ways to use that excess heat to, for example, fuel steam jackets around the piping to keep the molten sulfur at the proper temperature prior to the sulfur burner, or to heat the water going to the lime silo so its reaction would occur properly. The team also looked at ways to supplement the building’s heating with waste heat from the burner.

Another area that needed special attention was the electric kiln used in carbon regeneration, which needs to reach temperatures of around 700 degrees Celsius. The kiln rotates so that the carbon gets evenly heat treated; however, if the power goes off and rotation ceases, because the electric coils do not instantly cool, the internal vessel could warp as some spots sit on the heating elements and others cool rapidly. This meant that battery backups for rotating components were critical, Haase noted.

But the biggest challenge, he said, was the size of the equipment and the size of the cables needed to power it.

“Typically, diesel-fired elution heating is a very small burner and that system maybe takes up a couple of square metres of floor space. It’s very easy to fit in,” he said.

“With this [electric elution heating] system, it’s three sets of water heaters stacked together with a lot of electric junction boxes—it all has to be low voltage, because you’re basically forcing resistance to create the heat. To create that resistance, everything is done at 600 volts, rather than at a higher voltage,” Haase explained.

“There are 18 electric cables connected in, and they’re quite thick. Getting those [set up] in a sensible way, not restricting access, and then being able to put them into the same junction box was a challenge for both us and our suppliers.”

The electric elution system alone requires 4.2 MW of installed power, and the electric kiln needs another 700 kilowatts, he noted—this is about 15 per cent of the total power at the Blackwater mine plant. “Between those two, having almost five megawatts of low voltage heating is a significant challenge to get engineers on board, and then also make sure that it’s all safe. Low voltage electrical cable is large, harder to install and has safety risks if not done properly—mostly around getting large cables into junction boxes. Fossil fuel systems don’t have these electrical challenges, and are typically smaller and more cost efficient.”

Haase said that power outages are the largest safety concern in electric equipment. “With fossil fuel-based burner

management, [if] you cut power, the fuel and heat stops nearly instantly,” he explained. “With electrical induction heaters, the actual elements can stay hot for some time, while other parts that were previously pumping or rotating are now stationary.”

However, he pointed out, the electric elution system should be “a pleasure to operate” compared to a fossil fuel-powered system, because even the best of those systems have some leakage in their ducting, which makes them smelly and dirty. This allelectric installation, he said, will be “amazingly clean” to operate.

Power consumption The processing plant at the Blackwater mine will consume a lot of power. To supply it, Artemis Gold is building a 140kilometre grid extension to the site.

Haase’s team is still working on calculating the number of tonnes of CO2 that will not be generated thanks to the cleaner processes at the plant, but the carbon emissions savings are expected to be significant.

Haase advised companies that are considering electrifying a gold processing plant to be aware when budgeting that there will be additional capital expenses upfront compared to plants powered by fossil fuels.

“However, assuming that your power generation is cheaper than the fossil fuels you would buy—which it typically is—you will regain that capital in operating costs,” he said. “How you treat that as an NPV [net present value] is going to be the tricky thing for some junior miners, where they might feel, ‘I’m never going to make that money back’ in terms of project value, NPV or ROI [return on investment].

That’s, unfortunately, where some of these things don’t get pushed forward.”

The biggest thing to remember is that, in this case, affordable, renewable hydroelectricity is available in B.C., he noted.

In other locations that do not have a good hydroelectricity base, questions need to be asked before proceeding.

“We also need to look at—where does the power come from, how can we generate that cleaner and how do we get reliable baseload power for these projects in an affordable way?” he observed. “I know there are a lot of projects that are not going to be able to get hydro power. For them, going all electric would sound great, but it’s not really; you’re just pushing the problem further down the line. That’s probably the biggest missing piece: how do we get affordable, renewable, on-site power generation for these facilities?” CIM December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 33

Courtesy of SRK Consulting (Canada)

A higher level of mine-to-mill optimization SRK Consulting’s Adrian Dance says there is a place for preconcentration testing for heterogenous ore deposits

By Ailbhe Goodbody

W

ith over 30 years in his field, Adrian Dance has estab-

lished himself as an authority on comminution circuit operation. He has both industrial and consulting experience, working at operations in Australia, Canada and Peru.

He practices a proven methodology called “mine-to-mill optimization” that looks at improving the quality of the feed in the mine so that the process plant can perform at higher levels and save costs. The main focus of that mine-to-mill work has been on examining how to make fragmentation better so that the process plant can do 20 to 30 per cent more throughput.

The next challenge is to improve the feed quality even more, in terms of its composition, value and grade. In Dance’s opinion, mineral processing operations should look at the material on a size-by-size basis at every stage and ask if it is really worth processing. Rejecting the lower grade, poorer quality material before sending it to the processing plant can enhance the viability or operating performance of a project as well as save costs and reduce environmental impacts.

Dance is part of a team at SRK Consulting (Canada) that has developed sensor testing procedures and has acquired a laboratory-scale batch X-ray transmission (XRT) sensing unit to carry them out. These tests can be used in conjunction with crushing and screening to assess the potential for preconcentration, which can then be applied to scoping or prefeasibility studies.

CIM: Why is preconcentration important for heterogenous ore deposits?

Dance: It is evident to everybody in the mining industry that ore bodies are becoming increasingly lower in grade. What we’re not doing, as an industry, is investigating whether or not deposits have greater or less heterogeneity, which is a characteristic that actually can be exploited. I like the term “grade engineering” that came out of the CRC (Cooperative Research Centre) ORE research project some years ago in Australia. The idea is that, essentially, we don’t have to live by the grade that we find in our deposits, but we can engineer the grades to be more suitable by being more selective in what ends up going into our plants and tailings ponds.

SRK Consulting has seen the need for an industry standard testing and evaluation procedure for preconcentration amenability—to see if the material is amenable to preconcentration when it is coarse, dry and conveyable.

The reason for standardization is that if everybody follows it, they can compare and benchmark to see how their results are 34 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

related to operations that have been successful at applying preconcentration. Particularly when it comes to novel technology, the first question typically asked by clients, operations or owners of properties is, “Where has it been successfully done before? We want a conventional proven solution.”

Our industry responds very well to benchmarking against similar properties worldwide. If you can say, for example, “Your copper porphyry operation is very similar to another copper porphyry operation, which has gone ahead and successfully done particle sorting or screening,” then it can be replicated. There is a level of achievement and competence that people need to move ahead in this risky environment that we call the mining industry.

But to be able to find this industry standard, we needed to find a laboratory protocol that could be easily inserted into the existing metallurgical testwork program.

CIM: How did the partnership between SRK Consulting and Base Metallurgical Laboratories develop?

Dance: We found a company willing to sell us a laboratory unit that works in batch. I reached out for a joint venture partner and ended up speaking to Base Metallurgical Laboratories about it. I have had a long-standing relationship with the senior people there, having worked with them over many years in their previous positions, and now as owners of their own independent laboratory.

The XRT lab unit is a joint ownership between the two companies, and it resides at Base Metallurgical Laboratories’ facility in Kamloops, B.C., where it is operated by its qualified technicians.

The unit was purchased in March, it arrived in Kamloops in late August and was operating by late September. The first

Courtesy of SRK Consulting (Canada)

Mineral processing commercially paid particles went through the machine in the first week of October.

The unit is the first of its kind—a laboratory-scale batch XRT sensing unit. It was designed to run a test that can be done on the same size and style of samples we use for metallurgical testing, namely, half core samples. The test protocol itself is an assessment test; it is not meant to reproduce what existing sorting manufacturers do in using their equipment or their techniques. Instead, it is a characterization test designed to assess whether it looks very likely or not likely that material can be separated early on, in the stage before it is ground and before water and power is applied.

The unit works on batches—you put in a tray of rocks, it scans the individual rocks and gives you a response on each one. For testing purposes, to keep the cost down, we group the rocks into categories and then assay the groups.

CIM: How does this approach compare to typical ore characterization testing?

Dance: At the moment, to my knowledge, the only ore characterization testing out there for preconcentration is what we call performance tests, which are done by equipment manufacturers. They request a large sample mass in order to run their almost full-scale units for a reasonable period of time; the material size is what they consider to be suitable. All of that is done on their terms to allow them to demonstrate how their expertise can be applied by a combination of sensors, and how their technology differs from other companies’ technologies.

That is not suitable for companies with limited sample masses that really only need to understand whether their ore body has potential. They are not interested in finding out if a manufacturer’s piece of equipment works well, they’re more interested in finding out when and how often their material will respond to such technology.

Our characterization test is more focused on the projects and the owners of the project, and follows a standard metallurgical approach—taking small sample masses, doing repeat standard tests and then scaling up from there. In my opinion, the current characterization work provided by manufacturers is really a pilot plant scale, which needs to be done, but after early-stage preliminary amenability type tests have been done.

CIM: How will the XRT sensor testing fit into SRK Consulting’s preconcentration services?

Dance: SRK Consulting focuses on being an independent, reliable expert in different fields. To continue with that independence, we are including this in the routine services that we provide. We have no skin in the game, as we don’t want to sell equipment; we want the best for the project, and if that best means preconcentration, we should include it in our list of opportunities.

As a service, we include testing as a second stage. In our methodology, the first stage is an initial heterogeneity analysis toolkit—many companies like to get a relatively inexpensive consulting opinion on the potential of their ore deposits, with some economics. My colleague Bob McCarthy, a principal mining engineer in Vancouver, looks at the deposit heterogeneity and the potential for ore and waste, depending on the scale of the operation. He runs some preliminary economics, which he calls “size the prize,” to recommend where the project could benefit from preconcentration—perhaps pulling up marginal

The XRT sensor lab unit, which is jointly owned by SRK Consulting and Base Metallurgical Laboratories.

grade material into the mine plan or rejecting waste, depending on the operation.

Then we proceed to laboratory-scale testing, to see if the material is amenable to preconcentration. It is normally done only after an assessment of the deposit and to identify the samples that should be tested to show that diluted waste can be rejected or that lost ore can be recovered from the mine. This recursive test sorts out the grain from the chaff and says, “Your project is not going to work, even measuring it in our way. Don’t send it to the manufacturer.”

We do the preliminary testing on a number of samples, and that’s the main focus—by doing this at a small mass size, we want to test as many samples as possible to get the statistics in our favour. Because it seems likely that preconcentration variability will be significantly higher than what we’ve seen in other types of testing, it makes sense to test small-scale samples many different times. At the size we’re testing, which is 15 to 30 millimetres, we expect a fair bit of noise in the results. It’s not going to be a consistent response because of the sample mass, so we need to test more samples. If 10 or 20 samples gave us the same result, that gives us the confidence [in the results].

Previously, to support that, we had no choice but to send samples to the manufacturers to have them sensor test it. We see the XRT sensor unit as a step forward in cost, speed and independence by being able to provide that service ourselves. Certainly in terms of time, it is remarkably quick, because we have heard stories that manufacturers are so inundated with requests that they are three or four months backed up for testing.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 35

CIM: What are the latest developments of the XRT sensor unit?

Dance: We have had remarkably good results recently on some gold samples. We’re about to test out some tungsten samples as well as some base metal samples, including lead-zinc.

As part of our initiatives to make the testing cheaper and faster, we have been applying a combination of hardness and XRT sensor sorting. We are using SimSAGe’s HIT [hardness index test] to measure the relative hardness of the different sorted groups, investigating the idea that a concentrated sample mass using preconcentration may potentially be softer or require lower amounts of specific energy (or kilowatt hours per tonne). We are combining more of the comminution testing with the sensor testing, using the unit to understand how hardness changes as the sorted product changes.

Another aspect, which we think is unique for this test, is that by combining the comminution and sorting testing in one, we can estimate the amount of material that would be too fine for particle sorting, and also how it may or may not upgrade. This is something that is missing in the industry, because at the moment the only material that is getting tested is the material large enough for sorting, and there is little characterization done on the material that is too fine to bypass, which is quite important when you have softer friable materials such as oxide deposits going to heap leaching.

Another excellent application of this machine is to assess semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill or autogenous grinding (AG) mill pebbles, because that is a perfect stream to reject

material of no value or limited grade and increase plant capacity. I have a particular concern about AG/SAG mill pebbles—we send material into the mill, put seven to 10 kilowatt hours per tonne of energy into it, it comes out the other side, and then we send it back round and put it back in the mill again. Why are we doing this? It is an incredible opportunity to assess pebbles with our machine.

CIM: What are SRK Consulting’s plans for the next phase of the unit’s development?

Dance: Our plans include rolling the unit out as the final stage of our fully independent analysis method. Currently it is fitted with only XRT, but the plans are to expand upon that when we get more funding. The unit has the capability to add X-ray fluorescence (XRF) in the future.

We have had a lot of response from clients and operations saying they really like the idea of a completely independent evaluation that follows a standardized industry test protocol that could be done at very early stages of the project to assess whether or not preconcentration has some economic potential.

I am not suggesting in any way that every operation would benefit from preconcentration. In fact, it is likely that a minority of cases will really benefit. But I think it is the industry’s obligation to consider heterogeneity in their deposits and consider exploiting them through preconcentration to reduce their carbon footprint, their energy and water consumption and their tailings storage requirements. CIM

CIM DISTINGUISHED LECTURERS 2023-2024

DORIS HIAMGALVEZ

HANI MITRI

Senior Advisor, Hatch

GARY POXLEITNER

Principal (Mining) Consultant/Practice Leader, SRK

Professor of Mining Engineering, Mining and Materials Engineering Department, McGill University

NANCY WILK

MUSTAFA KUMRAL

Environmental Health and Safety Fellow, Mine, Water and Environment, WSP Canada Inc.

Associate Professor, Mining and Materials Engineering Department, McGill University

LECTURERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR YOUR ONLINE OR IN-PERSON EVENTS. 36 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

ROY SLACK Director, Cementation Americas

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Courtesy of Patricia Alexandre via Pixabay

Mining the seafloor and space have been discussed for decades, but the anticipated increase in demand for critical minerals has renewed interest in these unexploited frontiers.

The final mining frontiers From the deep sea to space, new frontiers with vast mineral resources are opening up

By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco

F

or years, many viewed companies and investors that set

their sights on opening up new mining frontiers in the deep seas and space with skepticism. Mining the oceans was seen as unviable, while mining the Moon or asteroids was considered to be something from science fiction.

That skepticism is beginning to change. Today, the mounting demand for critical minerals to fuel the world’s high-tech and green-tech transformation is igniting new interest in both deepsea and space mining. What is more, from a technological and practical perspective, both are edging closer and closer into the realm of reality. There are still significant challenges that need to be overcome, but many believe that tackling them through innovation could help solve some of the mining industry’s most daunting environmental, social and efficiency problems.

For example, on land, miners face diminishing resources and grades, down to an average of less than one per cent for many commodities. In contrast, the deep seas hold untapped resources that can have as much as 33 per cent in metals content and 99 per cent usable minerals. Space mining also offers high grades and vast mineral resources, which would be essential if we are to establish outposts beyond Earth and pursue further space exploration.

38 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Mining the oceans Covering some 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface, the oceans represent a massive potential mineral resource. Their floors are rich with mineral deposits, from copper, zinc, nickel, gold and silver to cobalt and rare earth elements (REEs), that have never been mined. These deposits are found in the form of polymetallic sulfides, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, polymetallic nodules and REE muds. Nations and pioneering miners have taken notice, especially over the last decade as the demand for battery metals has grown. What interests them most are the trillions of polymetallic nodules lying on the ocean floors at water depths of some 2,000 to 6,000 metres.

These irregular shaped, potato-sized nodules are rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper, titanium and REEs. “It’s not even that the deep-sea mining industry is poised to take off,” said Phillip Gales, a Toronto-based partner at a private equity firm that invests in ocean mining. “It is happening.”

At the forefront of the emerging industry, Gales pointed out, are Canada-based The Metals Company and U.S.-based Impossible Metals. But there are many others, and the industry is seeing an increase in mergers and acquisitions. Norway’s Loke Marine Minerals, for example, acquired deep-sea

Feature mining company UK Seabed Resources, as well as Belgium’s Global Sea Mineral Resources, in 2023. China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea are all exploring for minerals in international waters.

Deep-sea mining is a new frontier more than 50 years in the making. Interest in the potential commercial value of polymetallic nodules took off in the 1960s with mining companies and countries trialling various mining technologies to harvest them using dredging technologies. By the 1970s, major mining companies were forming consortiums to mine the deep sea. One, consisting of Kennecott Copper, Noranda Mines, the Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation, Gold Fields and Mitsubishi, invested US$50 million in 1974 to build the mining ships and dredging devices needed.

Then it all began to unravel. One of the factors leading to this were disagreements between developing countries and developed countries over who would benefit from the wealth of resources. At the time, there was no governing body to resolve the issues. But the hopes for deep-sea mining did not drown.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, more than 150 countries continued negotiations through the United Nations (UN). In 1982, the UN established the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to ensure deep-sea mining would be for the benefit of humankind. In 1994, it created the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous international organization based in Jamaica with 168 state members, as well as the European Union. The U.S. decided not to ratify UNCLOS and so could not formally join the ISA; however, it is an official observer at the ISA and sends a delegation to each meeting in Jamaica. The ISA embarked on the arduous task of negotiations to develop regulations for prospecting, exploration and exploitation of the oceans’ mineral resources, which have still not been agreed upon.

The organization has more than 40 years’ worth of research data. This ocean of data incorporates the research of the 1970s mining consortiums as well as that conducted by scientists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and recipients of the 31 deep-sea exploration licences it has granted to such states as China, North Korea, Germany and the U.K. One licence went to The Metals Company’s wholly owned subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources in 2011. Since then, The Metals Company has been exploring for polymetallic nodules in the 4.5-million-squarekilometre ocean area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Its project, which would mine using dredging technology, is sponsored by the government of the island state Nauru.

Deep-sea mining, however, has faced fierce opposition from 23 member states of the ISA, as well as many environmental scientists and NGOs. They argue that mining seabeds could cause substantial damage to marine ecosystems that are not yet fully understood and create a domino effect of environmental harm, from light and noise pollution to dredging up plumes of sediment. They argue that these effects could lead to the extinction of some marine species, and the concern of repeating humanity’s past mistakes of forging ahead with little to no awareness of the consequences to the environment and life weighs heavily on their minds. Others argue deep-sea mining could lead to a flooding of the market with commodities, lowering their prices.

The government of Canada, which in July this year announced support for a moratorium on commercial seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction, stated “seabed mining should take place only if effective protection of the marine environment is

provided through a rigorous regulatory structure, applying precautionary and ecosystem-based approaches, using sciencebased and transparent management and ensuring effective compliance with a robust inspection mechanism.”

Rather than simply blocking the mining of ocean floors, Gales advocates for more research to mitigate the risks.

“There is an environmental concern with deep-sea mining, but it’s visceral,” he said. “The risks can be managed by engineering. You can make a good case for operating safely, but you can’t just ignore deep-sea mining. The genie is out of the bottle at this point.”

“It has been estimated there is over 4,000 times more nickel in the world’s oceans than there is on land. Without these metals, there [will be] no energy transition.”

– Oliver Gunasekara, Impossible Metals

Since 2015, ISA members have been working to finalize a mining code. Many believed it would meet its July 2023 deadline to do so, but that date came and went without an agreement.

Still, negotiations have advanced, and deep-sea miners hope that a final draft will be agreed upon for the ISA’s new July 2024 deadline. After the ISA’s last session for 2023, which ran between Oct. 30 and Nov. 8, The Metals Company informed investors it was planning on submitting an application for a licence to mine the deep sea next summer after the mining code is finalized.

The ISA, however, only oversees international waters. In February 2022, the government of the Cook Islands issued three exploration permits for its territorial waters. In June 2023, Norway’s government approved deep-sea mining exploration of 280,000 square kilometres of its territorial waters in the Greenland Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. Around a dozen governments are working on deep-sea mining legal frameworks within their territorial waters.

Rethinking marine mining Others are taking a different approach to the challenges of deep-sea mining. Oliver Gunasekara, CEO and co-founder of Impossible Metals, was drawn to mining polymetallic nodules as a solution to both the growing demand for battery minerals and to build a more sustainable mining industry. He looked at the environmental and social impacts of terrestrial mining, and decided that ocean mining offered a better future for humanity and Earth; however, the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining using dredging technologies also concerned him.

“We decided to reinvent that architecture from a clean sheet of paper,” he said. “I had spent 18 years in Silicon Valley being very exposed to artificial-intelligence (AI)-led robotics, so we came up with a new architecture.”

Impossible Metals has developed the Eureka 1 autonomous underwater vehicle to harvest polymetallic nodules from the seabed. The Eureka 1 is an untethered, battery-powered robot that hovers almost a metre above the seabed floor. Using an array of cameras and AI, it examines and assesses each rock. If it detects life around the rock, it moves on to rocks where no life is December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 39

Courtesy of Geomar via Wikimedia Commons

Courtesy of Impossible Metals

Impossible Metals’ Eureka 1 is designed to use a precise and targeted approach to harvest polymetallic nodules.

Polymetallic nodules on the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean’s ClarionClipperton Zone.

detected. Using mechanical arms, the Eureka 1 fills its payload and transports it to the surface. The vehicle’s battery is then replaced and it is sent back down to the seabed.

With its precise and targeted approach, Gunasekara believes Impossible Metals’ technology represents a solution for deepsea mining with very limited environmental impact.

Impossible Metals will be in a position to mine six million tonnes of polymetallic nodules by 2030, said Gunasekara, adding that this amounts to about 10 per cent of current annual worldwide production of cobalt. “Beyond that, the ocean is just so vast and the resource is so big,” he said. “It has been estimated there is over 4,000 times more nickel in the world’s oceans than there is on land. Without these metals, there [will be] no energy transition. Yes, recycling will help in time, but it doesn’t really move the needle in the next decade or two.”

about developing the technologies needed to mine, manufacture and build infrastructure on the Moon, and then Mars and beyond.

“We’re going to actually develop an economy on the Moon,” said Chamirai Charles Nyabeze, vice-president of business development at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) and network director for the Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator Network (MICA). “We’re going to do it [by] using the materials on the Moon.”

The cost of transporting resources and manufactured products to the Moon remains astronomical. But building the infrastructure to expand exploration and eventually populate new worlds using the natural resources from the Moon or Mars is more efficient, realistic and economical than carrying these materials from Earth.

For example, all life and mining needs water; it could also be used as a valuable source of hydrogen and oxygen to create rocket propellant. The viability and efficiency of space exploration and mining on the Moon, Mars and beyond will depend largely on how much water is found, said Gordon “Oz” Osinski, a planetary geologist who is a professor of earth sciences at the University of Western Ontario. Osinski was selected in 2023 by NASA to be part of the geology team for the Artemis III mission, which plans to land astronauts on the Moon’s south pole in 2025. As a signatory of the Artemis Accords, which established principles for mutually beneficial practices in the exploration and use of outer space, Canada is a part of the mission.

“There’s pretty good evidence that there is water and ice in the [Moon’s] south pole,” said Osinski. “What we now need to determine is how much, in what form and whether or not we can extract it. Those are all questions that we don’t have answers to yet—that’s why we want to send robots and humans there.”

Cutting-edge AI-powered robotics, such as those developed

by Sudbury-based Penguin ASI for both terrestrial and space

From our Moon to the universe As with deep-sea mining, space mining—including lunar and asteroid mining—is a new frontier decades in the making. Waves of startups looking to mine asteroids and the Moon have come and gone. Once again, there has been a recent resurgence of investment and excitement around space mining. Some of the companies, however, never left and they continued working on developing new technologies to help miners harvest the mineral resources in the cosmos.

The U.K.-based Asteroid Mining Corporation, for example, was founded in 2016. In collaboration with the Tohoku University Space Robotics Lab in Japan, the company announced in 2023 it had created a new robotic platform called the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorer (SCAR-E). The crab-like robot, which has a 1.6 metre span and a mass of just 20 kilograms, is designed to land on asteroids in space, drill into them, extract their minerals on-site and send the minerals back to Earth.

For the present, however, lunar and asteroid mining is less about bringing mineral resources back to Earth and more 40 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Feature Canada’s slow pace The world is moving at a faster pace than ever, and some believe Canada is not keeping up.

Osinski, Sax and Nyabeze argue that Canada, as one of the world’s top mining jurisdictions, has the potential to become a major player in advancing space exploration and mining. But, they say, both the federal government and the industry have to step up with increased collaboration.

“Both the Canadian Space Agency and Natural Resources Canada have talked about space mining,” said Osinski. “But there has been little action so far.”

From Sax’s perspective, it is not just the mining industry that has to step up; Canadian investors do as well. For years, he said, space mining was not taken seriously. “It’s time for Canada to get serious if it wants to own a piece of this future economy,” he said. “In Canada, we continue to fail at taking long-term strategic action. This is a huge opportunity that is the future of the mining business on Earth and in space.”

Canadian seabed mining companies share the same sentiment about extracting resources from the oceans.

“Fundamentally, those who oppose deep-sea mining are saying no to a location,” said Gunasekara. “It’s equivalent to saying no to mining in Canada—it doesn’t make sense to ban a location.

With new technology, you can significantly minimize impact.

And if we don’t access the biggest resource on the planet, we will be forced to see more children dying in mines, more rainforests being destroyed, more emissions.

“So banning it is not a simple answer. I think most people would say we are in a climate emergency. We can’t say we’re not going to touch one area, and yet we’re willing to destroy another.

I think we need to take a holistic view and look at where we can have the least impact.” CIM Courtesy of NASA

mining, will be critical in achieving this. The company is developing a lunar mining robot that can be controlled remotely from Earth. But mining beyond the Earth’s atmosphere will also need the expertise of the terrestrial mining industry that has evolved over a millennium.

“We have these mining processes that have already been figured out on Earth for creating a metal product,” said Nyabeze. “It’s going to be the same on the Moon. It may be in different conditions, but it’s still going to be the same process to do this.”

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) teamed up with CEMI in early 2023 to leverage Canadian terrestrial mining knowledge, capabilities and innovation to develop in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) to enable future space exploration.

Daniel Sax, co-founder and CEO of the Canadian Space Mining Corporation (CSMC), believes investing in space mining research and development is also an investment in improving terrestrial mining. “As we continue at CSMC to work on space mining, solving real problems on the Moon of how to identify and process resources,” he said, “we are creating novel technologies that are immediately disruptive to the resource industry on Earth.”

CSMC, for example, is developing new AI and quantumbased technologies that can help improve prospecting and exploration on Earth—not just on the Moon. The company also recently completed a $2 million prototype of a containerbased medical capsule called the Connected Care Capsule (C3) for the CSA, which it described as an “early-stage prototyping exercise for a lunar medical system with potential space applications.” This modular, mobile hospital could also be used on Earth to provide medical care for remote communities and mine sites.

An illustration of Artemis astronauts at work on the Moon.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 41

Photo by Silvia Pikal

Ducks on the constructed wetlands that are now situated on land reclaimed from the former Sheerness coal mine.

From coal pit to prairieland The Sheerness coal mine in Alberta is well on its way to reclamation, while a mineral lying on top of its coal provides an opportunity for growth

By Silvia Pikal

I

n one area of reclaimed land at the Sheerness coal mine in Alberta, hundreds of cows can be seen grazing on prairie grass in the horizon, while ducks flock to constructed wetlands in the foreground. The area is quiet except for the splashes and quacking of dozens of ducks. The dozers that normally level the land are parked until their next shift. The slam of car doors and the stomp of steel-toe boots send several of the birds into the air momentarily before landing back on the pond.

What was once a 7,760-hectare surface coal mine, which supplied up to 3.4 million tonnes of sub-bituminous coal a year to the nearby Sheerness generating station, transitioned to reclamation in 2021. The total disturbance footprint is 4,995 hectares, and 1,105 hectares of land have been reclaimed so far.

Reclamation work will be ongoing until 2026, and when finished the area will resemble the surrounding prairies.

Mine to mouth The coal reserves in the area, which are about 32 kilometres southeast of the town of Hanna, were known to settlers in the town as far back as the early 1900s, but very little coal was 42 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

mined until the Sheerness coal-fired 780-MW generating station went into operation in January 1986. Two mines in the area exclusively supplied coal to the generating station: the Montgomery mine, operated by Manalta Coal Ltd., and the Sheerness mine, owned by Luscar Ltd. subsidiary Forestburg Collieries Ltd. The Sheerness mine began supplying coal to the generating station in 1995 as a mine-mouth operation under a 30-year contract. In this type of operation, the station is constructed close to the deposit to ensure a steady supply of coal.

“You knew what your financials were for the year [and] what you had to produce. Everything was laid out for 30 years,” explained Kent Viste, general foreman for WestMET Group Canada Ltd, which spun-off from parent company Westmoreland in May 2023 and is the current owner of the Sheerness mine.

The mine, which had three or four active pits when it was in operation, changed hands a few times over its approximately 25 years of operations, and the Montgomery mine was also merged into it in 1998, when Luscar Ltd. acquired Manalta Coal Ltd. In 2001, Sherritt International Corporation acquired Luscar

Project profile Ltd., and then sold its coal assets to Westmoreland Coal Company in 2014.

Coal phase-out

Reclamation work To get to the coal in a surface mine, vegetation is cleared in the area, and the topsoil and subsoil are removed. Reclaiming the land means reversing that process.

“As with Luscar’s other prairie operations, mining is closely integrated with the reclamation,” wrote J. K. Haddock, manager of engineering for Forestburg Collieries, in a CIM Bulletin article from 1997. “Surface soil is salvaged by scraper and either directly placed on levelled land following mining or placed in stockpiles for later use. One of the two dozers on site is assigned to spoil levelling, the other is assigned to work with the dragline to assist with bench preparation.”

Courtesy of WestMET

The Alberta NDP government announced in 2015 that it would phase out coal-powered electricity by 2030 as part of a wider climate policy, which followed Ontario’s coal phase-out in 2014. In November 2021, the Sheerness generating station officially transitioned from coal to natural gas.

From 1995 to 2021, the Sheerness mine had produced 96.8 million tonnes of coal; the last load of coal was sold to the power plant on Feb. 23, 2021. At that point, the mine transitioned completely into reclamation, and the workforce downsized to approximately 50 workers and staff.

At its peak, the Sheerness mine had employed about 130 people. As one of the highest-paying employers in the area, it was a draw for many Hanna residents.

With the original generating station contract not set to expire until 2026, and a 2030 closure set by the federal government, many employees who had joined the mine when it opened in 1995 had expected to work there until retirement. They include Roger Derbyshire, a former heavy equipment operator currently working as acting safety coordinator on a temporary basis, and Kevin Kern, who has worked a variety of roles for the mine, including as a dragline operator for 20 years, and began working as a grader operator when the mine switched to reclamation.

Derbyshire recalled when he first heard the news about the coal phase-out: “That was a bit disappointing, to say the least.

I was pretty sure I was going to make it to retirement, now that’s all into question.”

Kern described hearing the announcement as a sad day. “I liked the dragline,” he said. “I thought I’d be retiring there, but you never know nowadays.”

Viste noted when he began working at the Sheerness mine in 2001, there was already talk about mining other sources of coal in the area and extending the 30-year project by 10 or 15 years.

While the loss of jobs may not seem like much if you live in a major city, Hanna has a population of roughly 2,500 people, which means the generating station and Sheerness mine were both major employers for the town.

Kyle Hobbs, director of operations for WestMET, said the company retrained as many workers as it could for reclamation work and kept the same shifts as when coal was being mined.

“We continue to operate 24 hours a day into the reclamation world to get the reclamation closed as quick and efficient as possible,” Hobbs said.

Ramp levelling being done at Sheerness to reclaim old coal land.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 43

Courtesy of WestMET

(Left) One of the coal pits at the Sheerness mine in April 2021; (right) the same pit in June 2022 following reclamation.

The Sheerness mine had used two draglines to uncover coal, and four crews hauled it directly from the mine to the generating station using 150 tonne belly-dump haulers. Once coal mining operations had ceased, Hobbs said the two draglines were utilized for levelling the mine’s steepest slopes before they were decommissioned. One of the draglines is now being used in a gravel pit in Illinois, U.S., and the other one was cut up for steel.

After the land is levelled, subsoil is placed, followed by topsoil. “Once we have all that done, we’ll grade it and make sure it’s nice and smooth, then we’ll farm that and typically put some type of soil-building vegetation in there,” said Clay Williams, agriproducts manager for WestMET, one of the many mine employees who is also a farmer and rancher.

There are no tailings on site due to the raw coal being directly delivered to the plant and burned; the biggest challenge has been trying to work with land that is known to be inhospitable to agriculture. The mine sits on part of Alberta’s Special Areas, a region known to be arid and difficult to farm.

“The land wasn’t the greatest, and prior to [mining], it didn’t produce well. We’re trying to put it back as the same or better,” Hobbs said.

To boost the soil quality, the WestMET team turned to regenerative agriculture. This includes practices like planting cover crops to prevent soil erosion, and utilizing a cocktail crop—a mixture of different grass and legume species—to boost root growth and get more vegetative and organic matter into the reclaimed soil, rather than jumping straight to planting grassland. Crops are planted both in the fall and spring and grazed or tilled back in to help build up the soil with organic matter.

“After that soil’s built up, whether that’s one year or two years or more of soil building, then we’ll put a seed mix that’s approved by the county in—a grass and legume mix that’s native and typical to the area,” Williams explained. “That’ll grow for a couple of years, then we’ll start using cattle to get a rotational 44 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

grazing program on it, so that we can continue to build that soil and make it something that’s sustainable year-on-year.”

He added, “We’ve tried some bale grazing things, we’ve tried taking compost and doing other things to increase organic matter in our final reclaimed soils. There are some clever, creative, new age things that are being done in agriculture, that we’re pulling into the reclamation world.”

The end game is for the land to be comparable to the prairies around it: “slight rolling hills, grasses that are suitable to the area that comply within the county of what they have, and to produce agriculturally as much or better than the surrounding area,” Williams said.

Hobbs explained, “The goal is always to make it the same or better than what was previously. There are even wetlands that we’re producing that were not there previously to the mining.”

He added that while there is no set timeframe from the Alberta government, the goal is to finish the reclamation work as quickly as possible, with a current deadline of 2026, “and not prolong for 20 years to close this up.”

A “unicorn of reserves” In 2020, Westmoreland decided to investigate the reserves of humalite on the site. The oxidized, coal-like material was formed over millions of years of organic material decomposition and is found only in Alberta.

The humalite is classified as an organic soil amendment used to improve soil quality and reduce fertilizer requirements.

It had been treated as a byproduct of coal mining since the early ’90s as it was in the way of the coal underneath it, and sold to other companies that would screen and process it.

WestMET was formed to market the humalite and also to investigate the potential of generating renewable energy on site.

“We did research and found it’s some of the best reserves in the world based on humic quality,” Williams said. “It’s very low

Courtesy of WestMET

Project profile

The primary screener at Sheerness sizes humalite into granules, which feed into Meridian storage bins.

in heavy metals, it’s certified organic and we have significant reserves of it. It’s a gem, a unicorn of reserves sitting here that we didn’t really know we had. So we pivoted into [mining] it.”

The company now operates two separate facilities to produce three humalite products: a granular product, a smaller granular product for turf applications and a fine-powdered product. The transition from mining millions of tonnes of coal a year to mining and processing about 30,000 to 50,000 tonnes of humalite was an adjustment for the team. The scale of the humalite is planned on a continuous growth pattern, and tonnages could double or triple in the next few years—but still not to the capacity of the thermal coal mine.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around 40,000 tonnes,” Viste said.

“We used to do that in four days. Now, we’re doing that over a year.”

Extracting coal was straightforward: it was mined and hauled to the generating station. Humalite is a different beast.

“Now we mine it, haul it, screen it, do some processing and handling it in and out of trucks,” Williams said. “It’s been a learning curve over the last few years. But we’ve come a long way from just having a raw, ore-type product to building a refined, usable product.”

Hobbs said that mining humalite has little impact on the site’s reclamation timeline, as the humalite pits are minimal in size and tonnage compared to coal. When the team is ready to move to the next humalite pit, the previous one is reclaimed.

They open two to three humalite pits a year, and reclaiming each one takes about a month.

Hobbs estimated there are millions of tonnes of reserves of humalite at Sheerness that will last for over a century.

Williams said the next step is creating a market for it in North America, and especially Western Canada, where humic acid products are not a conventional agricultural input.

“It’s used a lot more internationally, [in] places that have farmed for thousands of years,” he added. “In North America, especially Canada, you’re talking a couple hundred years of farming, so they haven’t mined nearly as much organic matter out of the soils.”

According to a 2022 Straits Research report, the global humic acid market is projected to reach US$1.46 billion by 2030, due to world population growth along with growing demand for organic fertilizers worldwide.

WestMET is also investigating other options for the Sheerness site. It plans to develop a 13 MWac (megawatts of alternating current) photovoltaic solar power electrical generation project in partnership with clean energy developer PACE Canada LP on a reclaimed portion of the coal mine, with a commissioning date in 2024, and the company is also examining the possibility of wind power in the future.

“That’s why our company diversified to WestMET to allow investors, and that growth, instead of just a coal mine that shuts down and grows grass—which is fine as well. But we want to take it to the next step, and I think we have a great area to do it,” Hobbs said.

Derbyshire commented, “With any luck, if we can get this off the ground, it should keep all the guys here working for the foreseeable future.”

Viste added, “Two years ago, I had my mind made up that I was going to be here two years. After that, I’d probably just take over the family farm. But now with humalite, [the chance of] me retiring here is fairly high. Two, three years ago, everybody was looking at alternatives, but it seems like there’s life again.

The craziest thing is, we’ve been selling humalite for 20 years, and nobody even knows about it around the area. To start a market and industry—that’s the exciting part.” CIM December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 45

Courtesy of Andritz

Andritz’s BrainWave can significantly reduce process variability in comminution circuits.

Streamlining S comminution Techniques like artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionizing SAG milling

By Graham Chandler

46 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

emi-autogenous grinding (SAG) is the most common method of comminution at mineral processing plants, and SAG mills account for a significant proportion of energy consumed at mining operations. According to a 2021 report commissioned by Weir Group and written by Australiabased energy and climate change strategy consultancy Engeco, the mining industry consumes approximately 3.5 per cent of total final energy consumption globally, with comminution accounting for up to 40 per cent of that.

To reduce energy consumption of their SAG mills, mine operators need to juggle several challenges along the way: complex mineralogy, strict environmental regulations, pricey energy consumption, equipment reliability, water scarcity and lowgrade ores to name just a few. Dealing with all of those challenges demands innovative technologies and strategies to improve efficiency and safely reduce costs while protecting the environment and maintaining reasonable profitability. Precise control and monitoring are required to maintain that efficiency.

However, astute companies are up to the challenge—many with the indispensable help of artificial intelligence (AI) and

Courtesy of Molycop

Comminution Over time, mills operating in undesired operating states experience a decrease in average throughput, he said. “[The Digital Engine] will ultimately help your recovery, but also helps your operators make decisions. Increase in average throughput over time is important to them. An energy-efficient grind— that is important to them, too. We have several case studies as to how it helped.”

On the crest of a wave

The Molycop Digital Engine was developed to predict the behaviour and optimize the performance of comminution circuits, with a specific focus on semi-autogenous grinding processes.

machine learning (ML) to enable real-time prediction and optimization of mineral processing operations.

An engine of progress Paul Shelley, vice-president of innovation at Molycop in Perth, Australia, noted that due to the need to cut emissions by at least 45 per cent (compared to 2010 levels) by 2030, “you’ve got these pretty significant [decarbonization] challenges in a very short time window for the industry to solve those problems.”

To address these challenges, Molycop started developing a new monitoring system and building a Digital Engine that incorporates AI and ML. The first step of building the system was to construct a digital twin—a virtual representation of a physical system hosted and operated entirely on a computer system.

“The system was based on accelerometers placed inside, and within, the mill,” explained Shelley. “We knew that we needed some level of analytics to analyze the data stream; we needed a Digital Engine to analyze it and create value.”

He described the Digital Engine as a tool: “Its capability is a compelling value proposition competing with the next 20 minutes of operating parameters of the mill. By using the Digital Engine to predict what was about to happen, you could do something about it.”

As well as using AI, Molycop had a high level of customer interaction at every iteration of the Digital Engine’s design. “At every decision-making point in our product development cycle we involved [customers],” said Shelley. “That’s what drove the design of our monitoring system.”

He said Molycop started by taking four and a half years’ worth of data to design the Digital Engine. “Eventually, we did all of our product development and testing in the field: built the interfaces, the platforms and the Digital Engine,” said Shelley. “We developed it in the field with the customers so they could say ‘okay, this would be good’ or not.”

Shelley said results are difficult to quantify owing to the complexities of mills. “But what the Digital Engine has done is help immensely in decision-making,” he said. “If I know I’m in this desired operating state for a period of time and then I get an indication that I am moving away from that desired operating state, I can do something about it.”

Andritz’s BrainWave is an advanced predictive controller that can be used in a variety of processes, including SAG mills.

Its development started about 30 years ago as a collaboration between Andritz (then Universal Dynamics Ltd.) and the University of British Columbia.

“It was designed based on state-of-the-art academic research,” said Alireza Kheradmand, advanced process control engineer at Andritz’s facility in Richmond, B.C. “Originally rooted in a PhD thesis, BrainWave’s features were, and still are, designed by a group of engineers and verified against existing theory and academic knowledge.”

The main purpose was to design a model-based predictive controller (MPC) that can first optimally control processes with long dead times (time between a control input and its response), marginally stable systems, processes with interacting behaviours or even constrained systems.

“BrainWave’s other target was to create self-tuning controllers that can learn from process behaviour while in closedloop control,” Kheradmand said. He noted that this feature is particularly important since some processes, such as typical comminution circuits, are dynamic and constantly changing, adding: “BrainWave’s development objective was to have an adaptive MPC, in addition to a predictive controller.”

When it comes to mineral processing, especially comminution circuits, process control can be challenging due to constantly changing ore characteristics such as grade, size and hardness.

“Such occurrences create the need for an adaptive controller that can understand the underlying behaviour of the process by using accurate process models,” explained Kheradmand.

“Owing to its model-based approach and inherent optimization features, BrainWave can significantly reduce process variability, stabilize the process and push the process equipment closer to the limits in a safe manner.”

The result of this approach, he said, is to maximize throughput in the comminution circuit and minimize power consumption, while also maintaining particle size at a defined value so as to maximize plant recovery.

Due to its ability to model SAG mill behaviour, responsive and precise control is possible. BrainWave responds to changes in mill rotation, recycled pebbles and ore quality to maintain mill weight and maximize production. As the weight controller adjusts the set point for fresh ore feed, a second BrainWave controller adjusts the feeder speed to ensure that the right amount of material is delivered to the mill.

“By using BrainWave MPC, Andritz has developed advanced process control solutions for crushing, comminution, flotation and other circuits to optimally control various process variables,” said Kheradmand. “These solutions typically can improve throughput between two to 10 per cent, improve specific energy between two to 12 per cent and increase recovery between 0.5 to two per cent.”

A recent successful application is at Vale Canada, which installed BrainWave at its Voisey’s Bay copper-nickel mine in December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 47

Courtesy of ME Elecmetal

of BrainWave, and the analysis proved that BrainWave increased the throughput by five per cent.

Twin goals

SAG DTWIN is a SAG digital twin developed by ME Elecmetal in collaboration with ECN Automation.

Newfoundland and Labrador to ensure its SAG mill is properly loaded. The ore that charges the SAG mill at Voisey’s Bay keeps changing quite fast—which means that SAG mill control is quite challenging and small changes in ore properties can cause large changes in mill loading to happen very quickly. After installation, both Andritz and Vale analyzed the performance

48 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Pursuit of SAG mill efficiency, remote operations capabilities and more prompted another company, mineral processing solutions provider ME Elecmetal, to develop a digital twin using AI. In collaboration with smart manufacturing technology company ECN Automation, it created a SAG grinding digital twin (SAG DTWIN).

Ariel Medina, director of the ME Digital Lab—which is ME Elecmetal’s technology branch in Santiago, Chile—said it was comminution losses that drove the project. For starters, mineral processing operations needed to be more efficient. “Not only that, but improved safety, better condition of equipment, enhanced ability to monitor more critical processes and monitor more interactions between variables [were needed],” he said.

“Basically, we wanted to put together a series of variables— most of them were available in most of the operations—to create a scenario in real time,” he said.

Installing sensors and instruments to monitor variables like liner wear, “we were able to connect information from different parts of advanced process control systems of the whole operation.” AI and ML techniques played a large role, “all the way [through the project],” said Medina.

Once the model twin was built, “we ran an evaluation project in the Minera Los Pelambres (MLP) mine, starting with data from the last three years to train our models,” explained Medina.

Antofagasta Minerals’ MLP mine is fed from a sulfide deposit in the Coquimbo region of Chile, where copper and molybdenum concentrate are produced through grinding and flotation. Medina said it is an ideal proof of concept for remote operations and control. “It senses, diagnoses, then recommends certain actions,” he said.

The completed SAG DTWIN is a digital platform that brings together prediction, simulation and analysis tools that reflect the operating status of the mill and recommend adjustments to achieve stability and production optimization. It reads the required process variables from the distributed control system (DCS) and, using simulation, phenomenological models (those not directly derived from theory), ML and optimization algorithms, it creates variables that reflect the operational status of the mill and predict process performance. It then feeds the new variables back to the DCS. Medina noted that SAG DTWIN turned out to be a valuable tool for providing operational insights that allowed productive improvements. Hybrid models proved to be highly accurate, showing errors of less than three per cent in all validations performed, making them key enablers of process intelligence.

At the beginning of 2023, MLP’s Integrated Operations Management Centre (GIO in Spanish) commenced operations, integrating, digitizing and remotely administering the mine’s operations. Although the GIO is located in Santiago, over 300 kilometres from the mine, it seeks to centralize all critical operations—from the mine to the concentrator plant, through digitization and advanced data analytics.

According to Medina, the near-integration of SAG DTWIN at MLP’s GIO opens a range of possibilities to test the different modules for a variety of user profiles and advance development of new applications that enable better decision making for remote operations. CIM

LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and its corporate partners share a common goal: to advance responsible and sustainable mineral extraction in Canada and internationally. The knowledge, leading practices and innovations of CIM’s partners shared here accelerate that progress.

Rio Tinto • Hecla Mining Teck Resources • B2Gold MineSense Technologies

Courtesy of Rio Tinto

Fuelling up a truck with renewable diesel at Boron, California.

Driving change towards zero-emission trucks and mobile equipment

I

n June 2023, Rio Tinto announced it had fully transitioned the heavy machinery at its Boron operation in California from fossil diesel to renewable diesel—making it the first open-pit mine in the world to achieve this milestone. The conversion to renewable diesel brings with it an anticipated CO2 equivalent reduction of up to 45,000 tonnes per year, comparable to eliminating the annual emissions of approximately 9,600 cars.

An initial trial of switching fossil diesel to renewable diesel in a haul truck at Rio Tinto’s Borax mine in California was conducted in partnership with Neste and Rolls-Royce in 2022. It used Neste MY Renewable Diesel, a hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO)

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made from sustainably sourced, renewable raw materials, such as used cooking oil and animal fat from food industry waste. Results showed that a truck running on renewable diesel delivered similar performance and reliability as trucks running on conventional diesel.

When used in its purest form, Neste MY Renewable Diesel can deliver up to 75 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions over the full life cycle of the fuel than conventional diesel.

Based on these positive results, Rio Tinto U.S. Borax continued to work with Rolls-Royce, Neste, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the State of California to fully transition its heavy machinery fleet onsite to renewable diesel at the end of May

2023. This transition included all the heavy machinery on the property from haul trucks to loaders. Renewable diesel is even used in blasting. This conversion to renewable diesel supports Rio Tinto’s global decarbonization objectives, which include a 50 per cent reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and a commitment to reach net zero by 2050. Carbon emissions from the use of diesel in its mobile fleet and rail accounted for 13 per cent of Rio Tinto’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2022.

Given the success at Boron, Rio Tinto conducted a trial at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah.

The company partnered with Cummins, which manufactures engines and related technologies, to trial renewable

Courtesy of Rio Tinto

Partner spotlight

A battery electric vehicle operating at Kennecott’s underground operations in Utah.

diesel at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott site in Bingham Canyon in Utah, and results confirmed it is reliable as an alternative fuel.

Over the seven-month trial, the team tested acceleration, speed, cycle times, fuel usage and engine inspection reports for two trucks running on renewable diesel versus two trucks running on conventional diesel, using the same methodology as the Boron team to compare the results.

Diesel accounts for the largest portion of Kennecott’s greenhouse gas emissions, and renewable diesel could provide one component in the overall mix of solutions that will be needed for decarbonization.

An electric future While the biodiesel is a drop-in solution, supply at scale is still a challenge. Achieving decarbonization targets requires other solutions for the long term, including battery electric mobile equipment and renewable energy generation and storage.

Rio Tinto is working on projects to progress the electrification of its mobile fleet at its Pilbara operations in Australia—including haul trucks, mobile equipment and rail operations.

To support repowering its mobile fleet, the company is also working to transition its iron ore operations away from gas-powered generation to renewable solar and wind power. The company is working on delivering the first one gigawatt of renewable energy, which will abate about a third of its 2021 total Scope 1 and 2 emissions across its iron ore business.

At Rio Tinto’s Kennecott mine, the company is also trialing a Sandvik battery electric haul truck and loader as part of underground development work to improve health and safety, increase productivity and reduce carbon emissions.

Across the mining industry, there has been a long-held view that bigger is better. Enormous haul trucks provide economies of scale, allowing operations to move more material, more quickly, by leveraging the large trucks’ power and carrying capacity.

Rio Tinto is challenging thinking on size. Larger haul trucks, while already automated, consume more energy than current electric vehicle (EV) power sources can generate. By exploring truck size, Rio Tinto wants to assess how big and small trucks can both be a part of the solution to reduce

emissions in the Pilbara region, where it has several iron ore assets, and find fit-for-purpose solutions in mining.

At its Channar mine in the East Pilbara, the company is working with Scania, a Swedish manufacturer of commercial vehicles, to trial more agile automated trucks that could be electrified more readily to reduce carbon emissions, which could improve their speed to market.

The two companies have established a long-term research-and-development collaboration agreement for the continuous advancement of this autonomous technology, under which Rio Tinto’s Channar mine has become the first active partner site for Scania’s autonomous mining solution. The partnership also includes options for the future transition to electric-powered vehicles.

Rio Tinto is also exploring options to further reduce emissions of larger trucks through its partnerships with Komatsu and Caterpillar. The company is working with both partners to develop its future 220t+ zero emissions autonomous haul trucks, including key development programs and milestones for early operational deployment.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 51

Courtesy of Hecla Mining

Hecla’s Underhand Closed Bench mining method harnesses the power of controlled seismic activity at its Lucky Friday mine.

Pioneering mining method through innovation

I

f you visit the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, you will see that Hecla’s 1903 100horsepower hoist was powered by the longest transmission line in the world.

This is just one example of Hecla’s long history of innovation.

For more than 130 years, Hecla has fostered a company culture that values continuous learning, remains open to new ideas and is willing to adapt to change. Hecla has discovered that the best ideas are often years in the making, and success and failure are an important part of the learning process.

For example, construction of the Silver Shaft at its Lucky Friday mine in Idaho allowed for several innovations: paste backfill, rubber-tired equipment and a new mining method called the Lucky Friday Underhand Longwall (LFUL).

After using the LFUL method for 35 years, issues with Lucky Friday’s seismic activity made it apparent that it was time to find a new mining method, and Hecla took a huge leap.

“We were reaching for the Holy Grail of mining: a method for productively cutting preconditioned rock while removing the miner from the face,” said Hecla president and CEO Phil Baker.

“To meet this challenge, we developed a mechanical mining machine, the Remote Vein Miner (RVM), that could rapidly cut preconditioned rock.”

Baker equated investing in the RVM with exploration. Most exploration work is not successful, but it is still a

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necessary part of reaching a successful outcome. The RVM was no different.

At times, Hecla thought the RVM might not work, but the company could learn from the experience. This approach led Hecla from the RVM to a solution that was even better—the Underhand Closed Bench (UCB) mining method.

Chris Neville, Hecla’s current vicepresident and general manager, Lucky Friday, was at the forefront of recognizing the challenge of seismicity.

Growing up in Mullan, Idaho, Neville recalled sitting in his high school classroom and feeling the vibration of rockbursts from the mine. Windows would rattle, then the sounds of sirens would fill the town as the volunteer ambulance crew raced to the mine.

Neville shared this perspective to demonstrate how far Hecla has come, thanks to the UCB method. Building upon years of research, testing and analysis, Neville and his team crafted a creative yet simple solution. Instead of merely managing the effects of seismic shifts, Hecla now harnesses the power of controlled seismic activity.

UCB consists of drilling a series of blasthole rings 24-feet deep in the longhole stope floor, then initiating an explosion that uses 25,000 pounds of explosive to blast 10,000 tons of rock at once. The explosion triggers rapid yet controlled seismic activity. With UCB, more than 90 per cent of total seismic energy around the stope is released over the course of 12 hours.

This method releases 100 times more

fragmented ore than the traditional cut and fill method.

Neville explained that by blasting a longer, deeper area when personnel are out of the mine, miners can more safely, quickly and efficiently move the ore. With traditional methods, it could take up to 10 weeks for the energy to be released. Through UCB, Hecla achieved stability within one work shift.

This method revolutionized Hecla’s approach to operating in seismically poor areas. The mine has gone from miner control, to engineer and management control, by shifting towards task-based mining, where management decides how mining is done.

The results speak for themselves.

Lucky Friday has been using the UCB mining method since 2020, during which time it realized the best safety record in its history, and increased production by 150 per cent.

“Innovation comes from not being afraid to try and fail. We’re motivated by Every Day, Every Shift, Home Safe, and that’s led us to solutions that reduce risk and raise confidence. UCB was built on the shoulders of our predecessors that put the hours, days, weeks, months and years into studying the problem, and I’m proud to be a part of the team that developed a mining method that is making a difference,” said Neville.

Hecla has discovered that innovation builds upon itself. It is an ongoing process that did not begin with the UCB method, and it will not end there either.

Partner spotlight

Partnering to restore Bernard Harbour fisheries in Nunavut Courtesy of B2Gold

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n early 2023, B2Gold, a lowcost international senior gold producer headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, acquired Sabina Gold & Silver, and its interests in the Back River gold district, located in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut. One of the nearest neighbouring communities, Kugluktuk, comprises approximately 1,600 residents, the majority of whom are Inuit. Each Nunavut community has a hunters and trappers organization (HTO), which oversees and manages wildlife harvesting among Inuit.

Arctic char, an important food source for Inuit, once thrived in the nearby Bernard Harbour, and lake trout, caribou, seals and birds were plentiful. Historic Inuit fish harvesting activities at Bernard Harbour occurred primarily at a fish weir at the mouth of Nulahugyuk Creek, where the fish migrated to spawn in Hingittok Lake.

The fish weir was constructed of stones and functioned by allowing migrating fish to pass through an opening into an enclosed pool of water.

After a sufficient number of fish had entered the pool, the opening would be closed and fish would be harvested using kakivaks, traditional Inuit fish spears. Hundreds of fish would be caught at the fish weir each summer, with many being dried for later consumption. In more recent times, community members observed declines in Arctic char due to low water, blockages and obstructions (rocks) in Nulahugyuk Creek, often resulting in stranded or dead fish.

In Canada, fish and fish habitat are protected by law under the Fisheries Act. Unavoidable harm or impacts to fish and fish habitat from a new project or development must be offset.

The objective of offsetting is to create or enhance habitat at a location to

Arctic char, once plentiful in Bernard Harbour in Nunavut, will thrive again due to a novel long-term partnership between the Kugluktuk hunters and trappers organization and B2Gold.

counterbalance unavoidable impacts incurred by a project. Amendments to the Fisheries Act in 2012 provided opportunities for proponents to build offsets near communities rather than near the project location, focusing on fisheries that are important to, and accessible by, Indigenous communities. This change in approach allowed for innovative projects through the integration of Indigenous knowledge to help local fisheries while fulfilling companies’ requirements to offset harm.

As habitat restoration at Bernard Harbour was previously identified as a priority for the Kugluktuk HTO, Sabina Gold & Silver (now B2Gold) initiated a partnership with the Kugluktuk HTO in 2014 to study and complete stream restoration work in Nulahugyuk Creek as an offset for the Back River gold district operations that would ultimately boost the productivity of the Arctic char fishery. This unique community-industry partnership was the first of its kind in the Canadian Arctic. The Kugluktuk HTO has been instrumental in providing historical information through a traditional

knowledge study involving residents from Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay, and many more. The offsetting project has benefited from Inuit support and direction in project planning, field data collection and stream restoration. With restoration activities completed in 2016, the Kugluktuk HTO will continue to provide support and direction until offsetting objectives have been met to the satisfaction of both the HTO and regulatory agencies.

Through this novel initiative, a longterm partnership between the Kugluktuk HTO and B2Gold has been established, focused on creating a shared, mutual benefit for Inuit and the company. Key activities going forward will include ongoing community engagement and maintenance of restoration work annually, as needed, by the Kugluktuk HTO; scientific monitoring programs to be conducted by B2Gold with the HTO; and full ongoing funding for programs provided by B2Gold. The outcome will be a restored and maintained Bernard Harbour, helping Inuit regain an important and healthy Aboriginal fishery and sustainable food source for their community.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 53

Courtesy of MineSense Technologies

Optimizing the mineto-mill pipeline with data

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he mining industry faces increasing pressure to improve the sustainability of operations by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, water and power consumption, and chemicals usage. MineSense Technologies helps improve mining sustainability by equipping shovels and belts with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) sensors to enable bulk ore sorting at the mine face as well as downstream process optimization. To accomplish this, machine learning algorithms are applied to the XRF data to characterize the material for every bucket during extraction and along the belt in the grinding circuit.

Automated integration with the fleet management system allows bucket material characteristics to be aggregated to individual trucks so that they can be classified and routed to the correct destination, whether it be recovering ore that would have gone to waste or reducing the amount of waste material sent to the mill. A direct fleet management system integration also enables the tracking of material characteristics measured at the mine face through the full processing circuit and can be linked with downstream sensors such as MineSense BeltSense® systems, on-stream analyzer data or mill assays to provide further processing optimization insights.

The high-resolution datasets generated by MineSense’s ShovelSense® and BeltSense technology allow for smart mining decisions to be made to optimize the entire mine-to-mill pipeline, reducing the environmental footprint per unit of metal produced. For example, advanced machine learning models can be used to extract intrinsic rock properties and predict metallurgical responses of downstream material processing,

54 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Figure 1. Correlation between ShovelSense® coverage and overall recovery and copper concentrate grade per shift. ShovelSense coverage is calculated as the percentage of trucks in a shift that contain material measured by ShovelSense.

enabling operators to plan accordingly.

These methods have also been applied to quantify the acid-generating potential of waste material and the leachability of ores destined for leach pads to reduce environmental impacts.

On average, each ShovelSense system diverts 5.9 per cent of all measured trucks to waste, which were otherwise designated as ore, and 7.2 per cent of all measured trucks to ore, which were otherwise designated as waste. These estimates were calculated across nine open-pit copper mines equipped with ShovelSense over part of 2023. Percentage diversions vary depending on the amount of contrast in the ore body and in which areas of the ore body the system is operating. For example, highcontrast areas result in more diversions, and more ore diversions are expected when digging through waste.

Extrapolated to a full year of production at 90 per cent utilization, digging units equipped with ShovelSense recovered 500 to 9,000 tonnes more copper per year. This equates to an additional $3 to 50 million worth of copper concentrate after taking into account copper price and processing costs, and ultimately leads to an increase in metal production and potential mine life extension.

The second benefit of ShovelSense ore sorting is achieved through removing waste from the ore feed. By reducing the copper grade variability and increasing the head grade of the mill feed, Shovel-

Sense created a more consistent and higher-grade feed to deliver higher recovery and increased copper grade of the concentrate. At one site where these improvements were quantified, shifts with increasing ShovelSense coverage correlated to those with the highest average recovery and head grade (see Figure 1).

On average, shifts with 80 to 100 per cent ShovelSense coverage were observed to have a four per cent improvement in recovery and eight per cent more copper in the concentrate than shifts with less than 20 per cent ShovelSense coverage.

This is a direct result of ShovelSense increasing copper head grade by 0.03 per cent on average as well as reducing the copper grade variability.

Further downstream improvements of ShovelSense and BeltSense are achieved through operationalizing advanced classification models such as those to predict mineral speciation, acid-generating potential, leachability and grindability of the processed material. This data can be used for advanced waste and ore sorting, or in the case of BeltSense, can be directly integrated into Advanced Process Control (APC) systems in the mill to further improve processing and recovery in a “feed forward” manner. Thus, ShovelSense and BeltSense are proven to deliver highresolution data that is directly fed into the mine-to-mill pipeline to optimize mining and milling, ultimately leading to more sustainable mining practices.

Courtesy of Teck

Partner spotlight

Teck’s Quebrada Blanca project has been made possible by thousands of dedicated men and women.

The importance of what we mine and how we mine it

By Jonathan Price, president and CEO, Teck

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s the world becomes increasingly aware of the importance of critical minerals to ensure a sustainable future, Teck is focused on helping meet rapidly growing demand for copper—and doing it responsibly.

Copper is the single most important mineral in the clean energy transition, as it is an essential component in everything from wind turbines to electric vehicle batteries and charging stations. For example, the average electric car requires about four times as much copper as a gas combustion vehicle. That is why global copper demand is expected to double in the next 30 years.

In 2023, we made significant progress towards advancing our copper growth strategy, as the expanded Quebrada Blanca (QB) mine in Chile ramps up to full production. Mines like QB will play a critical role in helping meet the growing global

need for copper. At full production, QB will double Teck’s copper production on a consolidated basis.

The copper produced at QB will help contribute to global efforts to decarbonize—but as expectations on the mining industry from local communities, governments and Indigenous groups continue to rightfully increase, how we mine is just as important as what we mine.

This project was made possible by thousands of dedicated men and women—including the government of Chile, which is a strong supporter of responsible resource development—all working with the shared goal of creating a generational legacy of economic development, jobs and prosperity, while respecting the environment and communities of northern Chile.

From concept and construction, all the way through to production, QB was created with local people at the forefront. Before the first shovel

broke ground, local communities and Indigenous groups provided valuable input that resulted in project design amendments to better incorporate their environmental and social priorities and ensure they shared in the benefits of responsible mining. That dialogue continued through construction, and will continue throughout the life of the mine.

As a result, QB has a strong focus on environmentally responsible mining. The operation includes the first large-scale use of desalinated seawater for mining in Chile’s Tarapacá region. To achieve this, water is pumped from the coast through 165 kilometres of pipelines, up to an altitude of 4,400 metres at the mine. It was a major engineering and construction challenge but essential to protect precious and scarce freshwater resources in the region.

As part of Teck’s commitment to making our mining operations carbon neutral by 2050, QB will be 100 per cent powered by renewable electricity beginning in 2025, eliminating 1.6 million tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, we’re investing to protect and conserve biodiversity and the unique ecosystems around QB. For example, we’re partnering with the Ollagüe Quechua community to protect the Salar de Alconcha wetland, a unique and high-value wetland.

As significant as QB is, it has even more potential; the initial mine life of 27 years uses only 18 per cent of the mineral resource, meaning the mine can expand and continue operating and creating jobs for decades to come. QB also reflects the diversity of the region, with women making up approximately 30 per cent of the workforce—far above the industry average, and we’re working to do even better.

To decarbonize, the world needs significantly more copper than is produced today. Across our industry, our challenge is to find ways to produce more copper while making less impact. It’s a tall order—but I believe our industry is up to the challenge.

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 55

CIM news

In memoriam Compiled by Michele Beacom

A

s we remember those in the mining community who

have passed away, we would like to extend our condolences to their families and friends. Though they are no longer with us, their work and accomplishments live on.

Ladislaus “Largo” Albert passed away peacefully on Oct. 5, 2023, at the age of 94. He proudly worked in the mining industry for more than six decades. An industry leader in hoisting and mine safety, he was a CIM Life Member, CIM Fellow, executive member of the Maintenance, Engineering and Reliability Society of CIM and the 1989 recipient of the McParland Memorial Award.

CIM Member William John Beck passed away in Vancouver, B.C. A professional engineer, he worked in many roles at operations across the country and the United States during his 40-year career in mining. He formed his own consulting company, Beck & Associates GeoConsultants Inc., in 1999.

Avalon Advanced Materials founder and president Donald Bubar died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 68. He was considered a visionary for recognizing early on the importance of critical minerals for the energy transition. Along with championing the acceleration of critical minerals for zero-emission technologies, he was also an early advocate for mining companies to engage with Indigenous communities earlier, and more often, to gain social licence to operate. Bubar was involved with the Prospectors and Development Association of Canada for decades and was awarded its Distinguished Service Award in 2019 for his work as a leader in Indigenous relations.

Mauro Chiesa died on Feb. 8, 2023, at the age of 70. He spent 36 years in financing and advisory services as they applied to the fields of extractive and infrastructure projects. He was a proud CIM member who was named a Distinguished Lecturer in 2015 and awarded the Robert Elver Mineral Economics Award in 2023. He was a frequent contributor to CIM Magazine.

George H. Espley died peacefully on Aug. 16, 2023, at the age of 87. He led the Bank of Montreal’s Mining Services group for many years. A CIM Life Member, he held the positions of chair of the CIM Finance Committee and chair of the CIM Toronto Branch. He was named a CIM Distinguished Lecturer in 1995 and awarded the CIM Robert Elver Mineral Economics Award in 1998, among many other awards and accolades. He is survived by his wife and children, including CIM past president Samantha Espley.

Fathi Habashi, a dedicated figure in the mining, metallurgy and materials engineering field, and professor at Laval University, passed away on Sept. 26, 2023, just shy of his 95th birthday. Born in Cairo, Egypt, he was a renowned metallurgist who dedicated his life to teaching. He also held several patents, including a process capable of reducing the toxicity of asbestos. His legacy as a long-time member of MetSoc of CIM is commemorated through the Fathi Habashi Lecture and Scholarship. Habashi was awarded a CIM Fellowship in 1998.

Gerald Heffernan, known for pioneering less-polluting minimills for steel production, died on July 28, 2023, at the age of 104.

Made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1987, the citation read: “He is renowned worldwide as a founder and developer of major steelmaking organizations and as a highly skilled engineer and scientist.”

Kenneth J. Hill, a CIM 50 Year Club member, died on Sept. 5, 2023, at the age of 84. He worked primarily as a geologist in underground mines. In the 1980s, he transitioned to senior management 56 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

positions with several mining companies, including Dome Mines Group and Inmet Mining Corporation, before forming his own consulting company, Minpro. He was years ahead of his time when it came to environmental, social and governance practices. Hill initiated employment targets, and later benefit agreements, with Ojibway and Dene First Nations at the Detour Lake, Dona Lake, Musselwhite and Colomac mines.

Geologist John Hodgkinson passed away on Aug. 29, 2023. He came to Canada in 1957 to work at Madsen Red Lake Gold Mines in Ontario, before working some years in Western Australia. He eventually returned to Ontario to work with the federal Department of Northern Affairs.

Laurentian University’s Goodman School of Mines founding executive director Bruce Jago passed away on Aug. 5, 2023, at the age of 66. A seasoned industry veteran, prior to his mining school appointment, his career included serving in senior roles at Miocene Metals, Wallbridge Mining and Inco Ltd. CIM Life Member Hubert Wylam King died on Feb. 12, 2023, in Victoria, B.C. He was an internationally renowned research scientist. He taught metal physics and material engineering at Imperial College London, Dalhousie University, the Technical University of Nova Scotia, University of Western Ontario and University of Victoria, before finally retiring at the age of 85. King was awarded a CIM Fellowship in 2010.

William Irving (Bill) Mundle passed away on March 2, 2023, at the age of 84. After working as managing director at Boart Longyear Company, in 1978 he purchased Logan Brothers Diamond Drilling, which became Logan Drilling Group. He developed it into an international company, where he continued as CEO and chairman of the board until his death. He was very involved with CIM and the Mining Society of Nova Scotia. He was awarded a CIM Fellowship in 2000.

Co-founder and chair of the board of Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals Philip Pascall passed away peacefully on Sept.

19, 2023. A great source of pride for him was bringing improved standards of health and education to the local communities in which First Quantum Minerals operates.

The geophysical community lost a giant on Dec. 22, 2022, when Norman R. Paterson passed away, a month short of his 97th birthday. His legacy includes contributions to the full exploration cycle, from instrument development to interpretation. He was a mentor to, and collaborator with, multiple generations of geophysicists. His published technical contributions approached 80, including seminal papers in CIM Bulletin, and CIM published his book Mining Geophysics: A Canadian Story.

Peter C. Salmon died unexpectedly at home on July 29, 2023, at the age of 76. After becoming a pilot at a young age, he worked flying into mine camps all over the country. Salmon was active in the CIM GTA West Branch and was a past chair.

Tyler Thompson passed away on Feb. 28, 2023, at the young age of 46. He began his mining career at Teck’s Highland Valley Copper operations in 1997, where he spent 15 years, before moving to New Gold. Thompson was very active in the CIM South Central B.C. Branch and held the position of chairman for eight years. CIM We do our best to publish the names of recently deceased CIM Members and apologize if there are any we missed. Please send notices to membership@cim.org.

Lettre de l’éditeur

SECTION

francophone décembre 2023/janvier 2024

57 Lettre de l’éditeur 59 Mot du président Les actualités 60 Promouvoir l’électrification Par Tijana Mitrovic

Minéralurgie 62 L’avenir électrique Sedgman explique en détail sa conception de l’usine entièrement électrique de traitement de l’or pour le projet d’exploitation aurifère de Blackwater d’Artemis Gold, dans le centre de la ColombieBritannique Par Lynn Greiner

Projets importants, grandes questions

L

e Capital Projects Symposium (CPS 2023, un symposium dédié aux projets

d’investissement) de l’ICM est le nouveau venu dans la liste des événements de l’institut. En raison de la pandémie, le premier de ces symposiums avait dû avoir lieu en ligne en novembre 2020. Toutefois, le concept (une conférence d’ampleur raisonnable axée sur des études de cas et des stratégies en matière de bon déroulement des projets) a pris de l’ampleur. On pouvait s’y attendre dans une industrie à l’historique peu reluisant en matière d’exécution de projets dans le respect des délais et des budgets. La troisième édition a eu lieu en novembre, et j’ai eu la chance d’y participer (voir p. 15 pour plus d’informations, uniquement en anglais). Ce symposium a ouvert la voie à l’exploration d’éditoriaux futurs, qu’il s’agisse d’études de cas ou de questions existentielles.

Ces études de cas comprenaient le projet Quellaveco d’Anglo American au Pérou, le développement continu de Bloom Lake de Champion Iron Ore au Québec, et le déclassement du puits de la mine de potasse de Mosaic Company en Saskatchewan. Chacun de ces projets s’est taillé une place en tant que projet exemplaire, sachant que chacun d’eux a dû composer avec la phase difficile de la pandémie. Le fil conducteur qui réunissait toutes ces présentations, et d’autres, était l’association de l’expérience, des connaissances techniques et des compétences non techniques (nombre de ces compétences ayant été acquises par essais et erreurs), indispensables pour réussir.

Le rôle de l’intelligence artificielle (IA) dans les projets miniers et dans notre vie quotidienne était un thème qui revenait dans toutes les discussions, et qui requerra une attention certaine. George Greer de Pan American Silver Corp. se montrait sceptique quant à son utilité dans la gestion de projet. « Il est avant tout question de personnes. Il faut recruter les meilleurs, les traiter avec respect, et les motiver. » Un modèle d’IA, expliquait-il, n’est pas utile dans ce domaine.

Si d’autres, dont John Gravel de Bedrock-Service Group, insistaient sur l’avènement indéniable de l’IA en tant qu’outil précieux, Stefan Gueorguiev, directeur des études et du génie à Vale, est d’avis que l’application de l’IA générative et des modèles de langage pour la gestion des connaissances et des risques refaçonnera rapidement l’industrie minière, et bien plus encore. « On parle d’un changement d’ici trois à cinq ans. Il est difficile de savoir ce qui se passera audelà de cinq à sept ans. C’est un changement progressif », indiquait-il.

Confirmant ses propos, une équipe de recherche chinoise publiait, une semaine avant l’événement, un article dans Nature Synthesis consacré à un chimiste spécialisé en IA qui a développé une formule permettant de produire de l’oxygène à l’aide de matériaux disponibles sur Mars. Il faudrait deux millénaires aux scientifiques pour exécuter une telle tâche. L’IA l’a réalisée en six semaines. Cette découverte capitale vient appuyer et corroborer la possibilité d’une vie sur Mars et l’exploration de l’espace lointain. Le processus utilisé pour cette découverte représente le genre d’étape disruptive que M. Gueorguiev voit se pointer à l’horizon.

Quelles implications, par exemple, cela pourrait-il avoir pour le développement de nouvelles substances chimiques pour les batteries, et par là même pour les minéraux nécessaires à leur fabrication ?

Ceci ne constitue qu’une première piste d’investigation pour une technologie qui pourrait générer un nombre exceptionnel de découvertes.

Il serait passionnant de voir si et comment cela se vérifie, et quelle portée ces impacts auront sur notre manière de travailler, dans l’industrie minière comme dans les magazines.

Ryan Bergen, Rédacteur en chef editor@cim.org @Ryan_CIM_Mag December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 57

Avec l’aimable autorisation de Mike Cinnamond

Mot du président

Soyons optimistes pour les 125 années à venir

L

a fin de l’année approche, et avec elle sonne la fin des

célébrations du 125e anniversaire de l’ICM. Ces 125 premières années ont été témoin d’un essor important de l’industrie au Canada, en Amérique du Nord et dans le monde entier.

Cela m’a fait réfléchir à certaines des choses dont nous allons avoir besoin pour assurer la prospérité de l’industrie au cours des 125 années à venir. L’une d’elles concerne notamment les personnes qui la dirigeront.

Début novembre, j’ai eu la chance de célébrer la nuit étudiante annuelle avec la section de Vancouver. L’événement était à son comble, et j’y ai rencontré de nombreux piliers de l’ICM ainsi que beaucoup d’étudiants de l’université Simon Fraser, de l’université de la Colombie-Britannique (UBC) et du British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT, l’institut de technologie de la Colombie-Britannique). Nous avons accueilli des étudiants de la communauté de l’ICM et avons trinqué à leur réussite future.

Ces étudiants, et beaucoup d’autres comme eux dans le reste du pays, sont l’avenir de l’industrie minière et de l’ICM. L’industrie sera la leur, et ils dicteront son évolution dans le

monde entier. Ils porteront avec eux l’image de marque du Canada chère à l’ICM où qu’ils aillent—car ils n’auront d’autre choix que de partir.

L’industrie minière a une portée internationale, et la tâche ne cesse de se compliquer. Trouver de nouveaux gisements devient toujours plus difficile, et nous sommes face à une tempête géopolitique. Les régions les plus prometteuses sont aussi celles qui doivent déterminer à quoi ressemblera leur régime national d’activités minières et comment elles traiteront l’investissement étranger ainsi que les sociétés d’exploitation étrangères. Nos nouveaux dirigeants miniers devront faire preuve d’ouverture d’esprit en décidant où aller et comment s’adapter aux besoins des pays d’accueil. Ils devront être flexibles dans leurs méthodes de financement et inclure les pays d’accueil comme partenaires dans leurs projets. Ils devront former la main d’oeuvre locale et développer des chaînes d’approvisionnement locales.

L’innovation est également indissociable de la réussite future. Où et comment trouverons-nous de nouveaux gisements rentables? Nous vous parlons dans cette édition du CIM Magazine de l’exploitation minière dans les fonds océaniques et dans l’espace. Cela paraît logique, car les nouveaux lieux sont synonymes de nouvelles opportunités. Nous devons toutefois nous montrer innovants quant à l’évaluation de ces opportunités dans les territoires miniers existants.

Comment rendre nos exploitations existantes plus rentables et plus durables ? L’énergie est au cœur de ces considérations.

Exploiter de l’énergie durable et non polluante à partir de sources solaires ou éoliennes nous aidera à réduire nos coûts et à atteindre nos objectifs de réduction des émissions. À terme, l’électrification à l’échelle mondiale sera inéluctable si l’on veut atteindre ces objectifs. Comme le suggérait Donald Sadoway lors de la plénière d’ouverture de la Conference of Metallurgists (COM 2023, la conférence des métallurgistes) de la MetSoc en août dernier, nous devons nous montrer ambitieux et utiliser les métaux communs disponibles en grandes quantités pour construire des cellules électrolytiques et stocker l’énergie à grande échelle.

Ce ne sont que quelques-unes des difficultés auxquelles notre industrie devra faire face pour continuer à prospérer.

Mais les possibilités sont, elles aussi, innombrables. Alors que nous nous apprêtons à souhaiter pour la dernière fois un joyeux 125e anniversaire à l’ICM, ne nous contentons pas de regarder en arrière. Regardons les 125 années à venir avec optimisme.

C’est durant cette période que nos étudiants et jeunes professionnels du secteur minier devront briller et assurer la prospérité future de notre industrie.

Mike Cinnamond Président de l’ICM December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 59

Avec l’aimable autorisation de NMG

La mine de Matawinie de NMG (gauche) se situe à 120 kilomètres au nord de Montréal, Québec. Une route d'accès de huit kilomètres (droite) relie le site directement à l'autoroute 13.

Promouvoir l’électrification Nouveau Monde Graphite commencera l’essai pilote d’une chargeuse frontale électrique à sa mine de graphite Par Tijana Mitrovic

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a société québécoise Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) a récem-

ment fait état de l’avancement de son programme d’électrification pour Matawinie, une mine de graphite à ciel ouvert située près du village de SaintMichel-des-Saints, au Québec.

La société s’est engagée à procéder à l’électrification totale de l’équipement qu’elle utilise pour ses activités minières, ainsi que ses activités de concentration de minerai et de traitement, dans les cinq premières années d’exploitation de Matawinie. Cela en ferait la première mine à ciel ouvert entièrement électrique au monde selon l'entreprise. Pour atteindre cet objectif, NMG a fait équipe avec Caterpillar, qui sera le fournisseur d’équipement minier lourd de NMG, assurant la transition progressive des modèles traditionnels alimentés au diesel vers des machines fonctionnant entièrement à l’électricité.

Dans un communiqué de presse du 6 octobre dernier, NMG indiquait que les deux sociétés ont finalisé un partenariat et établi un calendrier pour tester l’équipement sur place, et pour organiser la transition vers des modèles de production n’émettant aucun gaz d’échappe60 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

ment. La chargeuse sur pneus 950 GC de Caterpillar serait le premier modèle pilote à batterie à être utilisé par les sociétés à la mine de Matawinie. « Ces progrès soutiennent aussi la planification des besoins en infrastructure de recharge », lisait-on dans le communiqué de NMG. « En modélisant et en simulant l’emplacement des bornes de recharge, le fonctionnement de l’équipement sur place ainsi que les cycles de recharge par rapport aux activités quotidiennes et au plan minier, les équipes sont à même d’optimiser la conception du site et les choix technologiques. La simulation des besoins en recharge permet d’identifier la puissance maximale demandée et d’élaborer des stratégies de gestion de l’énergie. » « Nous disposons désormais d’un plan clair que nous sommes tous prêts à mettre en pratique », déclarait Éric Desaulniers, président et directeur général de NMG à l’équipe du CIM Magazine dans un entretien. « Notre parc compte beaucoup d’équipement différent, qu’il s’agisse de dépanneuses, de chargeuses ou d’excavatrices, [et] le calendrier de leur électrification est très précis. L’idée est d’avoir [en premier lieu] l’équivalent

diesel, de recevoir un prototype et d’assurer la productivité, puis de passer progressivement à une version électrifiée. » Il ajoutait que ce projet d’électrification est unique dans l’industrie. « Caterpillar développe la toute première solution intégrale à ciel ouvert. Cela ne concerne pas que l’équipement, mais aussi les bornes de recharge, toute l’infrastructure entourant le projet ainsi que les solutions sur le chantier [qui seront totalement électrifiées] », ajoutait M. Desaulniers.

Selon lui, grâce à son rôle plus actif dans le projet minier de Matawinie, Caterpillar montrera à d’autres sociétés minières la valeur d’adopter un équipement durable. « L’idée était de collaborer avec Caterpillar et [d’autres fabricants d’équipement] en faveur de la transition », expliquait M. Desaulniers. « Notre plus grand progrès est d’être parvenus à intéresser une entreprise de l’envergure de Caterpillar. »

Nouvelles sources de production de graphite Une fois opérationnelle, la mine devrait produire 103 000 tonnes de concentré de graphite à haute teneur par

L’actualité année. Elle pourrait devenir la plus grande mine de graphite d’Amérique du Nord et d’Europe. « Nos gisements sont exceptionnels », déclarait M. Desaulniers. « C’est notre chance et notre devoir de développer ces projets sur le marché nord-américain. » La pression pour obtenir de nouvelles sources de production de graphite en Amérique du Nord et en Europe est à son comble. À compter du 1er décembre 2023, la Chine, plus grand pays producteur de graphite au monde, limitera la quantité de graphite qu’elle exporte en contraignant les sociétés étrangères à demander des permis les autorisant à réceptionner les expéditions de graphite brut et synthétique.

NMG cherche à s’imposer en tant que chef de file dans la production de matériel d’anode en dehors de la Chine, et devrait devenir le plus grand producteur totalement intégré de graphite naturel en Amérique du Nord. « [Nous devons] montrer que nous savons fabriquer le bon produit et trouver la bonne solution pour tout un éventail de clients », indiquait M. Desaulniers. « En d’autres termes, il s’agit de nous imposer en tant que fournisseur de confiance de ce matériel d’anode. »

Renforcer le permis social Comme le décrit le communiqué du 6 octobre, la motivation de NMG de transformer la mine de Matawinie en une exploitation fonctionnant intégralement à l’électricité provenait de plusieurs facteurs. D’une part, la société souhaitait limiter son empreinte carbone, engager le dialogue avec les fabricants de batteries et de véhicules électriques (VE) et obtenir l’appui de la communauté environnante pour le développement.

David Francis Lyon, président de la société de génie Zero Nexus, qui avait déjà travaillé avec NMG en tant que conseiller, déclarait que le programme d’électrification de NMG est révolutionnaire, non seulement concernant le développement d’une mine à ciel ouvert entièrement électrique, mais aussi en raison de l’attention que la société accorde au permis social d’exploitation. « Si l’on élimine le diesel, on élimine aussi une bonne partie du bruit, de la poussière, et de la pollution dont souffre la communauté locale », indiquait M. Lyon.

La transition vers un équipement entièrement électrique aura un fort impact pour les sociétés minières qui souhaitent réduire leurs émissions de

CO2. D’après M. Lyon, beaucoup d’activités portaient sur les solutions électriques pour l’exploitation minière à ciel ouvert au cours des 9 à 12 mois derniers, notamment pour les camions de transport de catégorie ultra-class, dont l’électrification pourrait potentiellement rapporter beaucoup de dividendes. « Ce sont les plus gros émetteurs sur un site minier », expliquait-il. « Dans les [plus] grandes sociétés minières, trouver une solution pour ces camions de transport permettrait d’éliminer une bonne partie de la pression qu’elles subissent pour atteindre leurs objectifs de décarbonation. »

De la mine au marché La société exploite le réseau hydroélectrique du Québec à sa mine de Matawinie et à son usine de matériau pour batterie de Bécancour, qui récupérera le graphite de la mine et le traitera en un matériau très pur pour batterie. NMG s’est récemment vu octroyer par HydroQuébec un bloc d’électricité de 77 mégawatts (MW) pour l’usine de matériaux pour batterie de Bécancour. Elle prévoit d’y créer une plateforme de fabrication avancée totalement intégrée pour affiner son concentré de graphite en du matériel d’anode actif pour batteries. « Nous avons tout ce dont nous avons besoin [à Bécancour], et nous prévoyons d’y produire 42 000 tonnes de produits finis et traités », indiquait M. Desaulniers. « Nous sommes en train de déposer toutes les demandes de permis nécessaires pour construire une ligne d’hydroélectricité de 14 kilomètres [pour la mine de Matawinie] avec Hydro-Québec, qui acheminera les ressources jusqu’au site…

L’arrivée de l’électricité sur le site avance comme prévu. » En début d’année, NMG et Caterpillar ont aussi signé une déclaration commune d’intention non contraignante pour établir une chaîne de valeur circulaire intégrale qui transformerait le graphite de NMG de minerai en un matériau pour batterie, et qui alimenterait le parc électrique à la mine de Matawinie.

Prochaines étapes M. Desaulniers indiquait que NMG cherche encore à atteindre des étapes clés, surtout en termes de financement d’un tel projet. « Si le seul problème était la mine, nous aurions déjà terminé », indiquait-il. « [Mais] c’est aussi la transformation de ce produit en un matériau

pour batterie qui est complexe. On passe d’un abattage à l’explosif et d’une exploitation minière qui est généralement très sale, à un niveau de propreté chirurgicale où la qualité est extrêmement importante. » Les premiers travaux de construction sont en cours sur le site minier. NMG vient de terminer une route d’accès de huit kilomètres et la majeure partie du travail préparatoire sur la plateforme industrielle. D’après M. Desaulniers, la société a aussi terminé ses premiers travaux environnementaux, notamment un bassin de décantation pour gérer l’eau et s’assurer que le site respecte les normes environnementales. La société a également récemment désigné la société de construction canadienne Pomerleau comme responsable de la construction pour l’étape de préconstruction sur les deux sites. « [Notre] prochaine grande étape consistera à ériger le bâtiment et poser les fondations, [puis] nous nous concentrerons sur la construction du concentrateur », expliquait M. Desaulniers. « Le [prochain] grand tournant sera de recueillir plus d’un milliard de dollars pour commencer la construction à grande échelle des projets. » Une fois le financement du projet de la mine de Matawinie terminé, M. Desaulniers indiquait que la société accélérera aussi ses travaux à son projet minier d’Uatnan, situé au gisement de graphite du Lac Guéret de Mason Graphite, dans la région Côte-Nord du Québec. D’après la dernière évaluation économique préliminaire (ÉÉP), ce projet distinct et bien plus vaste devrait produire environ 500 000 tonnes de concentré de graphite annuellement sur 24 ans. Il deviendrait alors la plus grande mine de graphite naturelle au monde, Chine y compris. La société prévoit aussi de mener une étude de faisabilité sur le projet en 2024.

Pour M. Lyon, les progrès constants de NMG en matière d’électrification ne sont pas seulement un signe positif pour l’électrification dans l’espace minier, mais également une note positive pour l’ensemble de l’industrie minière canadienne. « La majeure partie de l’électrification a lieu, de loin, au Canada, ce qui confère à l’industrie minière du pays une place unique », ajoutait-il. « Nous sommes des chefs de file dans [cette] technologie… L’industrie minière canadienne pourra partager [les] enseignements tirés avec le reste du monde. » ICM

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 61

Avec l’aimable autorisation de Artemis Gold

La zone de l’usine de traitement de la mine de Blackwater en mai 2023.

L’avenir électrique Sedgman explique en détail sa conception de l’usine entièrement électrique de traitement de l’or pour le projet d’exploitation aurifère de Blackwater d’Artemis Gold, dans le centre de la Colombie-Britannique Par Lynn Greiner

L

es mines qui envisagent la décarbonation de leurs activi-

tés orientent souvent leurs efforts sur le carburant utilisé dans leur parc automobile. Toutefois, éliminer l’utilisation des combustibles fossiles dans les usines de traitement des minerais peut aussi aider les sociétés à atteindre leurs objectifs de neutralité carbone.

Le prestataire de solutions pour le traitement des minerais Sedgman a relevé le défi de l’électrification dans la conception et la construction de l’usine de la mine de Blackwater d’Artemis Gold, qui traite six millions de tonnes par an. Cette usine est en cours de construction dans le centre de la Colombie-Britannique, une province qui a accès à des ressources hydroélectriques abordables et renouvelables.

L’idée, déclarait Karl Haase, directeur de l’ingénierie à Sedgman, était une collaboration entre sa société et Artemis Gold. « Leur approche était fortement axée sur le respect de l’environnement », expliquait-il. « Lorsque la société a développé la mine de [Blackwater] et a demandé des conseils, c’était l’un des premiers points sur lesquels elle voulait se montrer réellement vigilante. Essentiellement, elle souhaitait collaborer avec nous pour établir un mandat des meilleures pratiques environnementales. » L’usine sera composée d’un circuit de broyage à sec en trois étapes, d’un broyeur à boulets à une seule étape de 14 mégawatts (MW) et d’un circuit de fragmentation de l’or à gravité, associé à un circuit de lixiviation au carbone traitant 16 000 tonnes par jour. Au lieu d’utiliser des sources de chaleur classiques telles que le gaz naturel ou le diesel, la conception de l’usine de Sedgman comprenait un système de chauffage électrique à élution, un four électrique et une fonderie électrique.

62 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

La construction a commencé en 2023. Artemis Gold prévoit la mise en service de l’usine au deuxième semestre 2024, pour une durée de 22 ans. « Nos ingénieurs étaient ravis que [zéro combustible fossile] soit dans le mandat [de conception], car cela a légèrement facilité la décision », indiquait M. Haase. « La question n’est pas de savoir quelles technologies choisir en général, mais quelle technologie électrique [utiliser]. »

Enjeux de l’électrification de l’usine La transformation en une usine fonctionnant intégralement à l’électricité n’a toutefois pas été simple. Comme le sait tout cuisinier, la chaleur issue de combustibles fossiles s’arrête dès que l’on éteint le brûleur. Les éléments électriques, quant à eux, refroidissent progressivement. Ceci, expliquait M. Haase, présente certaines difficultés opérationnelles.

Artemis Gold, par exemple, a décidé qu’elle voulait un système de combustion du soufre en granulés afin de créer le dioxyde de soufre nécessaire pour détoxifier les réactifs utilisés dans l’extraction de l’or. « Généralement, [la combustion du soufre] commence avec des combustibles fossiles, puis on brûle le soufre », indiquait M. Haase. « Nous avons dû nous rapprocher d’un partenaire pour obtenir une conception entièrement électrique dès le départ. Un système électrique auxiliaire doit permettre de conserver la chaleur de la brique réfractaire [à tout moment], afin qu’elle ne se fende pas ni ne provoque de dégât au système lorsqu’on ne brûle pas de soufre. » Pour faire face à ce problème, indiquait-il, Sedgman a conçu deux systèmes de chauffage auxiliaires distincts. Mais, comme le

faisait remarquer M. Haase, ceci impliquait de produire une grande quantité de chaleur alors qu’elle n’était pas forcément nécessaire pour brûler le soufre. Ainsi, Sedgman a aussi trouvé des manières d’utiliser la chaleur excédentaire pour, par exemple, alimenter les manchons de vapeur entourant les canalisations afin de préserver le soufre fondu à la bonne température avant qu’il n’atteigne le four à soufre, ou pour chauffer l’eau allant dans le silo de chaux afin que sa réaction se fasse correctement. L’équipe a également envisagé des manières de compléter le chauffage des bâtiments avec la chaleur résiduelle du four.

Le four électrique utilisé dans la régénération de charbon nécessitait aussi une attention immédiate. Il doit atteindre des températures d’environ 700 degrés Celsius. Le four tourne de manière à ce que le charbon soit traité par la chaleur de manière homogène. Toutefois, en cas de panne de courant, la rotation cesse. Du fait que les bobines électriques ne refroidissent pas instantanément, la cuve interne pourrait se déformer car certains endroits touchent les éléments de chauffage et d’autres refroidissent rapidement. Ceci signifie que les batteries de secours pour les éléments tournants sont essentielles, précisait M. Haase.

La plus grande difficulté, ajoutait-il, concernait la taille de l’équipement et celle des câbles nécessaires pour l’alimenter. « Généralement, le système de chauffage à élution alimenté au diesel est un très petit brûleur, et il nécessite quelques mètres carrés d’espace au sol. Il est très facile à trouver. » « Ce système de [chauffage électrique à élution] est composé de trois séries de chauffe-eau empilés avec de nombreuses boîtes de connexion électriques. La tension doit être basse, car globalement, on force la résistance pour créer de la chaleur. Pour créer cette résistance, tout est fait à 600 volts et non pas à haute tension », expliquait M. Haase. « Dix-huit câbles électriques épais sont connectés. Il nous a été difficile, à nous comme aux fournisseurs, de les [configurer] intelligemment, sans restreindre l’accès, puis de les placer dans la même boîte de connexion. » Le système électrique d’élution à lui seul requiert 4,2 MW de puissance installée. Le four électrique a besoin de 700 kilowatts supplémentaires, indiquait-il. Cela représente environ 15 % de la puissance totale de l’usine de la mine de Blackwater. « Entre les deux, avec près de cinq mégawatts de basse tension, c’est assez compliqué pour les ingénieurs, qui doivent s’assurer de la sécurité du procédé. Le câble à basse tension est gros, plus difficile à installer et présente des risques en termes de sécurité si la manipulation n’est pas faite correctement, surtout pour placer les gros câbles dans les boîtes de connexion. Les systèmes fonctionnant aux combustibles fossiles ne rencontrent pas ces difficultés électriques, et sont généralement plus petits et plus rentables. » M. Haase ajoutait que les coupures de courant constituent la plus grande préoccupation en termes de sécurité dans l’équipement électrique. « Avec une gestion des brûleurs à combustibles fossiles, [si] le courant s’arrête, le combustible et la chaleur s’arrêtent aussi instantanément », expliquait-il. « Avec des chauffages électriques à induction, les éléments restent chauds pour un moment, et les autres éléments qui pompaient ou tournaient sont désormais à l’arrêt. » Toutefois, faisait-il remarquer, l’utilisation du système électrique d’élution devrait être « simple et conviviale » par rapport à un système alimenté aux combustibles fossiles, car même les plus performants de ces systèmes ont des fuites dans leur canalisation, les rendant malodorants et sales. Cette installation

Avec l’aimable autorisation de Sedgman

Minéralurgie

Un modèle de l’usine de traitement des minerais en construction à la mine de Blackwater. Aucun de ces bâtiments ou de ces zones n’utilisera de combustible fossile.

entièrement électrique, indiquait-il, sera « exceptionnellement propre » à utiliser.

Consommation électrique L’usine de traitement de la mine de Blackwater consommera beaucoup d’électricité. Pour l’alimenter, Artemis Gold construit un prolongement de 140 kilomètres de son réseau électrique vers le site.

L’équipe de M. Haase travaille encore sur le calcul du nombre de tonnes de CO2 qui ne sera pas généré grâce aux processus plus propres à l’usine, mais les réductions des émissions de dioxyde de carbone devraient être considérables.

M. Haase informait les sociétés qui envisagent l’électrification de leur usine de traitement de l’or d’être bien conscientes, lors de la budgétisation, que les dépenses en capital en amont seront supérieures à celles des usines alimentées par combustibles fossiles. « Toutefois, en supposant que la production d’électricité est moins chère que l’achat de combustibles fossiles (et c’est généralement le cas), le capital investi en amont sera récupéré dans les coûts d’exploitation », ajoutait-il. « Le traitement de ces dépenses en VAN [valeur actualisée nette] peut s’avérer compliqué pour certaines petites sociétés minières, qui pourraient penser qu’elles ne récupéreront jamais cet argent en termes de valeur de projet, de VAN ou de RCI [rendement du capital investi]. C’est pourquoi, malheureusement, certaines sociétés ne font jamais le pas. » Il ne faut pas oublier, dans ce cas, que la C.-B. dispose d’hydroélectricité abordable et renouvelable, ajoutait-il. Dans d’autres régions qui n’ont pas de ressources hydroélectriques suffisantes, ces questions devront se poser avant de se lancer. « Il faut aussi tenir compte de la provenance de l’électricité, des possibilités de produire de l’électricité plus propre et d’obtenir une alimentation électrique de base abordable et fiable pour ces projets », faisait-il remarquer. « Nombre de projets ne pourront pas bénéficier de l’hydroélectricité. Pour ces derniers, il pourrait paraître formidable de fonctionner intégralement à l’électricité, mais ce n’est pas le cas. On ne fait que déplacer le problème. C’est réellement la pièce manquante du puzzle, à savoir comment assurer une production d’énergie électrique abordable, renouvelable et sur place pour ces installations. » ICM December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 63

NEW FRONTIERS

THE FUTURE PROMISE OF MINING IN THE OCEAN Since 1957, John L. Mero’s professional life was devoted to research and development in ocean minerals exploration and exploitation. He was president of Ocean Resources, Inc., a U.S.-based firm specializing in the management of offshore exploration and mining projects.

In 1964, Mero published the book The Mineral Resources of the Sea in which he attempted to assess the economic worth of polymetallic nodules in the oceans, arguing that the seabed could be a significant resource for fulfilling the world’s mineral requirements.

This is an abridged version of a paper Mero presented at the Annual Western Meeting of the CIM in Vancouver in October 1971, which was then published in the April 1972 CIM Bulletin. he ocean has served humanity as a source of raw materials for thousands of years, but on a minimal scale relative to its potential. Exploration programs have shown the ocean to contain a large number of mineral deposits of great extent and attractive grade. Recent research has indicated that a number of these deposits can be economically exploited with present-day technology and that the cost of winning many industrially important minerals from oceanic deposits is potentially much less than that of winning similar minerals from land deposits. Although the finding of mineral deposits in the sea is a relatively simple matter, the exploitation of many of these deposits has lagged due to the lack of availability of specific mining techniques. Within the past two years, however, developments have taken place in the design and testing of ocean mining systems in depths of water as great as 12,000 feet, which indicate that the problem of mining in the ocean may soon be solved.

Within the next decade, the ocean should come to dominate as a source of such metals as copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese, etc. Within a few years of the initiation of the mining of the deep-sea metalliferous nodules, land sources of such metals will be seriously affected and it is conceivable that the present structure of the world mining industry will undergo a substantial change in character.

T

64 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

Deepsea Ventures, Inc.’s converted freighter, Deepsea Miner.

Development of a Hydraulic Mining System About eight years ago, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, now part of Tenneco, designed a system to mine manganese nodules from the Blake Plateau.

The design was acceptable, but the nodules were not commercially acceptable in relation to the much higher grade of nodules found in the Pacific Ocean. When Newport News was taken over by Tenneco, Deepsea Ventures, Inc. was formed as a subsidiary. The prime objective of this new company was to develop a practical hydraulic dredge for the mining of the ocean-floor manganese nodules using the basic technology developed and patented by the shipyard. This company announced at the Offshore Technology Conference of 1969 that they would have a one-fifth scale model of a deep-sea hydraulic dredge designed, built and being tested by the summer of 1970.

During July and August of 1970, Deepsea successfully tested their dredge in about 2,500 feet of water. Using air injected into a 9 5⁄8 -inch-diameter pipeline to create an upward flow of water, this company was able to recover nodules from a flat, hardpacked sand base and pump them to the surface. The indicated production rate of the test equipment varied between 10 and 60 tons of nodules per hour.

The tests were conducted from a 7,500-ton, 322-foot converted freighter named Deepsea Miner. As a result of the information gained from this test, Deepsea Ventures feel confident that they can build a hydraulic system to mine the nodules from depths as great as 20,000 feet. This company has been trying to organize a consortium of companies willing to finance the full-scale venture, which will include a process plant to handle about one million tons of the nodules per year. It is hoped that this venture will be in existence and producing metals from the manganese nodules by 1975.

Development of a Mechanical Mining System In 1966, Commander Yoshio Masuda, an officer with the Japan Defense Agency, became interested in the mining of metalliferous nodules from the ocean floor and devised the continuous line bucket (CLB) system. This system consists of a continuous loop of cable to which are attached a series of

1971 dredge buckets. On the surface vessel, the cable is threaded through traction devices so that it can be rotated, being pulled up out of the sea on one side of the loop while being returned to the sea on the other. As the buckets are raised to the surface, they are dumped of their haul of nodules and returned to the ocean floor on the descending side of the cable loop. At the ocean floor, several hundreds of meters of the cable are allowed to pull across the ocean floor, dragging the buckets attached to that portion of the cable, filling the buckets with nodules. So that the loop of cable does not follow the same path continuously across the ocean floor, the surface vessel is forced to move laterally in a direction approximately perpendicular to the plane of the cable loop and slightly forward.

After the initial tank tests, a model was designed, built and tested at sea. In all but one of the six tests, it was possible to fill the cylindrical buckets with sea-floor sediments and to recover these sediments at the surface.

After the success of this model test and a subsequent deep-sea dredging test to secure a tonnage lot of the nodules for process experimentation, Masuda organized a large-scale test of the CLB mining system in actual deposits of the nodules. For this test, two traction machines were designed, one to operate over the forward end of the vessel and one to operate off the rear. Some 8,200 meters of braided 40-mm polypropylene cable (breaking strength of about 20 metric tons) and 10,000 meters of braided 20-mm-diameter polypropylene cable (breaking strength of about 7 metric tons) were provided. The 40-mm cable was to be used primarily in tests of the dredging system; the 20-mm cable was to be used to dredge for samples of the nodules in new areas of the ocean. Some 240 dredge buckets, each with a capacity of 100 pounds of nodules, were attached to the dredge cable loop at 25-meter intervals by 1-meter lengths of manila rope with one end of the rope braided into the dredge cable and the other end snapped to the forward and rear end of the buckets.

Tahiti was chosen as a port of operations for this test, as both shallow (3,000 feet) and deep (12,000 feet) deposits of nodules could be found within 200 miles of the port. Ocean Resources, Inc. provided the underwater television system for this operation and served as general consultants.

On August 4, 1970, the Chiyoda Maru, a 1,400-dwt freighter, 260 feet long by 36 feet wide, left Tokyo with a crew of 22. The vessel arrived in Tahiti on August 24, where it took on eight test engineers and observers, and left the same day for an area 200 miles east of the island.

The depth of the initial test was 3,550 feet. After analysis of the data of the initial successful test, it was decided that there should be no difficulty in testing this system in deep water. The Chiyoda Maru proceeded to an area 250 miles north of the island for the deep-water test. On September 4, 10,600 meters of cable were formed in a loop with 170 buckets attached. The loop was formed of 8,200 meters of the 40-mm-diameter cable and 2,400 meters of the 20-mm cable. Buckets were attached to the 40-mm cable only. The cable loop was rotated to allow 60 of the buckets to reach the ocean floor. When they surfaced, each of the buckets, which had been dragged over the ocean floor, contained

One of the buckets coming up from the sea during the largescale test of the CLB mining system aboard the Chiyoda Maru near Tahiti.

manganese nodules. Thus, the first test of a practical dredging device for the deep-ocean nodules was successfully completed in depths of water in which the nodules are actually found.

Because of the ease with which this test was conducted, it was apparent that there would be no major difficulties in extending the working depth of this system to 15,000 or 20,000 feet of water. All economic nodule deposits thus far discovered lie in water depths less than 20,000 feet.

Because of the simplicity of this dredging system, it is also apparent there will be no major problems involved in scaling it up to a full-size production system in which 5-toncapacity buckets can be used on a 250-ton (breaking strength) cable to produce as much as 5,000 tons of nodules per day from depths as great as 20,000 feet.

The entire system can be manufactured and installed on a vessel within about six months of an order being received.

It would appear that the block to the development of a deep ocean mining system has been removed. The development and testing of this system on a full-scale basis should not take more than a year.

Conclusion Although there is substantial interest and activity in ocean mining among the natural resources companies of the world, it will be the degree of efficiency by which these deposits can be mined, processed and the products marketed which will determine the profitability of a deep-sea venture.

It can be predicted, however, that as soon as one company is producing metals from the nodules of the deep sea, most of the major mining companies will be forced to follow suit. The next few years should produce some of the most exciting times the mining industry of the world has ever experienced. CIM

December 2023/January 2024 | Décembre 2023/Janvier 2024 | 65

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Alamos Gold Inc.

4

Quadra Chemicals

13

Valard

23

BBA

17

Redpath

Tip-on

28

ControlChem

48

RockEng

IFC

3

Liebherr

OBC

Van der Graaf Canada Inc. Zeiss

Sandvik Mining & Construction

The Future of Mining Is Within BOOK YOUR AD NOW! LEESA NACHT Senior Account Executive 905.886.6640 ext 321 lnacht@dvtail.com DINAH QUATTRIN Senior Account Executive 905.886.6640 ext 308 dquattrin@dvtail.com NEAL YOUNG Senior Account Executive 905.886.6640 ext 306 nyoung@dvtail.com 66 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 18, No. 8

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Electrifying your mine also

improves the world beyond it.

— ABB Ability™ eMine.

For your world, and mine.

Did you know that every electrified mining truck eliminates enough CO2 emissions per year to save 3,000 square meters of arctic ice? Imagine the impact of electrifying the entire mine. ABB Ability™ eMine makes that possible. Building on decades of experience and expertise, we fully integrate electrification and digital systems from the mine to the port, reducing your environmental impact, lowering your costs and raising your productivity. Refreshing, isn’t it?

Let’s write the future of mining. Together. new.abb.com/mining/emine

AutoMine® Core, a comprehensive automation platform for mass mining applications with solutions to support customers in their journey of ramping up operations from manual to fully autonomous production.

Built on Sandvik’s proven AutoMine® Fleet and Manual Production Monitoring (MPM) solutions, AutoMine® Core provides users with multiple levels of interoperability for Sandvik and third-party OEM fleets.

AutoMine® Core for mass mining applications