Chapter 10
I 1. Introduction
II 2. The Role Of Technology
III 3. Some Highlights Of Australian Minerals Technology
IV 4. Other Technological Achievements (in brief)
V 5. Export Of Technology
VI 6. Education And Research
VII 7. The Scientific Societies
VIII 8. Conclusion
References
Index
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Bougainville has now been operating for 15 years and the capacity of the concentrator has been increased from the original 80,000 t/d to 135,000 t/d by a series of changes in the crushing and grinding sections with automatic controls at every stage. Utilisation of ball mill circuits currently stands at 99 per cent. In the mining section shovel availability is typically 90 per cent and truck availability is 88 per cent through systematic preventativs maintenance, assembly replacement and condition monitoring by oil analysis.
The actual mining operation has been further improved by the use of more powerful computers and the science of geostatistics, and Bougainville engineers have retained their position in the forefront of technological advance in this area. An automated truck dispatching and reporting system monitors the status and position of all units in the fleet. A computer uses dynamic linear programming techniques to optimise the allocation of trucks to shovels on moment by moment basis.
The success of the vast Bougainville project certainly provides evidence of a highly developed Australian minerals technology. In its 15 years of operation 1040 Mt have been mined and 560 Mt have been milled, producing 8.8 Mt of concentrates containing 2.6 Mt of copper and 260 t of gold. Reserves of ore are estimated at 580 Mt at 0.40% copper and 0.46 g/t gold.
Further, the success of the Panguna operation has demonstrated the potential for a major minerals industry in Papua New Guinea, and a number of other possible projects are currently at an advanced stage of investigation.
Organisations in Australian Science at Work - Bougainville Copper Ltd
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Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering |  |
© 1988 Print Edition page 772, Online Edition 2000
Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/742.html