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Historically, the mining industry in South Africa has undertaken its own research. Today, however, the situation has transformed to such an extent that to maintain mining operations the research is increasingly funded by the state.
Beyond the direct need for mining research to secure the long term future of our industry, research can lead to creation of a mining supply industry. The classic example is Finland where the mining supply industry has become bigger than its mining industry.
The major problems that face the African mining industry relate to issues such as water and energy supply, logistics and local politics. These drawbacks to not apply to the top four commodities mined in South Africa - gold, platinum, coal and diamonds. However, mining of these four minerals are increasingly technically demanding because the shallow deposits are becoming exhausted to a greater extent. In particular, gold and platinum are mined in a manner that is not widespread elsewhere in the world.
With this in mind, the NRE mineral and mining competency focuses its research on the major tabular ore deposits of South Africa: gold, platinum and coal, but also seeks opportunities in chrome because it is mined in the same way as platinum; and in diamonds because of the high level of technology already being applied in that industry.
NRE is also increasingly addressing mining related issues such as social and environmental impacts relating to mining in a sustainable development context. This requires increased levels of collaboration with partner institutions, including other research areas within NRE and other CSIR operating units. It is anticipated that this focus on sustainable development in mining will increase in future.
In order to ensure that the opinions of all stakeholders were taken into consideration and that future research was correctly constituted, the Mineral Research group conducted four foresight exercises that identified the primary drivers for the mining industry in South Africa. These are market pressure; availability of human resources, both skilled and unskilled; availability of mineral resources; productivity; and safety. These indicators proved to be substantially the same as those that apply internationally.
Furthermore, the five axes of research important to South Africa within the CSIR context are:
- improve excavation support;
- improve or optimize layouts;
- better drill and blast technology;
- mechanical rock breaking; and
- orebody information.
There are diverse fields of science and engineering that are applicable to mining and the CSIR does not allege to have expertise in all. In the recent past it has focused on four relevant research areas namely: Declan, these links go the each RG’s own comprehensive page…
Within the mining competency, five projects have been designed and scoped in order to address these research axes, namely The Nederburg Miner, Stability pillar removal, Smart Mine, Optimal Miner and Glass Rock.
The first two projects are driven by a desire to improve current operations and are evolutionary. The following two projects represent a desire to mine in a new way and are revolutionary. The fifth project is an enabling technology which may be defined as technology that is able to promote mining efficiency.
Partners to the mining theme are an important element to the successful fulfilment of its goal. Current and potential partners are indicated below, with each one’s intent of association in brackets:
NIOSH (International technical information exchange and technical assistance)
HSE (International technical information exchange and technical assistance in airborne pollutants)
Rhodes University (Ergonomic advancement, potential student identification and student supervision, and supervision of PhD students)
University of the Witwatersrand (Association with the training of occupational hygienists, and teaching input into curriculum and assessment of students)
University of the Witwatersrand (Innovation and industry revolution)
PlatMine (Directed research, and grow existing project base and direct new work)
Coaltech 2020 (Directed research, and grow existing project base and direct new work)
GMRA partners (Exchange of information over best practice, and staff exchange and workplace attendance)
MIRO (Research and collaboration)
AMIRA (Directed research; achieve first AMIRA funded project)
University of Pretoria (Innovation)
The Mineral Resources theme has identified specific issue to be addressed and anticipated because of its potential impact nationally or on the African continent. These include:
- Optimizing the extraction of coal resources
- Mechanization of the platinum industry
- Safety and health of mine workers
- Ensuring sustainability of mining operations
- Creation of a locally led mechanization industry
- Undersea mining
Theme convenor: Dr Declan Vogt
Communication and media: Wiida Basson
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