Lac des Iles Mine

Wed, Jul 04, 2018: Lac des Iles Mine

Event Photos

Event Description and Details

This event is a day trip to the Lac des Iles Mine in Northwestern Ontario.

This is a spaces limited event. You must preregister.
This is a descent into a mine about 1km deep.
Mine will provide all Safety Equipment.
Event difficulty: Medium
Event will proceed, Rain or Shine.
Bring Camera, Tools, eye protection, gloves for other spots we may visit on the way there or back.
Event Guides and Participants should use the Event Guide and Hiking Checklist to prepare in advance and identify Guides for the event.
Any other specific notes.

For more information about Lac des Ilses Mine or Palladium please consult:

Schedule

Overview at previous General meeting to finalize numbers, who's going and answer any questions. This is a spaces limited event. You must preregister so the mine can prepare orientation and properly sized equipment.
6:30am: Meet at Terry Fox Lookout. Quick meeting to determine cars, drivers and passengers. We left to time our arrival at the mine for 9am when mine gate/security is open.
7:00am: Depart to Lac des Iles Mine.
9:30am: Arrive at mine gate. Check in and proceed to mine offices (boardroom) for orientation, IRS/Health & Safety orientation and to put on equipment.
10:30am: Begin mine tour. Descent was by truck on spiral/switchback with stops at 250m?, 450m? and 690m. Not sure if that is measured from the top, at surface level, or bottom of the open pit ?
. 1:30pm: Left the mine and returned to mine office for lunch.
Toured mine operations: Crushing area , Flotation area, Water reclamation and filtration plant and tailings areas. Not able to step outside vehicles due to a lightning storm. In mining, safety is key and taken pretty seriously on site.
4:00pm: Mine tour ends. Depart back to Terry Fox Lookout.
5:30pm: Arrive back at Terry Fox Lookout.

Mining Operations

Material is blasted out in the mine and brought to the surface using mining trucks. The mine processes an average of 12,000 tons per day of ore. Here is a video from another mine site that shows the underground loading a 30 ton truck.
The trucks bring the ore up to a gyratory crusher where it is broken to a uniform size. Here is an animation and a detailed explanation of that process. The weight of the rock pressing down also helps the crusher to operate effectively.
The ore brought up from underground is mixed in with stockpiled ore and older tailings material to create a constant pipeline of ore to be milled in a Semi-Autogeneous Grinding (SAG) mills which uses both 5' steel balls and the ore rock together to generate the impact force needed to break up the ore into a powdered slurry. Then two ball mills further reduce the ore to make particulate ore slurry. Here is a quick overview video you may need to pause to read, a basic overview and a ball mill in operation.
Flotation is the next step. At NAP they use flotation banks so air is added by mechanical impellers. In the flotation process, air is introduced into a water and ore particulate mixture to create bubbles in this slurry. Some of these particles are attracted to water (hydrophillic) and some are not (hydrophobic) So imagine a single air bubble rising up in the mix of water and ore particulates. The particles will slide around the bubble and those that are hydrophobic may stick or embed? themselves and rise with the bubble and those that are hydrophillic will slide off the bubble as they drop off and instead bond with the water. The mechanical impellers skim off the now floating bubbles and move to the next bank becoming more and more concentrated. A frothing agent such as xanthate is used to increase the hydrophobisity and improve yield (how exactly, reduces surface tension?). Not much different to when you wash your clothes in soap to remove dirt particles. The flotation process is animated here and described here. I need to read about PGMs in sulphites.....
This process takes considerable water. NAP operates next the Lac des Iles from which they can gather new water but for the most part the mill utilities water recovery methods to reuse as much water as possible in order to limit the amount of water that is sent to settling ponds at the site which take up 50% of the mine footprint. It was mentioned that the water they do release to the settling ponds is cleaned to a few ppm and significantly cleaner that provincial requirements.
This entire operation takes massive amounts of electricity to operate. During the tour staff explained that the amount of electricity required to start the SAG/Ball mills really "dims the lights". At times they stop the mill and can actually save millions in electricity when they cannot run the plant at maximum efficiency with a full pipeline which may occur 2 - 2.5 times a year.
Finally, the processed and concentrated slurry is washed and settles to be pressed to less than 10% water. Every month trucks leave NAP to take about $250K per truck of the concentrate to Sudbury for further refinement at the smelter. In the concentrate there are significant levels of gold, platinum, and copper which is calculated into the selling price. Some of the ore travels to Europe for refinement.
It takes about 2 metric tons? of ore to generate 1-2 grams of palladium. About 2-4 grams of palladium is required per automotive vehicle's catalytic converter to turn noxious gases into carbon, nitrogen and water vapour. Demand will not go down as we move to electric cars which use palladium in their battery systems.
The biggest, most important palladium deposits are found in the following areas: Norilisk–Talnakh, Siberia, The Merensk Reef deposit, Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa, Stillwater igneous complex, Montana, and the Lac des Îles igneous complex, Ontario.
NAP is slated to be in operation to 2026 as per the Life of Mine Plan. About 500 people work 365 days a year at the plant. It should take about 10+ years for remediation of the land and mine site.
I really enjoyed reading the NAP Feasibility Study (local copy). Focus on Section 7 "Geological setting and mineralization" starting on page 31 - 53. Figures 7.4 and 8.1 really helped get an understanding of this space. I personally wish we had been able to see the offset fault.
As of Jul 9, precious metal prices have Gold at $1258, Palladium at $907 and Platinum at $849. Take note that Platinum Group Metals (PGMs: platinum, palladium) are 15x as rare as gold .... and some list palladium at 15x as rare as platinum.