Baltic Dry Index. 1282 -15 Brent Crude 53.06
“Get a good night’s sleep and don’t bug anyone without asking me.”
President Obama, with apologies to President Nixon.
For more on the Obama spying on Trump, scroll down to the end of this section.
While we await the Great East meets
West, Trump meets Xi, Pow-Wow in Palm Beach Florida, summit, this recent mining
article seems of great import for platinum and cobalt. I suspect that the 21st
century is going to be a story of great technology advances, falling costs and
rising efficiencies.
New cost-slashing platinum technology ready to roll – Pallinghurst
31st March 2017 By: Martin Creamer Creamer Media Editor
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Years of
diligent research and development has paid off for Pallinghust group platinum mine Sedibelo, which is now
ready to implement an amazing new technology that will send platinum processing costs screaming down
the cost curve, use a fifth of the electricity currently needed for smelting
and throw caution to the wind when it comes to mining chrome-containing platinum ore.
The new Kell process route takes cutoff
grades far lower, extending mine life and saving the cobalt in the platinum group metals (PGM) mix from the
destruction it currently suffers.
By allowing an operation to go from mining to finished refined metal in a week, the process unlocks significant capital.
Construction of a plant to facilitate the commercial implementation of the patented paradigm-shift technology – which has been 18 years in the making – will begin this year.
Sedibelo in the North West province dispatched 165 000 oz of four element platinum group metals in the 12 months to December 31.
Not only is the operating cost far cheaper, but so is the capital cost.
The plant at Sedibelo, which will have a capacity to process 300 000 oz of platinum group metals (PGMs) a year, is budgeted to come in at less than $100-million.
“We’ll turn the first sod this year and cut the ribbon in two years’ time,” Pallinghurst CEO Arne Frandsen told Mining Weekly Online in an exclusive interview on Friday.
The development of Kell has accelerated in the last five years following the backing it received from Pallinghurst, South Africa’s State-owned Industrial Development and investors.
The enormous volume of data has been gathered from running two pilot plants at Sedibelo for five years.
“Without any hesitation, I can tell you that the study has firmly established that Kell is viable, technically doable and is exactly what is needed to transform the industry,” Frandsen said.
Former Mintek researcher Keith Liddell, the developer of the technology, explained that the process carries out on the mine site what normally takes place in smelters and refineries.
It does so by reconfiguring, in a slightly different way, standard unit operations that already exist in the industry.
The substantial electricity saving is brought about by avoiding heating worthless gangue, as is done currently, and only expending a fraction of usual heat on the commercially valuable metals.
----A slightly modified Kell is also successful for the reprocessing of the PGMs in recycled autocatalytic converters, which are recovered when the vehicles using them come to the end of their useful lives and are sent to the scrapyard.
Cobalt, now in a strong potential earnings position because of its growing use in electric vehicles, is recovered with the use of the Kell system.
“When you add up the numbers, cobalt is worth tens of millions of dollars a year,” Liddell noted.
More
Staying with commodities and mining,
last week’s great Pacific cyclone that hit Queensland Australia is still
causing major problems.
Floods hamper restart of Qld coal exports
3rd April 2017
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The resumption
of coal exports from Queensland could be
delayed by several weeks, as the state recovers from the damage caused by
cyclone Debbie, which hit last week.
The Goonyella system, which connects the Darymple Bay coal terminal and the Hay
Point coal terminal, has
been closed since March 28, as a result of severe flooding.
Aerial inspections have been conducted and a programme of work is being assessed and planned, with freight operator Aurizon saying on Monday that road and rail access to the rail corridor was severely limited, especially around the Black Mountain area, where initial assessment has indicated that significant landslips have occurred.
Aurizon said the company would examine alternative routing opportunities for its impacted customers and rail operators as its other rail systems became available in the coming weeks, from the western section of the Goonyella system, north to the Newlands system to Abbot point coal terminal, and south to the Port of Gladstone.
It was currently estimated that the recovery of the Goonyella rail infrastructure could take as much as five weeks.
Mining giant BHP Billiton, which also uses the Goonyella rail line to service several of its coal mines in the region, on Monday said it would seek to manage ongoing access to ports and shipments to customers.
The miner said in a statement that the Hay Point terminal was ready to receive coal.
BHP noted that dewatering infrastructure installed at its mines after the 2011 floods were working as designed and that all sites were now resuming operations and ramping up production.
The miner holds an interest in 11 coal mines in the Bowen basin. Nine of these are held in joint venture with Mitsubishi, of which seven are operational and two are on care and maintenance, while BHP Billiton Mitsui Coal owns two mines.The 55-million-tonne-a-year Hay Point coal terminal is also held by the BHP Mitisubishi alliance.
Meanwhile, coal producer Peabody Energy said that its mines in the region have also restarted operations, the outages of the rail systems were preventing coal shipments from mine to port.
More
We close for the day back in America.
It looks like Preseident Trump was right all along. President Obama’s team was
spying on Trump’s team, and leaked and spun for political reasons to try to
discredit President Trump. The big question now is, “what did President Obama
know, and when did he know it?” This scandal is likely to run and run.
When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
President Obama, with apologies to President Nixon.
Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say
By Adam Housley Published April 03, 2017
Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security
adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of
Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then
sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense
Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA
Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former
Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.
The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate
and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members,
for up to a year before he took office.
It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for
the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late
Monday.
----White House Press Secretary Sean
Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment
specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives.
“I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional]
committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s
alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of
suspected Trump-Russia links.
When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to
be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is
international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national
security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are
loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed
to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this
case, they were not.
This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas’ television interview last month
in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: “I was
urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it
was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as
you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the
administration.”
Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well
before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging wiretapping.
More
“I’m not a crook.”
President Obama, with apologies to President Nixon.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday
final figures were: Registered 29.50 Moz, Eligible 160.72 Moz, Total 190.22 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks or bent banksters and politicians today,
just Jaguar Motors on a trip back to the 60s and 70s. What about producing a
new E-type based on an EV concept using 21st century technology.
Jaguar rebirths the E-type ... and it's the opposite of painful
C.C. Weiss
March 31, 2017
Jaguar Land Rover Classic has been all about Rovers in its Reborn series,
presenting the Series I and Range Rover
Classic models. Now it's adding a bit more Jag, putting its automotive
talents toward the very worthy goal of restoring Series 1 E-types. At this
year's Techno-Classica Essen, it will reveal the first of 10 E-types it plans
to rebirth, this one a beautifully revitalized 1965 Series 1 Fixed Head Coupe 4.2.Jaguar Classic proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it knows its way around classic cars with the fascinating work it did bringing the Lightweight E-type and XKSS back to life. Those two models were ground-up recreation projects, and now Jaguar takes on the simpler but still impressive work of factory restorations. The E-type makes a natural first for the series, and Jaguar Classic plans an initial batch of 10 cars, each of which will be "expertly sourced and comprehensively restored."
"The E-type is the most iconic sports car of all time," opines Tim Hannig, Jaguar Land Rover Classic director. "We are delighted to be able to give new life to expertly selected examples for discerning customers around the world to own and enjoy. The resources and information available to Jaguar Classic's expert technicians are unrivaled, which results in the most authentic E-type restorations possible."
Jaguar's experts source each E-type before restoring it according to
1960s factory specification, relying on original drawings and build records
stored in the Jaguar Heritage Trust. The process includes retaining or
refurbishing as much of the original car as possible while replacing
safety-critical parts with new ones from Jaguar Classic Parts, swapping out
unsalvageable body panels with Jaguar Classic reverse-engineered panels, and
using period-appropriate spot welding when affixing those panels.
Buyers can also choose to improve performance by adding carefully
selected options based on later E-type models, such as an improved cooling
system with Lightweight E-type-derived parts and Series 2 front brake calipers.
The 1965 Fixed Head Coupe that's the first to roll out of the Reborn
program was originally exported to California in May 1965. Jaguar says the
265-hp 4.2-liter inline six-powered car recorded 78,000 miles (125.5K km)
before being stored away back in 1983. Jaguar's team has rebuilt the original
bodyshell, engine and gearbox. The Opalescent Gunmetal Grey paint provides just
enough shimmer to fully accentuate the E-type's timeless curves without
overpowering the eyes like a brighter treatment might.
Each E-type Reborn will start at £285,000 (approx. US$358K), a very pretty
penny in its own right but well under the £1 million+ price tags of the
recreated XKSS and Lightweight E-types.Source: Jaguar Land Rover
People react to fear, not love --they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.
President Obama, with apologies to President Nixon.
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards? DC? A quantum
computer next?
3 April 2017
Graphene sieve turns seawater into drinking water
Graphene-oxide membranes have attracted considerable attention as promising candidates for new filtration technologies. Now the much sought-after development of making membranes capable of sieving common salts has been achieved.New research demonstrates the real-world potential of providing clean drinking water for millions of people who struggle to access adequate clean water sources.
The new findings from a group of scientists at The University of Manchester were published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Previously graphene-oxide membranes have shown exciting potential for gas separation and water filtration.
Graphene-oxide membranes developed at the National Graphene Institute have already demonstrated the potential of filtering out small nanoparticles, organic molecules, and even large salts. Until now, however, they couldn’t be used for sieving common salts used in desalination technologies, which require even smaller sieves.
Previous research at The University of Manchester found that if immersed in water, graphene-oxide membranes become slightly swollen and smaller salts flow through the membrane along with water, but larger ions or molecules are blocked.
The Manchester-based group have now further developed these graphene membranes and found a strategy to avoid the swelling of the membrane when exposed to water. The pore size in the membrane can be precisely controlled which can sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink.
----When the common salts are dissolved in water, they always form a ‘shell’ of water molecules around the salts molecules. This allows the tiny capillaries of the graphene-oxide membranes to block the salt from flowing along with the water. Water molecules are able to pass through the membrane barrier and flow anomalously fast which is ideal for application of these membranes for desalination.
Professor Rahul Nair, at The University of Manchester said: “Realisation of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology.
“This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes.”
More
Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.
President Obama, with apologies to President Nixon.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: 20,663
+131 Up. NASDAQ: 5,912 +165 Up. SP500: 2,363 +135 Up.
No comments:
Post a Comment