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By A. M. Gaudin

This year the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers has chosen to give me its Robert H. Richards Award, a distinction which is widely regarded as the highest honor in the field of mineral engineering. I am deeply moved by this tribute, which suggests not only regard for my service to the profession but also the affectionate esteem of my fellow mineral engineers. You have made me happy at the prospect of the permanent association of my name with that of Robert Hallowell Richards and of the distinguished recipients of the award, Arthur Fay Taggart, Frank R. Milliken, John F. Myers, Edward William Englemann, C. Harry Benedict, Edward W. Davis and Arthur W. Fahrenwald. I wish to thank you all for an honor so generously bestowed. Professor Richards is known to us all as a legendary figure, and we can read about him in the Richards Memorial Volume of our Transactions. Some of us have even had the good fortune of knowing him. I count myself among those lucky few. In its intangible attributes the Award recalls those things for which Professor Richards stood: for Science in Art, for thoroughness, for meticulous accuracy, for bold imaginativeness, most of all for professional integrity. Now, as in his day, these attributes are central to an engineer's creed. They are appropriately needed in a formulation of a definition of the mineral engineering profession.

Jan 6, 1957

By L. E. Young

GERMANY'S recent collapse and the occupation by the Allies of the coal fields of the Ruhr, the Saar, Silesia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia have focused attention on the postwar coal problems of Europe. American coal operators are interested deeply in what is happening in Britain, particularly in the discussion of plans to rehabilitate and reorganize the entire British coal mining industry, as such reorganization will probably determine the place Britain will occupy in the European coal markets for the next few decades. The continuing decline of British out-ut per man-shift, particularly during wartime, has resulted in a most serious effort to determine whether this unfortunate trend is due to the physical condition of the coal seams, poor management, poor engineering and planning, inadequate use of power and machinery, or failure of labor to co-operate with management.

Jan 1, 1945

By Leo J. Miller

It is both an honor and a pleasure for me to be the keynote speaker for the Paul F. Kerr's Symposium on Applied Mineralogy. Professor Kerr was a man for all seasons to his students, and he treated all students as distinct individuals. Philip Bethke in his memorial to Dr. Kerr summed up our remembrance best by stating that "We have lost our most successful educator-administrator-scholar, who was our steadfast teacher-counselor-mentor-friend." His unique trait was the ability to bring out the best in a variety of individuals In order that their performance was at the peak of quality.

Jan 1, 1985

Jan 1, 1967

Jan 1, 1967

By E. R. Darby

When bronze is melted in open-flame furnaces a considerable amount of slag is formed during the melting operation. This slag may be incidental to the melting practice or it may be formed intentionally by slag-forming constituents added to the furnace charge to provide a covering for the melted metal When this slag is removed from the furnace, it contains, in addition to the free metal carried with it by the skimming operation, a considerable amount of metal as oxide either combined or mechanically mixed with it. By the usual crushing and washing methods this metallic oxide generally goes to the tailings pile, so diluted by other foundry waste that its recovery is economically impossible. If this furnace slag is not inixed with other foundry waste, practically all of the metal oxide as well as the free metal may be recovered by some form of smelting operation. The first side of the problem to be considered is the amount of slag produced. It may not be true that the majority of foundries have no record of the amount of slag made, but it is certainly true that a very great many either have no record or pay little attention to it. Usually the collection of furnace slag for one normal week's run will be sufficient to determine the advisability of its being handled in a different manner from the crushing and concentrating generally employed. If a large representative sample of the accumulation is crushed and concentrated and the recovery compared with the results of a careful assay, it will be found that a large percentage of the total metal content was lost in the washing process. The percentage of loss will be greater than the metallic oxide content, as some free metal in extremely fine particles always is carried away in grains of slag. From such a comparison, it may be determined whether or not the slag should be melted, sold or treated as before. An example of an actual test of this kind is given below. In a foundry melting 50,000 to 80,000 Ib. of bronze per day, a week's accumulation of furnace slag and ladle skimmings amounted to 16,500 1b.—over three times as much as the foundry superintendent estimated before the accumulation was made. Two tons of this material was taken as representative of the lot. This was ground through a thoroughly cleaned ball-mill and concentrated over a Wilfley table. The

By John Ward Smith

Dawsonite-bearing oil shale of Colorado's Green River formation offers a unique and vast (more than 5.9 Gt of A120 j) resource of easily extractable alumina. The processing methods required by the thermal reactions of dawsonite and its oil-shale carrier also require production of shale oil, soda ash, and nahcolite as marketable coproducts. These production methods are presented. The alumina production process is contrasted with the Bayer process to describe technical advantages of extraction of alumina from oil shale which may offset the problems associated with processing a relatively lean ore. While alumina production from oil shale requires development of new technology, the technical problems appear solvable. Only the political problems arising from the now onerous and completely unnecessary federal oil-shale withdrawal appear less solvable.

Jan 1, 1982

By P. S. Bagga, P. T. Luckie

Liberation (the process of destroying the interlock between unwanted materials, such as mineral matter and pyrite, and coal) is one of the most important precursors to the benefication of raw coal in order to produce high grade marketable coals at economical recovery levels. Liberation is achieved usually by comminuting the raw coal. However, because of the significant interaction between the production of fine particles to achieve liberation and the cost of separating fine particles, the coal industry needs a method projecting the change in washability with size reduction. Such a projection can be combined with size reduction and separation simulators in order to examine completely beneficiation circuitry to produce coals of stringent specification. This paper presents the development of an appropriate liberation model for coal and its solution by Monte Carlo simulation to predict the expected washability of the raw coal as a function of comminution. It includes model validation with a known binary mixture as well as with a known teritary mixture.

Jan 1, 1983

Jan 1, 1969

By AIME AIME

A CERTAIN area in the State of Indiana seems to be a breeding place for presidents and near president about eighteen miles southeast of Elwood is the little village of Daleville, and there, on April 9, 1890, John Robert Suman, newly elected President of the A.I.M.E., was born. It was not long before he migrated to California, however, where he went to the Los Angeles High School, then for two years to the University of Southern California, after which he went up to Berkeley

Jan 1, 1940

Jan 1, 1961

By AIME AIME

NO MORE SUITABLE time and place than LOS Angeles on Thursday and Friday, July 28 and 29, could have been chosen for the Western Regional Meeting of the~1nstitutk. After attending two clays of technical sessions and enjoying the luncheons and dinners of the meeting, visitors, on the following days, could see the opening ceremonies and events of the Olympic Games, which started on July 30 and continued to Aug. 14. Such d spectacle can be seen only once in a generation in this country.

Jan 1, 1932

By R. E. Radabaugh, J. M. Brown, J. S. Merchant

The Gilman district is on the northeast flank of the Sawatch Range in central Colorado. It has yielded a total of 10,000,000 tons of ore having a value of over $250,000,000. Paleozoic sediments intruded by a Tertiary quartz latite sill and unconformably overlying Precambrian intrusives and metasediments comprise the country rock of the area. The sediments strike northwesterly and dip 8° to 12° northeasterly. Structures in the Precambrian are related to the Homestake shear zone of the Colorado mineral belt. Only minor folding and faulting occur in the sediments. The principal ore bodies are massive sulfide replacement deposits in carbonate rocks. They consist of long, pipe-like mantos in the completely dolomitized Mississippian Leadville Limestone and funnel-shaped chimneys of copper- silver ore cutting across the Mississippian and Devonian strata. Mineralization is continuous from the chimneys into the mantos. The principal ore bodies are roughly in the shape of a four-tined fork which points up dip. Smaller manto deposits occur in the Cambrian Sawatch Quartzite, and fissure veins are present in the Precambrian rocks. The principal minerals in the mantos are marmatite and galena in a gangue of pyrite and manganosiderite. The chimneys consist of a central core of pyrite with erratically distributed chalcopyrite, tetrahedrite, freibergite, and occasional galena with a shell of zinc ore on the outer margin. Both the chimneys and the mantos are surrounded by imperfect shells of manganosiderite and sanded dolomite. The mineralization is of Laramide age. Hydrothermal alteration affects all rock units to varying degrees. Clay mineral alteration halos occur around the ore bodies. Hydrothermal solutions have developed sanded rock, rubble filled channels, and banded zebra textures, principally in the Leadville Limestone. Structural control of the ore bodies is not well defined. Both the location of the district and the chimneys are probably related to basement structures. The mantos are largely controlled by stratigraphic factors and a pre-Pennsylvanian karst topography in the Leadville Limestone, which were modified by hydrothermal activity, and by weak zones of northeasterly trending faults.

Jan 1, 1968

By Carlton D. Hulin

ARE we a "have" or a "have-not" nation in our domestic supply of metals and minerals? Impinging on the ears of a people weary of war and faced with the problems of reconversion to peace, the import of this question has built up with the momentum of an avalanche. Stemming from statistics cited by Pehrson and accelerated by the pessimistic and possibly biased statements of Ickes, hardly an issue of any technical periodical dealing with mining has appeared during the past year but within whose pages was to be found some comment, some discussion of the question: Are we a "have" or a "have-not" nation? We have proved commercial reserves of high-grade iron ore in the Lake Superior region sufficient for 22 years, based upon the prewar rate of consumption; commercial copper reserves to last only 34 years, one fourth being inferred ore; zinc sufficient for nineteen years, over half being inferred; lead for twelve years, two thirds of which is inferred; mercury for only three years. So read the figures. Although admitting that these figures may be extended by new discoveries, by the use of marginal and submarginal ore, and by further technological advances, are we nevertheless to assume complete pessimism in the acceptance of the meaning of these statistics; are we to expect a rapidly increasing dependence upon foreign sources of mineral supply; are we to believe that we are at or near the peak of the "metal age" as has been held by Theodore J. Hoover? Or is some more optimistic viewpoint possible?

Jan 1, 1947

By Robert Pack

INTRODUCTION SOONER or later in the development of any natural resource it becomes highly desirable to know the quantity of this resource in the country as a whole, as well as of the part that is being developed, for the general course and. conduct of the development work must be governed to some extent by the total supply available. An accurate estimate of the quantity of any natural resource is difficult to make; yet if one is diligent enough one can obtain a pretty accurate idea of the quantity of marketable timber, the acreage of tillable land, or the horsepower that may be developed from the streams, for these are things that may be measured. But any attempt to estimate the quantity of some mineral in the ground appears to enter the realm of imagination and it seems that the estimate can be nothing more than a blind guess. It may appear to be especially futile to attempt to determine the quantity of oil and gas that is available in the ground, for these minerals are so vagrant that even if the quantity now available should be known quite exactly, the quantity that will eventually be obtained may be much less, for certain losses in the extraction of both oil and gas are unavoidable, and just what these losses will be cannot be predicted. Though necessarily inaccurate, estimates of such mineral reserves are, however, of distinct value, for they summarize the existing knowledge of the deposits of the mineral and thus enable those who are interested in some industry that depends in one way or another on this mineral to formulate a rational commercial policy. Some time ago, when the price of gasoline suddenly rose in a rather spectacular manner, the writer was one of the U. S. Geological Survey geologists called upon to help to estimate the quantity of oil that could be obtained in the United States, for the fear had become widespread that perhaps the rate of increase in the price of gasoline was a measure of the rate of depletion of the supply of petroleum. It thus became his

Jan 8, 1917

By Charles R. Keyes

I. INTRODUCTION. FOR a period of several years, and in a large number of cases, the Metallurgical Laboratories of the New Mexico School of Mines were employed in umpire work. During this time many important local problems were solved. Against the results of careful chemical analyses of ores, assay-returns were often checked. In many cases the assay-methods of mine and custom-smelter were compared, and both often found faulty for the ore concerned. A wide range of ores was covered. Many of the chemical analyses and assays were made by Dr. F. C. Lincoln, Professor of Metallurgy, now of the Montana State School of Mines. A varied series of instructive assays was prepared by Prof. R. B. Brinsmade, now of the West Virginia State University. Single assays and given series of tests were undertaken by H. T. Goodjohn, now chief chemist to the Cia. Metalurgica de Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico; by H. J. Hubbard, now superintendent of the Butters Divisadero Mines, Jocoro,. San Salvador, C. A.; by E. D. Morton, now superintendent of the Arizona & Nevada Copper Mining Co., at Lunning, Nev. ; and by A. W. Edelen, now superintendent of the Angangueo Unit of the American Smelting & Refining Co., in Michoacan, Mexico. A critical comparison of assay-methods that were found to be followed in the case of certain gouge-ores mined in the Mimbres range in New Mexico, and about which there had been much controversy, was made by D. F. Riddell, then Acting Professor of Assaying, and now superintendent of the Providentia Mines Co. of Parral, in Chihuahua, Mexico. To him is due the credit of much that is contained in the following notes, which be has generously permitted -to be used in advance of the publication of the complete results.

Jul 1, 1911

By C. F. Park

Hog Mountain is in the north central part of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, about 13 miles northeast from Alexander City. The Hog Mountain Mining and Milling Co. controls 1658 acres of land and is the only company operating in the district. The principal mine workings are in sections 10 and 15, T.24N., R.22E. The region has been visited by geologists many times, has been briefly described in several papers,' and mentioned in many others. No detailed map of the mine or vicinity has been published. The field work for this report was started in March, 1934, as part of the Public Works reemployment program. About a month and a half was spent mapping both the surface and underground geology. The mine owners and operators have cooperated in every way possible to facilitate the work. N. 0. Johnson, the mine engineer, E. W. Ellsworth, J. E. McCoy and J. G. Englebert have acted as assistants for part of the work. The University of Alabama and the State Geologist's office have aided materially by permitting free use of their libraries and laboratory equipment. Geography Hog Mountain forms a conspicuous ridge that rises to a height of a little more than 1000 ft. above sea level, and about 400 to 500 ft. above the adjacent country. The ridge is composed of granitoid intrusive rock and silicified schist that are more resistant to erosion than the surrounding softer schist. The topography of the area around the ridge is gently rolling and is typical of the subdued forms of the deeply eroded Southern

Jan 1, 1935

By C. F. Park

Hog Mountain is in the north central part of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, about 13 miles northeast from Alexander City. The Hog Mountain Mining and Milling Co. controls 1658 acres of land and is the only company operating in the district. The principal mine workings are in sections 10 and 15, T.24N., R.22E. The region has been visited by geologists many times, has been briefly described in several papers,' and mentioned in many others. No detailed map of the mine or vicinity has been published. The field work for this report was started in March, 1934, as part of the Public Works reemployment program. About a month and a half was spent mapping both the surface and underground geology. The mine owners and operators have cooperated in every way possible to facilitate the work. N. 0. Johnson, the mine engineer, E. W. Ellsworth, J. E. McCoy and J. G. Englebert have acted as assistants for part of the work. The University of Alabama and the State Geologist's office have aided materially by permitting free use of their libraries and laboratory equipment. Geography Hog Mountain forms a conspicuous ridge that rises to a height of a little more than 1000 ft. above sea level, and about 400 to 500 ft. above the adjacent country. The ridge is composed of granitoid intrusive rock and silicified schist that are more resistant to erosion than the surrounding softer schist. The topography of the area around the ridge is gently rolling and is typical of the subdued forms of the deeply eroded Southern

Jan 1, 1935

Hog Mountain is in the north central part of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, about 13 miles northeast from Alexander City. The Hog Mountain Mining and Milling Co. controls 1658 acres of land and is the only company operating in the district. The principal mine workings are in sections 10 and 15, T.24N., R.22E. The region has been visited by geologists many times, has been briefly described in several papers,' and mentioned in many others. No detailed map of the mine or vicinity has been published. The field work for this report was started in March, 1934, as part of the Public Works reemployment program. About a month and a half was spent mapping both the surface and underground geology. The mine owners and operators have cooperated in every way possible to facilitate the work. N. 0. Johnson, the mine engineer, E. W. Ellsworth, J. E. McCoy and J. G. Englebert have acted as assistants for part of the work. The University of Alabama and the State Geologist's office have aided materially by permitting free use of their libraries and laboratory equipment. Geography Hog Mountain forms a conspicuous ridge that rises to a height of a little more than 1000 ft. above sea level, and about 400 to 500 ft. above the adjacent country. The ridge is composed of granitoid intrusive rock and silicified schist that are more resistant to erosion than the surrounding softer schist. The topography of the area around the ridge is gently rolling and is typical of the subdued forms of the deeply eroded Southern

Jan 1, 1935