Search Documents

By C. W. Davis

THE name fuller's earth, which was derived from its early use in "fulling" or removing grease from woolen goods, is a term that is generally considered to designate mineral matter, containing hydrous aluminum silicates of the clay group, which has a high capacity for removing colors from oils, whether of animal, vegetable, or mineral origin. Fuller's earths are usually dried and may be "tempered" by heating or may be treated with water or reagents to improve their efficiency. For our purpose the term "acid-treated earths" will include those products from the partial decomposition of mineral water by acid which are equal to or more efficient than an untreated fuller's earth from Quincy, Fla., when used in bleaching mineral oil by the "contact" process. In general, the contact process for treating oils consists of heating and agitating a mixture of oil and finely divided adsorbent, the latter being subsequently removed by filtration. The term "adsorbent" is used because, although there has been a great deal of controversy over the mechanism of removal of impurities from oils by mineral matter, there is no doubt that adsorption, which involves the surface of the solid, plays a major part.1 The properties that make fuller's earth useful in the treatment of petroleum products by "percolation" and in the purification of edible oils by the contact process have long been studied, but the comparatively recent adaptation of the contact process to the bleaching of petroleum products has made desirable the further investigation of fuller's earth and other adsorbent earths.

Jan 1, 1929

By J. V. W. REYNDERS

IN THE remarks which I am about to make concern¬ing the safety work of the Bureau of Mines, I want first of all to disengage myself from a disposition, which is frequently in evidence, to give spectacular emphasis to the hazards of mining operations. It is of the' utmost importance to the industrial welfare of our country that the enormous annual requirement of fuel be produced and be made available in our economic activities, with a minimum of distress and hardship. The safety of coal mining is a condition with which. we are all concerned in a fundamental way. And yet we should not rush to accept hastily conceived notions that laxity among employers in respect to safety measures exists to any outstanding degree. In fact in a large number of instances, the precautionary efforts of min¬ing companies, directed to the elimination of accidents are beyond all criticism, albeit the industry suffers in reputation from the carelessness of, its less effi¬cient constituents. The Bureau of Mines has been a leading influence in disseminating the doctrines of safety, in securing the cooperation of the miners themselves, and in stirring up ' the laggards, both among the employers and the employed. It is much to the interest of well-conducted mine operations that the industry, as a whole, observe safety regulations to the utmost.

Jan 1, 1925

By D. V. BURR

THE ORIGINAL HUDSON RIVER TUNNEL. NOT quite forty years ago a man of uncommon character entered New York. He had several hundred thousand dollars earned by railroad building in the Nest. He was not an engineer, but he had ideas of engineering work which he was destined to prove correct.. He introduced new ways of tunneling, but his plans had only one distinguishing feature-they were simply interesting as showing how such work could be done; they added nothing to the science, have never been used since his clay, and never will be used again. Engineers of repute ridiculed his proposition ; he was an Ishmael in the profession. But if engineers looked askance at him, he certainly returned their contempt in the heartiest fashion, and had no hesitancy about expressing his views of them individually and collectively. This worked to. his disadvantage when he afterward tried to raise the means to go on with the work. He found that the opinion of engineers was respected by financiers, and that money would not flow contrary to their advice. While his conception of large constructions was distinguishingly original, much more marked was his method of demonstrating the feasibility of, his schemes. In the present clays of great undertakings it is the custom to make the other man pay for the experiments. But the man from the West had other notions of how the thing ought to be done. Having wonderful confidence in his own ability and in his perception of the task before him, he used up all his own money before seeking outside assistance. By building several hundred,, feet of tunnel he proved the correctness of his theory, and the tunnel then dug forms a part of the present tube. The result-he failed to finish the tunnel. He was blind in

Mar 1, 1908

By R. S. Dean

IN THE COURSE of its investigations directed toward providing strategic metals from domestic sources and toward utilizing power from Federal power projects in West, the Bureau of Mines concluded some years ago that the development of a method for producing electrolytic manganese might well be an important step towards both goals. Accordingly, laboratory investigations were undertaken in 1935. Further studied on a relatively large laboratory scale indicated that electrolytic manganese could be made from domestic ores at a cost not out of line with other nonferrous metals. On the basis of these results, the Electro Manganese Corp. Operating under U.S. Patent 2,119,560 issued to S, M, Shelton and assigned to the Secretary of the Interior for administration, undertook commercial production of electrolytic manganese at Knoxville, Tenn, This company has brought the process through the pilot-plant stage successfully, and is now regularly producing approximately one ton a day.

Jan 1, 1941

By AIME AIME

EVERYONE enjoyed the coal meeting and found it profitable. At least your correspondent did, and those to whom he talked. Close to a hundred were there. The Coronado proved an excellent headquarters hotel, though it is two miles or more from the business district of St. Louis; its Crystal Room was suitable for the technical sessions; its Lounge adequate for registration and informal chats; its Club Caprice made an artistic setting for the informal banquet; and its Coal Hole in the basement presumably served other needs-unfortunately we passed up an invitation to find out, and never got another. To be sure, the first day of the meeting (Monday, Oct. 28) was a drizzly one, but that only served to keep people inside where they belonged. Believe it or not, the first technical session was only five minutes late in getting tinder way, with H. N. Eavenson's words of welcome. M. M. Leighton then took over the conduct of the meeting, and invited Eugene McAuliffe to read his paper on how much coal the railroads are likely to use in the future. E. G. Bailey then presented some written discussion; among other things he wondered about the success of stokers on locomotives, and whether or not the burning of coal in locomotives could not he made a cleaner operation. Mr. McAuliffe pointed out that railroads are built to haul coal rather than to burn it. Maximum firebox efficiency is often subordinated to the traffic situation. Powdered-coal firing has not been a success because of limited firebox space. Stokers have resulted in economies indirectly, because large locomotives cannot he hand-fired and stokers thus make them possible. Nowadays it is not so important to do away with smoke, cinders, and soot, because most trains are sealed up and air-conditioned.

Jan 1, 1935

By J. C. HEILMAN

THE Tri-State district, named from its situation in three States, lies in the northeast corner of Oklahoma, the southeast corner of Kansas and the adjacent part of Missouri east of the common corner of the above States. Production in the past eighty years has come from scattered mines within an area of some 35 miles east and west, by 25 miles north and south, although the actual area of the mined ground is but a small fraction of this territory. The land is leased from the individual land-owners, and the size of the tracts varies from 4.0 to 200 acres, the smaller sized tracts predominating. The leases usually call for a royalty of 7% to 15 per cent of the gross receipts of the concentrates, continuous operation during the life of the lease and specifically set out that no ores can be brought in from a foreign lease for custom milling nor can any ore be removed from the lease for milling. The ownership of the tailings remains with the land-owner.

Jan 1, 1931

By James Gayley

(Wilkes-Barre Meeting, June, 1911.) THE paper presented to the Institute in 1910, by H. 0. Hofman, on Recent Progress in Blast Roasting,1 has called the attention of the iron industry to the adaptability of these processes to the reclamation of by-products such as flue-dust and blue billy, and the better preparation of concentrates and fine ores for use in blast-furnaces. The waste of valuable iron-ore through the production of flue-dust has increased at an enormous rate, and much of it has in reality been wasted as far as future recovery is concerned. Only in recent years has a possible future value been recognized, and the material stored. The increased use of Mesabi ores, which carry considerable fine ore, is principally responsible for the great increase in the production of flue-dust. The amount of fine material that is carried over depends on the fineness of the material and the velocity of the gases, and also to a very great extent on the regularity or irregularity of the working of the furnace. Attempts to recover a part of this loss have been made by recharging a portion of the production into the furnace, but as this material has been once carried out from the furnace, it is naturally in good shape to be carried out again. A recent practice at some works, is to soak the flue-dust thoroughly with water to give it more cohesiveness, but by many this is considered of doubtful advantage in the furnace, and the gases are in consequence heavily laden with moisture. There are vast deposits of magnetic iron-ores in the United States and Canada that are too low in iron for use at the present time, but which can be economically concentrated into very rich material ; in many cases the fineness of crushing necessary to secure proper concentration has prevented their

Aug 1, 1911

By AIME AIME

THE 122d meeting of the Institute was held in the Lake. Superior Copper and Iron Country Aug. 20 to Sept. 3, 1920 with an approximate registration of 1100 members and guests. This is the 'first visit of, the Institute to this vicinity since 1904 although previously it held meetings there every six or, seven years. 'The eastern party assembled at Buffalo and sailed on the S. S. "Tionesta ". on Friday morning, Aug. 20, arriving at Houghton, Mich., Monday, Aug. 23. En route stops were made at Detroit, where sightseeing auto trips were taken, and at Mackinac Island, where a short stop permitted a visit to the picturesque and historic Fort Mackinac.

Jan 1, 1920

By John T. Thorndyke

MOST important of the naturalcalcium silicates is the meta¬silicate, CaSi03, known as wollastonite, after W. H. Wollaston. A large deposit of this mineral was dis¬covered some seven years ago near Code Siding, Rademacher mining dis¬trict, Kern County, Calif., the deposit being some 7500 ft. long and of an average width of 300 ft. It consists of a series of small domes striking north¬erly and southerly and with a dip of 81 ° to the south. This deposit was opened up by a series of small quarries showing a potential tonnage of 12,000,¬000 tons, allowing of cheap mining and transportation, the Southern Pa¬cific R.R. spur track being one mile north of the workings. Numerous sam¬ples taken from different points on the deposit, tested by Mr. Brinker, of the California Testing Laboratories, Los Angeles, showed an average as fol¬lows: Per Cent Silica (SiO2) 47.12 Lime (CaO) 41.72 Magnesia (MgO) 2.72 Alkalies (R,0) Trace Iron (Fe.,O,) 1.60 whereas the theoretical composition of of wollastonite, as given by William Shirley Bayley, is as follows: Silica 51.75 Lime 45.25 The tonnage and purity of this de¬posit led to investigations into its com¬mercial development. Early work es¬tablished the fact that wollastonite was ideal for the manufacture of a tough, almost unbreakable, glass similar to Pyrex. It also established the fact that wollastonite was particularly adapted for use in the manufacture of mineral wool, towards which further research was then directed. Briefly, the prin¬cipal advantages were the substantially unvarying chemical composition of the naturally occurring mineral and its characteristic of being relatively flexi¬ble and highly resilient when fused into a glass. A mineral wool produced therefrom is thus not only of highly uniform composition and color but is most desirable because of the high mechanical strength and length of the individual fibers constituting the wool. It is well known that mineral wool may be prepared by melting a suitable charge of raw material and then intro¬ducing a stream of a suitable fluid, such as air or steam, into a stream of the molten raw material. By this means the molten material is blown into threads or fibers, which are collected in a suitable chamber similar to a tun¬nel, from which they are removed from time to time or continuously. Com¬mercial manufacture of mineral wool has been carried on for only about 50 years, but volcanoes, specifically Kilauea in the Hawaiian Islands, have

Jan 1, 1936

By Elwin L. Fisk

The Cordero mine is located in the Nevada portion of the Opalite Mining district that straddles the Oregon-Nevada state boundary. The mercury deposits of the district occur along the margins of the broad east-west graben valley of McDermitt Creek. The only other major producers, the Opalite and Bretz mines, on the northern margin of the graben have thus far exploited only shallow deposits within 100 feet of the surface. Through December 1965, Cordero has produced 94,680 flasks of mercury, the most of which came from the large underground cinnabar deposit. Nearly all of the mercury ore deposits in this district have been found in Miocene rhyolitic intrusives, flows, tuffs, and lake beds. These rhyolites have been argillically altered at depth and extensively silicified at or near the surface. These silicified areas or "opalite" masses were the original cinnabar-bearing outcrops.

Jan 1, 1968

By Thomas R. Stauffer

The principle that conventional schemes for taxing petroleum or mineral resources are "inefficient" is illustrated using simulation calculations tested against an "ideal" system. Inefficiency is defined as the relative success in maximizing expected government revenues from the resources. Most systems fail because: 1) they leave oil in limbo, i.e. unproduced because of excessive fiscal burden; or 2) they unnecessarily increase the variance in the explorationist'c, rate of return by undertaxing large fields and overtaxing smaller but infra-marginal fields. This increases his discount rate and reduces taxable surplus. An "ideal" tax system is specified which maximizes government revenues while minimizing risk to the operator. Two criteria are developed: 1) the tax falls to zero on fields which yield only the minimum necessary rate of return ("marginal" fields); and 2) the after-tax present value of all fields is the same for all fields above a threshhold size. In particular, marginal fields, while contrib- uting little to expected values, do contribute to reducing variance and hence risk praemia by distributing the exploration costs over a higher probability of successful outcomes.

Jan 1, 1982

By AIME AIME

A PAPER prepared by James A. Adams, development engineer of the fitline & Smelter Supply Co., and presented at the last Annual Meeting of the A.I.M.E. in New York City, de- scribed a new automatic pulp density controller which has had a most favorable reception. Manual control has until now been the universal practice in spite of its shortcomings; samples of pulp for density determination were often improperly taken, and only at the operator's convenience, so that the trend in density changes was frequently missed, and the grinding circuit al- lowed to operate under something less than the most efficient conditions.

Jan 1, 1940

By AIME AIME

M ODERN metallurgy properly belongs to this century. The great advance made in this science is directly attributable to the discovery of the Roentgen rays. Application of the results of this discovery, together with the more recent corroborating studies in electronic diffraction have definitely and for all time established this science. Metallurgists today speak with familiarity of the atoms of the different metals in terms of their orientation, atomic volumes, lattice structures, dimensional lattice constants distance of nearest approach, and the like. One matter of profound interest, which is quite staggering to the imagination of the human mind, is the enormity of the number of atoms even in a small particle of metal. As an illustration, let us compute the number of atoms in the volume of one cubic centimeter in a single grain of absolutely pure copper. Eighteen and a fraction cubic centimeters equal the volume of one cubic inch.

Jan 1, 1940

By Paul D. Martinka

Coal is the principal energy source for the American Electric Power System (AEP System), which generates and delivers more electric energy to its customers within a seven-state area than any other investor- owned electric public utility. The company expected to burn 21.5 million tons of coal in 1968 at its coal-fired, steam-electric generating stations. About 4.3 million tons, representing 20% of the firm's total annual requirement, was the expected yield of its captive coal mines; the other 17.2 million tons were to be purchased from commercial mines in Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. American Electric's largest captive coal mining operation is conducted by Central Ohio Coal Co., a subsidiary of Ohio Power Co., at the Muskingum mine in the Meigs Creek No. 9 coal field of southeastern Ohio. The mine was started in 1953 to produce the coal requirements of the Philo and Muskingum River generating plants of Ohio Power Co., and it has been supplying their annual requirements in the range of 2.5 to 3.5 million tons since that time. The Muskingum River plant is one of the major steam-electric generating stations on the AEP System. This plant began operation in 1953 with a 215-megawatt unit and now has five generating units with a total plant capacity of 1,495 megawatts. The addition of the 615-megawatt Unit 5 in the summer of 1968 increased the total annual coal requirement of the plant from 2.6 to 4.4 million tons. In order to produce the additional 1.8 million tons of coal for the Unit 5 addition and to exploit the remaining coal reserves at the Muskingum mine most economically, Central Ohio Coal Co. has undertaken a $41 million expansion and modernization program, involving the world's largest dragline and an electric railroad.

Jan 1, 1969

By Leon Borgman, Michael P. Lipkewich

Orebodies at or near the surface are generally amenable to open pit mining. The development of a mining program involves designing an ultimate pit and a production schedule. This pit maximizes total profit while the production schedule maximize6 the present value of the property. Optimum pit limits can be approximated by two-and three-dimensional numerical techniques. These techniques presuppose that the mineralized area has been sufficiently sampled to allow a reasonably accurate prediction of grade at any spatial location.

Jan 1, 1969

By C. H. Lieb

ONE astounding fact in the production of petroleum is the comparatively recent realization by producers that flowing production is the cheapest crude produced. About 1910 or even later, operators actually endeavored to get a producing well to pumping as quickly as possible after completion. A well was not really considered to be completed until it was operating on the pump. Remarkable progress has been made since then. It was not until about 1920 that producers began to take a serious interest in pressures and to think a little about proper methods of handling oil wells. Pressure gauges were installed, and records of pressures maintained, which was quite an innovation. Desultory experiments were made with tubing of different sizes, as well as experiments with placing the bottom of the tubing string at different levels in the well. Probably the first important departure from customary procedure was about 1926, during the Seminole development, when gas lift

Jan 1, 1936

By E. E. AGGER, Arthur Notman

THE proposal has been made in a bill introduced into Congress at the last session by Representative Jones of Michigan that an import duty of 6 c. per lb. shall be placed on copper. This action is urged after eighty years of prosperity for the industry in this country; during most of which copper has been on the free list, and during all of which a tariff would have been without real effect. To comprehend the general situation upon which this action would be imposed, we must refer to the past history of the industry and its trends at the present time. The following table supplies us with a picture of the physical growth of the industry in this country and its relation to that of the world as a whole down to Jan. 1, 1921:

Jan 1, 1925

By C. A. Fisher

THE Salt Creek Oil Field of Wyoming occupies a unique position among the major oil fields of this country. Many years before the beginning of actual production in this area, in 1911, it had attracted country-wide attention as a district holding oil possi¬bilities. Even foreign capital, mainly French and Belgian, had sought out this district as having oil values and spent many thousands of dollars 'in an effort to acquire property rights' in this field which was very largely located on the public domain. Owing to inadequate laws governing the acquisition of oil lands on the Federal domain and a careless practice having grown up among oil land locators of that time, a complicated title situation quickly developed in Salt Creek. This condition of uncertain titles together with the isolation of the field from industrial centers were doubtless the two most potent factors in retarding its early development. After actual production began in 1911 governmental regulations, suits between the government, and the locator, disputed ownerships between locators and claim and counterclaim continued to retard the field's development. It is believed that the title situation in the Salt Creek Field, where potential values of such magnitudes were involved, was responsible more than any other factor for the ultimate passage of the government leasing act in 1920 affecting all oil lands on the Federal domain.

Jan 1, 1925

By Scott Turner

MY YEAR OF SERVICE as president of the A.I.M.E. came at a time when the mineral industry had suffered severely because of disturbed economic conditions throughout the world. The Institute, an integral part of this industry, had been similarly affected. Its membership and revenues decreased; it was confronted by problems of retrenchment at a time when its vigorous operation was especially important to its members, of some moment to the mining industry, and of value to the nation. Throughout the last year, the recession of activity in our industry continued with slight abatement. Your Board accordingly exercised such economy within the Institute as was possible without impairment of essential functions. It endeavored to aid in sustaining the morale of members, their sense of professional unity, and their interest in maintaining research and the interchange of scientific and technologic data upon which the progress of our industry depends. Effort was made to assist in the difficult task of finding employment for needy members; our endeavors have met with some success.

Jan 1, 1933

By HERBERT G. MOULTON

FROM prehistoric times to our own day man has struggled against extremes of climate. Human life, originating in semi-tropical or temperate areas, was unable to progress into the northern latitudes until fire was discovered and some form of clothing provided. It was found possible to maintain life even in the hottest parts of the tropics, but only at a great sacrifice of comfort and efficiency compared with the more temperate zones, or in cooler areas with the protection of clothing and artificial heat. It was no accident, but the natural result of climatic conditions, that efficiency became the greatest and civilization the most advanced in areas where the natural climate was favorable, or in cooler zones where protection against severe cold could be se-cured by relatively simple methods of conserving or producing heat.

Jan 1, 1933