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By Walter Renton Ingalls

The ores of zinc which are important as sources of that metal are of two classes, viz., the sulphide and the oxidized. The latter includes six varieties: zincite (the red oxide) and franklinite (the oxide of zinc, iron, and manganese), which are found abundantly only in New Jersey; and the hydrous and anhydrous carbonates, the hydrous and anhydrous silicates, which are of widespread occurrence. The hydrous carbonate is known mineralogically as hydrozincite, zinconise, or zinc-bloom; the anhydrous silicate is recognized as willemite. With respect to the anhydrous carbonate and the hydrous silicate, however, there is a confusion of name which is of old standing. Attempts to clear it away were long ago made by the mineralogists with the result that there is now a more or less national uniformity of nomenclature; but there is still an international disagreement, sometimes very perplexing and always leading to inexactness in expression, which may be considered an adequate excuse for this return to a time-worn subject. The name calamine, together with Galmei of the Germans, is commonly supposed to be derived from xadµela, which was used by the Greeks to designate the peculiar kind of ore employed with copper in their brass-making, and also the accretions which formed in the brass-founder's furnaces. Agricola, however, says that it is from calamm, a reed, in allusion to the appearance of the material, cadmia fornacum, which collected 011 the furnace-walls. But whatever the derivation of the word, it was used until within one hundred years to include all the oxidized

Jan 1, 1896

By John T. Galey

The restrictions placed on drilling by the Federal Government, which caused a severe curtailment in activity at the beginning of the year, were relaxed somewhat so as to permit the drilling of one shallow† gas well per 40 acres. New wells numbering 574† were drilled for a combined depth of nearly 1,500,000 It., and of this number 131 were dry holes with a footage of slightly over 375,000. Inside locations account for the majority of these totals and the increasing demand for natural gas would normally have increased the number considerably, but many of the independent operators chose to ask for fewer exceptions to Order M-68 of the Office of Production Management, and consequently to curtail the number of wells drilled. Initial open flow of natural gas developed from all operations§ is over 230 million cu. ft. Nearly 191 million cu. ft. of this volume resulted from the 410 new gas wells drilled to horizons above the Lower Devonian, and the footage drilled in these wells accounts for approximately 93 per cent of the total. Shallow Development Oil.—Thirty oil, wells, with a total initial production of slightly over 152 bbl. and a footage of 50.000, were drilled during the § Including deepening wells previously drilled.

Jan 1, 1943

Charles T. Malcolmson, Chicago, Ill.:—Mr. Blauvelt's admirable paper is a valuable contribution to the literature on briquetting of coal in this country. It should have a special significance for those interested in the commercial development of the coal-briquette industry. I believe that the data included in Mr. Blauvelt's paper will be particularly useful because they represent costs taken from a briquette-plant in actual operation. There are several points touched on in Mr. Blauvelt's paper which may bear comment in the way of emphasis rather than of criticism. In the first place, he has stated a fact which becomes axiomatic to any one who has had any experience in the design, building, or operation of coal-briquette plants, and that is, that the press is only one factor in the successful opera-

Jan 1, 1911

By Sumner M. Anderson

Any discussion of outside support to Latin American mineral industries must concede at once the pre-eminent role of U. S. industry and business. American capital has developed the great copper resources of Chile and Peru, the lead-zinc of Peru and Mexico, the bauxite of Surinam and Jamaica, the petroleum and iron ore of Venezuela. American consumers have provided the market for their products. U. S. companies operating south of the border have trained Latin American geologists, engineers, chemists, and skilled labor-including metal, mineral, and fuel technicians-to new and greater competence. The industrial demands of World War II drastically altered world economics and concepts of U. S. foreign mineral requirements. In this country discovery of vital mineral resources fell far behind the alarming depletion rates, and there was new appreciation of the actual and potential importance of the world's less extensively explored areas. During the war and afterward, the task of supplying the nation's mineral requirements became greater than private industry could carry alone, and the Government assumed a position of continuing support.

Jan 11, 1958

By Howard M. Graff, Sidney C. Bouwer

The economics of mining has traditionally been viewed quite apart from the economics of blast furnace operations. It was realized, of course, that blast furnaces would operate best with good raw materials, but the shipping grade of ore, for example, was decided by a sort of collective bargaining process between the ore producers and the blast furnace operators. The mine operators had to keep their costs down, and were usually successful in convincing management that the ore in any particular deposit was endowed by nature with a certain iron content and that the mine grade could not be raised beyond a certain economic limit. The blast furnace operators would have liked a better grade, but as long as they were able to make a fairly good showing it was more or less accepted that they had to take the ore as it came. The mine operators were able to ship to the nation's blast furnaces thousands of tons of iron ore that would be completely unacceptable by present-day standards. As late as the early 1950's, the major steel companies were witnessing an actual decline in the iron content of their incoming ore supply as the mining companies mined progressively leaner material and upgraded it only enough to pass competitive market requirements

Jan 8, 1965

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Jan 1, 1938

By William Glenn

Almost beyond doubt, the most important contribution to the assaying of copper yet made, is that of Mr. Eustis (Bans., xi., 120) on the " Comparison of Various Methods of Copper Analysis," which indicates in a manner for which the assayer cannot but feel grateful, how a copper sample ought to be treated from the moment it enters the laboratory until the copper is finally weighed. Admitting, as the present writer is inclined to do, that this paper establishes, as the official standard, the method of electrolysis, we may note as one of the few details which it does not finally fix, the kind of battery most desirable for precipitating the copper upon platinum. In this respect each assayer appears to be a law unto himself, while all feel more or less " shaky " as to the results. Classsen seems to suggest a remedy when he directs the measuring of the -gases liberated by the battery employed. But, in fact, that measure is not a constant in the Bunsen elements which he prescribes for copper determination. Furthermore, measuring gases necessitates more machinery and labor than the average assayer has a stomach for. It is, however, but just to Classen, to whom we owe so much, to reeall that he wrote more especially for students in the schools.

Jan 1, 1889

By W. R. Ingalls

THE MAJOR use of spelter has always been for the coating of iron and steel products, the process of coating being known as "galvanizing" and the products themselves as "galvanized," except for a couple of years during the war, when the consumption for brass making became superior, in the United States at least, owing to military demands. Since 1919, however, the consumption of spelter for galvanizing has regained the premier position, but not with such a long lead over brass making as previous to the war. The last development is ascribable to two main reasons, viz., an increased demand for brass in new industries, especially automobile manufacturing; and a diminished use of spelter per unit of iron and steel galvanized. MAJOR IMPORTANCE OF SUBJECT The last mentioned matter has already been the subject of some discussion and of some literature. The galvanizers have been charged with deliberately thinning their zinc coatings, with the consequence of producing inferior goods and thereby jeopardizing the whole galvanizing business. Zinc producers have been concerned about this, out of consideration of both the less use of zinc per unit of iron and steel and the fear that, the number of units produced may be curtailed. It has been argued, among other things, that the present policy of American galvanizers would impair their ability to compete in foreign markets with British galvanizers, who have been represented as making a superior product.

Jan 7, 1923

By F. Rosenblum, P. Spira, F. Kitzinger

The possibility of increasing the efficiency of mineral processing plants by means of computer control has prompted metallurgists to examine their flowsheets more critically in order to develop practical control strategies. Control schemes in use to date generally rely on the automation of traditional and previously manually regulated control loops, e.g., the addition of reagents to maintain a constant assay or a constant pH. This approach is predicated on the availability of well established primary sensors such as pH electrodes or on-stream analyzers. Noranda Research Center, in cooperation with Noranda Group concentrators, has developed a froth level monitor and a pulp density meter adaptable to this type of control. Although some of the basic principles on which they are based have been known for some time, their incorporation into the design of reliable, direct-reading instruments which can be interfaced with a computer is believed to be novel.

Jan 1, 1980

Discussion of the paper of HENRY M. HONE and ARTHUR G. LEVY, presented at the New York meeting, February, 1915, and printed in Bulletin No. 99, March, 1915, pp. 587 to 600. J. E. STEAD, Middlesbrough, England (communication to the Secretary*).-As I have not personally studied the question of quenched and distorted manganese steels I cannot give any information of my own on the subject. The question as to whether certain indications in strained manganese steel are "slip bands" or "twins" might be settled, I think, by heat tinting-a method I have applied with success to certain meteorites and other alpha irons in which there were undoubted twins. After polishing and very slightly etching with picric acid in alcohol, and then "heat tinting," the colors assumed by the twinned strata and the adjoining metal are different. The reason of this, as I have proved repeatedly, is that different faces of the iron crystals are differently attacked by oxidizing and other reagents, and consequently some of the faces take temper oxidation tints more rapidly than others. This simple method enables one to determine with certainty whether the "twins" are actually, twins and differently oriented from the bed in which they are found. After correspondence with Dr. Howe, I think we both agree that Neumann lines should not be called "lines" but "bands" or "strata," preferably the latter term, as I have found that they are more or less continuous throughout the crystals, and it would be just as improper to call the edges of cementite plate by the term "lines" as to call stratified twins by the same term.

Jan 5, 1915

By George H. Ashley

It has been said that the Pittsburgh bed is the most valuable single mineral deposit yet known to man. The figures in Table 1 are presented in substantiation of that claim. Production and Value In order that the figures of Table 1 may have any weight, a statement must be made to show how they were arrived at. Because, to the writer's knowledge, no accurate separate figures ever have been kept of the production and value of the Pittsburgh coal bed, the states will be considered separately. Pennsylvania Accurate figures are obtainable for Pennsylvania for recent years because recent reports of the Pellnsylvania Department of Mines show the production from each mine and the bed worked at each mine. For recent years, therefore, it is only necessary to list the mines working in the Pittsburgh bed and add up their production. The value was obtained by treating each county separately, applying the average price for the county to the production of Pittsburgh coal in that county. Unfortunately for great accuracy, while production figures for individual mines are available for many years, the name of the bed being

Jan 1, 1938

By R. S. Dean

The careful work of Gross and Zimmerleyl has established the fact that the energy actually used in grinding is proportional to the new surface produced. This confirmation of Rittinger's law was made by crushing quartz in a frictionless drop-weight machine and determining the surface of the quartz by its rate of solution in hydrofluoric acid. The details of this procedure have been described adequately elsewhere and need not be repeated here. The resultant data furnish the only available basis for comparing accurately the efficiency of grinding machines. This method is so cumbersome experimentally that it has been little used. As an alternative all sorts of approximations have been proposed. The best of these is complete size analysis by sieving and elutria-tion. Such procedure is very lengthy and difficult to carry out accurately. Furthermore, any sizing method becomes very inaccurate for determining surface with very fine sizes where the ratio of surface to volume becomes very large. To avoid the lengthy and difficult technique of elutriation it has been proposed to estimate the size distribution below 200 mesh from various probability formulas. Such a procedure is at best an engineering approximation; at worst it is a mere guess. Some time ago Dr. V. H. Gottschalk2 found that the coercive forces of magnetite powders were directly proportional to the surface area, regardless of size distribution. It was at once apparent that this furnished a method for determining grinding efficiency quickly and accurately. The only requirement was a single determination of the relation between the work input of the Gross-Zimmerley drop-weight machine and the coercive force of the resultant crushed magnetite. For this purpose Ural Mountain magnetite in definite octahedra was

Jan 1, 1939

By Robert L. Grayson, Y. J. Wang, R. Mike Mishra

Prediction of ventilation needs in long range mining projections requires serious consideration when formulating those projections. Predicting the behavior of the ventilation system of an old, complex mine poses an especially provocative problem. Air-flow around and through mined-out areas via bleeder systems, leakage flows through stoppings or other air control devices, and the use of multiple fans all add to the basic complexity of a ventilation system and make predictions of ventilation changes very difficult. Fortunately, the task of making ventilation decisions can be greatly assisted by ventilation surveying and computer simulation. The Nemacolin Mine of Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, is one such old mine which used the computerized approach successfully. A mine-wide pressure-quantity survey was used to obtain realistic values for airway resistance factors. These values, together with network topology, formed the basic input for computer simulation. Results from this simulation indicated that air quantities generated at critical airways by the model were generally within a couple of percent of those measured in the actual survey. It was then concluded that the model was acceptable for practical application, and it was used immediately for studying the effects on the ventilation system of changing the blade settings of fans. Additionally, the model was modified to incorporate projected mine development and used to predict future ventilation.

Jan 1, 1982

By W. H. Holman, J. B. Wagstaff

IN spite of considerable interest among blast furnace operators on the question of the penetration of air into the furnace, there is still uncertainty as to how far the blast does, in fact, penetrate. Moreover, it is not always clear just what is meant by the word penetration in this sense. In 1952, Elliott et al.1 showed that at the end of each tuyere of a blast furnace there is more or less of a void. In this region, coke particles are blown around by the force of the air. This explained the well-known observation reported by Sweetser2 hat if a bar is pushed into a furnace through a tuyere it will go easily into the furnace a distance of some

Jan 1, 1958

Prior to any detailed discussion, I'd like to say that Dr. Aplan has made direct hits on two important considerations: 1) The most demanding need in Fine Coal research is to develop improved methods of sulfur reduction. 2) The areas of particle (impurity) liberation and froth flotation hold real near-term promise as techniques for improved sulfur removal. Digressing for a moment, I thin kwe can all remember the time when the biggest problem facing coal research was simply defined - "No money!" In the mid 70's we suddenly found ourselves dealing with a product worth five to seven times the value it carried in the mid60's. All of a sudden, we're talking about a high-profile, high- value commodity. The coal industry still hasn't made the complete psychological adjustment - especially in the operating areas (prep plants included). We have a valuable material at hand which is, in' many cases still being processed as though it were a two or three dollar per ton item. Simply put, I think that while the industry has made some major strides during this transition, a stronger commitment of attitude (and finances) needs to be made toward deeper definition of beneficiation work. Back to specifics - Dr. Aplan has really highlighted three areas where strong research efforts are needed. 1) Liberation processes - not limited to mechanical comminution - must be more fully studied.The industry certainly needs a better handle on value returned (improved ability to beneficiate) for dollars spent on improved liberation. 2) Flotation processes probably hold the most promise for near- term improvement in fine coal beneficiation technology. Dr. Aplan’s.

Jan 1, 1979

By R. T. Murrill

BLOCK-SIGNAL and dispatching systems have been in use on surface railways for years, but only recently have they been applied to underground mining conditions. Formerly, all ore was moved underground by hand tramming; the surface openings were numerous and fairly close to the ore being mined. As the tramming distances increased, animals were brought into service. Then came the locomotive, and since its introduction, haulage lines have gradually been reduced to fewer levels and to fewer surface openings until more than 20,000 tons are being handled daily on one level in some of the larger mines. Under the, se conditions many trains must use the same-tracks, and signal systems have become necessary. In some cases it has been found more advantageous to use train dispatchers than to install signal devices. The dispatcher may be simply a flagman at a busy point or he may have mechanical signals to operate at more distant points. At the inspiration mine, Inspira-tion, Ariz., the station is equipped with a switch-con-trol board, whereby the dispatcher throws electrically all track switches in a certain block, which gives him complete control over all trains passing through that block. In a few cases, dispatcher stations are established in connection with a signal system.

Jan 2, 1922

By R. S. Dean

The careful work of Gross and Zimmerleyl has established the fact that the energy actually used in grinding is proportional to the new surface produced. This confirmation of Rittinger's law was made by crushing quartz in a frictionless drop-weight machine and determining the surface of the quartz by its rate of solution in hydrofluoric acid. The details of this procedure have been described adequately elsewhere and need not be repeated here. The resultant data furnish the only available basis for comparing accurately the efficiency of grinding machines. This method is so cumbersome experimentally that it has been little used. As an alternative all sorts of approximations have been proposed. The best of these is complete size analysis by sieving and elutria-tion. Such procedure is very lengthy and difficult to carry out accurately. Furthermore, any sizing method becomes very inaccurate for determining surface with very fine sizes where the ratio of surface to volume becomes very large. To avoid the lengthy and difficult technique of elutriation it has been proposed to estimate the size distribution below 200 mesh from various probability formulas. Such a procedure is at best an engineering approximation; at worst it is a mere guess. Some time ago Dr. V. H. Gottschalk2 found that the coercive forces of magnetite powders were directly proportional to the surface area, regardless of size distribution. It was at once apparent that this furnished a method for determining grinding efficiency quickly and accurately. The only requirement was a single determination of the relation between the work input of the Gross-Zimmerley drop-weight machine and the coercive force of the resultant crushed magnetite. For this purpose Ural Mountain magnetite in definite octahedra was

Jan 1, 1939

By John H. Hollomon

IN a recent paper,1 a very early suggestion by Ludwik2 concerning the nature of the mechanical behavior of metals has been reexamined and extended. In essence it was [ ] suggested that there exists, at least under certain conditions, a mechanical equation of state; that the stress required for flow depends upon the instantaneous values of the strain, strain rate, and temperature, and not upon their past values. It is proposed that under these circumstances the stress does not depend upon past history of these variables, but is like the temperature of a gas that depends only upon the I instantaneous values of the pressure and volume. This notion has not been applied to present day studies of metals, though it is especially applicable to the study of creep. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze the significance and possible range [ ] of applicability of this idea and to deter- mine how it influences the accepted ideas concerning creep. STRESS-STRAIN RELATIONS It is well known that the stress-strain curves of metals are influenced by both strain rate and temperature. For a fixed strain rate and temperature there is associated with each metal a stress-strain curve. If either the strain rate or temperature is changed a new stress-strain curve will be characteristic (Fig. I). A much more general relation between the effects of the sevariables is possible, however. Consider the stress-strain curves of Fig. I determined at

Jan 1, 1946

By Robert C. Meaders, Arthur R. MacPherson

Many attempts have been made to eliminate most of the crushing plant and all the grinding plant in the process of ore beneficiation by substituting a combined crushing and grinding unit which could take coarsely crushed ore and reduce it to a fine size in one unit. This unit normally would have no other grinding media than the ore itself. This is true autogenous grinding, as we understand it today, and should be clearly distinguished from pebble mill grinding, where pebbles are substituted for steel balls to grind a ball mill size feed. To compete in efficiency with normal methods of crushing and grinding, the autogenous mill must use less labor and steel to produce an equivalent product at equal or lower power consumption. In general terms, a unit to perform these functions must have means to crush the ore to fine sizes and to then further reduce the crushed pieces by grinding. In other words, to do efficient autogenous grinding, there must be a proper balance established between crushing and grinding rates. There is not much point in crushing at too fast a rate if the grinding means are not present to reduce the small particles to the required product size. The crushing means used in an autogenous mill are impact forces of two kinds, namely, (1) the rock travelling at high speeds striking the shell, and (2) the lifters travelling at high speeds striking the rock. Grinding is probably effected in a manner equivalent to pebble milling.

Jan 9, 1964

By C. D. Broadbent

Open pit blasting can be a low cost routine or a high cost bottleneck depending on geology, environment and the operator's ability to master site conditions. Because blasting is a repetitive operation, there should be ample opportunity to optimize the process; but ordinarily this optimization is rarely achieved and then only if conditions remain consistent and predictable. Often, however, and particularly with porphyry coppers, hidden differences in rock characteristics nullify the operator's best efforts. At a porphyry copper deposit being mined by Kennecott Copper Corporation, all of the following rock types occur; oxidized and fresh porphyry, altered and silicified limestone, explosion breccia, rhyolite, sandstone, shale and several others. The units can cover large areas or be limited to a few tens of feet in maximum dimension. They are rarely visible on the bench surface and often do not show up in the bench slope. Even though the blastability of these rocks varies substantially, a generally-uniform blasting pattern was formerly used with disappointing results. Secondary blasting was often required and high bottoms occurred frequently, overblasting wasted drilling time, and explosives caused excessive throw.

Jan 4, 1974