Search Documents

By Howard Hughes

IN drilling for water and oil to reasonable depths through the generally soft yielding clay and sand formation of the Coastal Plain of Texas, . Louisiana, and Mississippi, the rotating method of drilling was adopted, principally on account of the easy and quick penetration, and the low cost of the drilling plant. In favorable ground, free of heavy gravel and rock strata, as much as 1,000 ft. has been drilled in less than 36 hr., although such performances were of course rare. Hydraulic rotary drilling, or, as it is now called, rotary drilling, was used in the above States as early as 1880. The plant consisted of an ordinary derrick, a 25-h.p. boiler, a small hoist, a steam pump, and a water swivel with hose attachment, and an ordinary flat diamond-pointed bit. The successful drilling in of a phenomenal oil well by this process on Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, on Jan. 10, 1901, and the ascertained impracticability of drilling subsequent wells in the same locality by other methods (owing principally to heavy quicksand under pressure from below), brought rotary drilling into great prominence, practically to the exclusion of any other process throughout the Coastal Plain, and later on elsewhere. The method, as its name implies, involves the rotation of a pipe by means of machinery placed on the derrick floor. A drill bit attached to the lower end cuts a clearance for the drill pipe, with much the same motion and effect as an auger. Water forced through the drill pipe by means of a pump, and escaping through the bit, removes the cuttings and returns to the surface outside the drill pipe. In this manner the hole is kept open, permitting the drill stem to rotate freely. The pressure of the column of muddy water holds up the walls of the hole until it has been cased. Practically all the wells of the Gulf coast region, numbering nearly 10,000, have been drilled with this system. During the last five years its use has been extended to many other States and countries.

Jan 3, 1915

By O. W. Ellis

BEFORE entering upon a general discussion of the fascinating, but at present rather controversial, subject of gases in copper, the author feels that some attention should be directed to the work which has been carried out on the solubility of gases in metals. The outstanding contributions to our knowledge of this subject have been made by Sieverts and his collaborators(1) t and by Iwasé.(2) Both the German and the Japanese investigators employed apparatus of the same general design in their investigations. Full reference need only be made, therefore, to the German scheme, which is diagrammatically illustrated in Fig. 1. This, to use the words of Sieverts, which he employed in describing his Burette arrangement of apparatus at the 1928 meeting of der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Metallkunde(1g): shows a diagram of the usual mode of procedure. A quartz flask contains the metal (for high temperatures a highly refractory porcelain FIG. 1.-SIEVERTS' APPARATUS FOR INVESTIGATING SOLUBILITY OF tube is used) and is connected with the rest of GASES IN METALS. the apparatus by means of a stopcock. The other parts consist of a burette divided into 1/10 c.c., a leveling tube, and art adjus-table mercury reservoir. The burette is connected on one side with the gas inlet and on the other side with the absorption flask; the connection can be interrupted by means of suitable taps. Another tap permits the connection of the flask and the Töpler pump. In an experiment the quartz flask is first exhausted and then a meas-ured quantity of gas is let in from the burette. In the first place the volume of the flask when empty is found by calibration with an inert gas. The pressure is read off on the level tube of the burette, and the temperature measured by means of a thermo-couple whose welded junction lies close to the outside of the quartz flask, which is heated in an electric furnace. In several experiments the quantity of absorbed gas was transferred to a burette by means of a pump and measured.

Jan 1, 1932

We have received from L. S. Cates, the following translation, by S. W. Mudd, of early mining methods in India: In Herodotus one finds a description how Darius by aid of his good horse and his good groom Oebares got himself the Kingdom of the Per-sians. He then set up in Persia twenty satrapies assigning to each a governor and fixing the tribute which was to be paid to him by the several nations. The following description of the method of getting the gold demanded of the Indians as tribute is copied directly from Book III Thalia, paragraphs 94 to 105 omitting the diversions of Herodotus which in one case consisted of a lapse of two pages following a semicolon before the author returned to the subject. The Indians, who are more numerous than any other nation with which we are acquainted paid a tribute exceeding that off every other people, to wit, three hundred and sixty talents of gold-dust. The way in which the Indians get the plentiful supply of gold, which enables then to furnish year by year so vast an amount of gold-dust to the King, is the following: Eastward of India lies a tract which is entirely sand. Here, in this desert, there live amid the sand great ants, in size somewhat less than clogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof we are speaking. These ants make their dwellings under ground, and like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold. The Indians, when they go into the desert to collect this sand, take three camels and harness them together, a female in the middle and a male on either side, in a leading-rein. The rider sits on the female, and they are particular to choose for the purpose one that has just dropped . her young; for their female camels can run as fast as horses, while they bear burdens very much better.

Jan 12, 1919

By E. L. Estabrook, H. H. Hill

This report summarizes the information that was obtained by the Committee on Unit Operation in Eastern United States and in the foreign countries. Letters and questionnaires were sent to all of the Eastern members of the Petroleum Division of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and to those who are living outside of the United States, asking them to advise the Committee of any unit operations that are in effect in the various countries of the world and to furnish the names of men to whom inquiries should be directed for detailed information on the different projects. The response to the Committee's request is worthy of note. Practically all of the members who had knowledge of foreign operations replied to the questionnaire and not only furnished information that was of value to the Committee, but they evidenced a real interest in the subject of unit operations and assured the Committee of their willingness to assist in every way possible in order to make the study a success. The Committee wishes, at this time, to express its appreciation of the excellent cooperation that was received from the members of the A. I. M. E. to whom questionnaires were sent. Unfortunately, the limited time that has been given to this survey did not permit the collection of detailed data on the different unit operations that are now in effect. It required several weeks to get back replies from the members located in some of the foreign countries and as a result the men who were asked to furnish information on the various projects have not had sufficient time to submit the detailed data that were requested. The Committee has been assured, however, that information relating to a number of unit operations will be furnished in the near future. Part of the delay has been due to the fact that the purpose of the study was not understood and because the terms "unit" and "near-unit" operations were not clearly defined. In the foreign countries, practically all of the operations in noncompetitive fields are on concessions or leases that have been granted to a single company and for that reason

Jan 1, 1930

THE morning session on mining methods with R. M. Raymond as chairman was devoted mainly to papers on explosives and the discussion of these papers. A paper on the numerical index of the re-sistance which rocks offer to the penetration of a drill bit was also read. The first paper, "Relation Between the Oxygen Bal-ance and Propulsive Strength of Eight Gelatin Dynamites" by G. St. J. Perrott, N. A. Tolch and J. E. Crawshaw, was presented by Mr. Perrott, super-intendent of the Pittsburgh Experiment Station of the U. S. Bureau of Mines. In this paper which is the beginning of a series of publications on explosives, Mr. Perrott stated that the attempt was made to put down in quantitative form the facts which have been known to explosive engineers for a long time. Eight samples of 40 per cent gelatin dynamite, with oxygen content varying from + 15 to - 36 per cent of the theoretical amount necessary to form complete combustion with all of the combustible elements were tested. The experimental work showed that a bal-anced explosive did not give the greatest propulsive strength-but the most favorable range was from - 8 to - 25 per cent oxygen. The experimental work also brought out the fact that the wrapper of a stick of dynamite enters quite completely into the explosive reaction, and gelatin dynamites from which the wrapper had been removed developed less strength than the a same explosive with the wrapper. The second paper, "Effect of Oxygen Balance of Gelatin Dynamites on the Gaseous Products of Det-onation," by G. W. James and G. St. J. Perrott, was also presented :by Mr. Perrott. The first portion of this paper is given over to a discussion of the relative merits of different types of apparatus for testing and analyzing the combustion products of dynamites. Three types were used (1) the Bichel gage, (2) the Crawshaw-Jones apparatus and (3) the Hercules tank. All three of these types were used in testing dynamites whose oxygen balance varied from-35 to + 6 per cent.

Jan 3, 1928

By Walter Miller

Any review of the engineering progress made in 1932 in the petroleum refining industry must necessarily be broad and general, improvements having been made in practically all major branches of this activity. Several factors contributed to an advancement on a wide front, much of it coming from those active in refining, considerable from those not, immediately in it but engaged in designing and installing equipment and maintaining large and capable staffs of experts in both engineering and development work. Another factor has been the ability of the refiner, because of less than capacity operation, to carry on experimental and development work in regular plant equipment. The movement to higher antiknock value gasoline has continued through 1932, and the average improvement of the more widely sold branded gasolines is from 3 to 4 points higher in the octane scale. A very great improvement was brought about during the year in the method of determining the octane number of gasoline. While the procedure and equipment for determining this value as developed by the Cooperative Fuel &search Steering Committee prior to 1932 had received fairly general acceptance, evidence that it did not always evaluate in a measure consistent with road performance quickly accumulated, and led to further effort to synchronize laboratory results with actual use. As the result of some really brilliant work on the part of the C.F.R. Committee and a large number of collaborators, it was found that a comparatively minor modification of the previously developed equipment and method gave surprisingly concordant results between laboratory tests and trial per-formance on the road. This method has been officially accepted by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the American Petroleum Institute, and will according to present plans go into general use on April 1, 1933. The American Society for Testing Materials has studied the method but at the time of writing this had not reached a final decision regarding it. Improved Volatility of Gasoline The most notable trend during the year, in addition to a very considerable increase in antiknock value referred to above, has been in the

Jan 1, 1933

By R. M. Treco

THE thermal expansion of pure beryllium was first investigated by Hidnert and Sweeneyl in 1925 on a single cast specimen stated to be of 98.9 pct purity. A study of the coefficients of expansion by X-ray methods has recently been made by P. Gordon' on powder obtained from the Brush Beryllium Co. assaying 97 wt pct beryllium with about 2 wt pct oxygen as an impurity. The present work pertains to about the highest purity metal obtainable from the Brush Beryllium Co. This metal was in the form of lumps which were remelted and cast in a high-vacuum induction furnace. Expansion data in this paper deal with beryllium extruded into bars of rectangular cross-section 4x1/2 in. and the anisotropic expansivity of a large cast single crystal. Analysis of the cast metal after extrusion indicated a beryllium assay of 99.28 pct. Impurities were 0.170 pct Fe, 0.140 pct Al, 0.014 pct Mg, 0.086 pct Si, 0.020 pct Cu, 0.020 pct Mn, 0.007 pct Ni, 0.007 pct Ca, 0.080 pct C, 0.179 pct 0, (as BeO). Part I—Extruded Metal Thermal expansion measurements were obtained with a fused quartz-tube differential type dilatom-eter3 on specimens cut from the extruded sections in longitudinal and transverse directions. Specimens were machined to a diameter of 0.250 in. and a length of 3.000 in. One sample from each direction was vacuum annealed for 1 hr at 800°C. The dilatometer tube was placed in a vertical tube furnace having a uniform temperature zone which was twice the length of the sample. Average time for a complete thermal cycle to 500°C was 18 hr. Temperatures were observed with two chromel-alumel thermocouples attached to the sample about 1 M in. apart. The accuracy of temperature measure-ment was ± 0.25°C. An argon gas atmosphere sur-rounded the specimen to prevent oxidation of the beryllium. Samples were identified as shown in table I. Results - The original plan included measuring expansion up to 1000°C, but the first two runs on sample No. 5 showed that a permanent contraction occurred from

Jan 1, 1951

By James Humes

THE active mines in the Park City district at the present time are the Silver King Coalition, Daly-Judge, Daly West, and Silver King Consoli¬dated. Several other companies, such as the Daly, American Flag, Ontario, etc., are doing considerable development work. In the Silver King Coalition mines the ore is a replacement of a dark siliceous limestone bed, varying in thickness from 18 in. to several feet. In places the ore has reached a thickness of 25 ft. This limestone bed lies within 100 ft. of the underlying Weber quartzite. There are other lime beds, similar in appearance to this one, in the Park City formation, which is approximately 700 ft. thick; but not one of them has been found to contain any traces of ore. Directly under and in contact with the ore-bearing bed is another, composed of gray lime well studded with dark concretionary nodules; and this one is an unfailing indication of the proximity of the ore-bearing bed. These ore deposits make out from or have connection with some one of the ore-bearing fissures, which were undoubtedly the channels for the circulation of mineral-bearing solutions. It is therefore proper to run prospecting drifts in the fissures, although they seldom contain much ore. As a general rule, drifting in the fissures is not costly. Mining and mucking cost from $2.50 to $4 per foot, and very little timber is required. There are instances, as in the Daly fissure in the Daly-Judge mine, where the expense of keeping drifts open in the fissure is so great that it has proved economical to make the drifts in the foot-wall rock and run crosscuts into the fissure at short intervals. In the Park City mines it is not easy to determine beforehand the best method for extracting the ore from a newly discovered ore shoot in the bedded deposits. While we may get one dimension from the drift run in the fissure, that will not give us a correct idea as to the other dimensions of the orebody. The fissures here referred to have a N. 35° E.

Jan 2, 1915

By John W. Langley

The papers of Mr. W. J. Keep, read before this Institute, have called attention to the influence of aluminum in cast-iron and on iron and steel castings. The information in these papers is interesting and valuable, as showing the modifications which iron undergoes when dosed with sufficient aluminum to form a distinct alloy, the quantity of the alloying metal used being such that the amount remaining in the casting is sufficient to be readily discovered by analysis. The same is also true of the so-called aluminum-steel patented by R. A. Hadfield, where the proportions specified are such as to leave in the finished steel from one-twentieth to one-tenth of one per cent. of aluminum. Whether these alloys are of practical utility or not has thus far . not been proved by any extended tests on a large scale, and until such evidence is forthcoming it may be safely held, provisionally, that such a use of aluminum is of doubtful utility. But there is another function which this metal can perform that has been known for some time, and which has passed beyond the experimental stage, viz.: its beneficial effect in securing sound ingots. It appears to be a general property of all metals when in the fluid state and at a temperature considerably above their points of fusion, to contain gas, either dissolved from the air or frorn the furnace, or else self-evolved by internal reactions. Silver, perhaps, shows this power in the highest degree, and mercury and lead in the least; midway stands steel—the quantity of gas which it can hold in solution, or " occlusion " as it has been called, varies with its temperature, its composition, and its mode of manufacture. When the steel sets in the mould, a portion of this gas escapes, causing blow-holes, surface defects, boiling-over, wildness, and quite a long train of troubles, familiar to all practical steel-makers. Ferro-silicon has long been used as a quieting agent. The first extended use of it for this purpose was made at Terre-Noire, in

Jan 1, 1892

R. H. SWEETSER, Columbus, Ohio.-My experience with oxygen in the blast is limited to the use of one tank of oxygen in melting out a chilled anthracite furnace. The oxygen was introduced through the peephole of the tuyeres and opened them in a very short time. We could see that an intense heat was generated just as soon as the oxygen struck the fuel. I agree with the committee in respect to many. of the things that will probably happen in the iron blast furnace, particularly as to the speeding up of the operation. There will undoubtedly be changes in the shape of the blast furnace, and if I were designing one today I should hesitate about the form to give it. Mr. Kirby suggested that the proper shape might be rectangular. Some of the men of the American Rolling Mill Co. have reached the same conclusion, as a result of Royster and Joseph finding that the combustion zone in the front of the tuyeres extended into the furnace less than 40 in. If this is correct, we might build the furnace with an elongated rectangu-ular hearth having the shorter dimension a little over 80 in. and secure. a very intense temperature in the hearth. The committee's report said, "With more oxygen available in the blast, the smelting ability of the furnace will be increased beyond the' speed of the preparing zone in the shaft." This can be controlled by providing ample facilities for getting stock into the furnace, and this will be one of the biggest changes in blast-furnace construction. The question has been raised as to finding suitable refractories to withstand the increase of hearth temperature. If the furnace can be kept full, the descending column of cold material will probably take care of the increased heat from more rapid combustion of the coke. At the Cleveland meeting, in 1912, the iron blast-furnace men listened with great interest to a paper on copper slags; from Mr. Kirby's paper, it looks as though they might again have to go to the copper men, for many of the problems of the iron blast furnace of the. future that uses oxygen may be worked out on lines of the copper blast furnace.

Jan 11, 1924

By J. E. Sandor, P. F. Schmidt

A general review of the present knowledge of the semiconductor/oxide interface is given, with emphasis on silicon and germanium. The electrical properties of clean surfaces and the changes that occur upon oxidation are described. A brief disczcssion of the methods and mechanisms of oxidation of silicon is given, and the interaction between the semiconductor substrate and the oxide phase is considered. Physical properties of the oxide film, charge storage effects due to the dielectric, and some device applications of oxide films on semiconductors are discussed. THIS paper will be heavily preoccupied with the elemental semiconductors germanium and silicon. Undoubtedly some injustice is done thereby to other semiconductor-oxide systems, but it is not readily possible to cover all aspects of so vast a field in the present review. In considering the semiconductor/oxide interface, we may start out by discussing briefly an idealized clean semiconductor surface, and may then follow the changes brought about by oxidation, as the oxide is allowed to grow progressively thicker. The references given are not a complete list, but are to be taken as guides to the literature. Tamml suggested in 1933, based upon the study of a one-dimensional asymmetrical potential model, that localized surface states may appear at the surface of a crystalline lattice; it was pointed out by Fowler that these states should occur in pairs. shockley3 examined the origin of such surface states on the basis of a more general one-dimensional model and found that surface states may appear in the forbidden region between the highest filled and the lowest vacant band. This happens when the two bands overlap, as, for instance, the "s" and ('p" bands of the diamond structure. In a three-dimensional model these levels would produce a surface band which is half-filled for diamond, and the number of surface states should be approximately equal to the number of surface atoms. This picture of the surface has been refined by more recent theoretical work, like Handler's4 and Koutecky and Tomasek's~ without introducing essential modifications. When these concepts were applied to semiconduc-

Jan 1, 1965

By Morris Muskat

ALTHOUGH the problem of well spacing is one of the most important involved in the production of oil, it must be considered at the present time as still subject to further development. The published literature on this question is so voluminous that we cannot enter here into a review of it, except to refer to the recent papers by L. L. Foley1 and E. A. Stephen-son,2 where other references are cited. However, a decisive and conclu-sive answer to the problem of well spacing in any general form does not seem to have been developed. And while we shall be unable to present the desired solution in the present paper, it is nevertheless felt that the material to be given here not only provides the physical ground work for the ultimate solution, but shows qualitatively the essential factors that enter the well-spacing problem. Field studies of the well-spacing problem, in which the ultimate recoveries from different fields with different well spacings have been compared, have generally suffered from the lack of knowledge as to the similarity of the inherent characteristics of the producing reservoirs being compared, such as the sand volumes, the sand porosities, the sand permeabilities, the original reservoir pressures, the presence or absence of gas caps, the presence or absence of effective water drives, and the economic limits of production rates at which the various fields were considered to have yielded their ultimate recoveries. Certainly no one who is evaluating originally the economic significance of any oil reservoir would deliberately ignore these phases of the problem. And it is equally certain that no one would reasonably expect the ultimate recoveries from two reservoirs, even with the same well spacing, to be identical regardless of these other factors. More reliable results might be expected from comparisons of the recoveries obtained from different leases with different well spacings, but producing from the same reservoir sand. Unfortunately, however, even conclusions for such studies may be subject to serious errors. The reason simply is that however much one may insist that an operator is entitled only to the oil immediately underneath his surface acreage he will nevertheless drain the surrounding properties as long as his reservoir

Jan 1, 1939

By E. S. Bardwell

The reverberatory copper-refining furnaces at the Great Falls Reduction Dept. of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. have used successively as fuel, lump coal on grates, pulverized coal, oil and natural gas. In no other plant, so far as can be ascertained, has such a variety of fuels been used. This fact affords a unique opportunity for comparing the relative efficiency obtained with these several fuels under nearly identical conditions. Furnaces The present furnace refinery at Great Falls was placed in operation in April, 1916. The original installation consisted of two furnaces, each with hearths 36 by 14 ft. and provided with fireboxes 10 by 12 ft. for firing lump coal on grates. These furnaces had air-cooled sand bottoms and chrome-brick side walls both above and below the metal line. The roofs were of 12-in. silica brick. Each furnace was provided with a waste-heat boiler of approximately 400 boiler-hp. capacity. We soon found that chrome brick was very unsatisfactory as side-wall material because of its excessive spalling. At the first opportunity the furnaces were rebuilt, using magnesite brick below the metal line and silica brick from the metal line to the roof. At the same time the thickness of the side walls was increased, thus decreasing the width of the hearth to 13 ft. At about this time also, the thickness of the furnace roofs was increased from 12 to 15 in. No further changes occurred in furnace design until 1922, when the use of lump coal on grates was abandoned in favor of pulverized coal. The first charge to be melted and refined with pulverized coal was cast on March 30, 1922. When pulverized coal first was used the burner pipes were introduced directly into the firebox as it was felt that some kind of a combustion chamber might prove necessary, but this was not needed. The fireboxes were dismantled and the burners introduced through openings directly over the bridge wall. During the summer of 1922 one of the furnaces was completely rebuilt, lengthened 10 ft. and provided with a silica-brick bottom in the form of an inverted arch. At

Jan 1, 1934

By Morris Muskat

Although the problem of well spacing is one of the most important involved in the production of oil, it must be considered at the present time as still subject to further development. The published literature on this question is so voluminous that we cannot enter here into a review of it, except to refer to the recent papers by L. L. Foleyl and E. A. Stephen-son,2 where other references are cited. However, a decisive and conclusive answer to the problem of well spacing in any general form does not seem to have been developed. And while we shall be unable to present the desired solution in the present paper, it is nevertheless felt that the material to be given here not only provides the physical ground work for the ultimate solution, but shows qualitatively the essential factors that enter the well-spacing problem. Field studies of the well-spacing problem, in which the ultimate recoveries from different fields with different well spacings have been compared, have generally suffered from the lack of knowledge as to the similarity of the inherent characteristics of the producing reservoirs being compared, such as the sand volumes, the sand porosities, the sand permeabilities, the original reservoir pressures, the presence or absence of gas caps, the presence or absence of effective water drives, and the economic limits of production rates at which the various fields were considered to have yielded their ultimate recoveries. Certainly no one who is evaluating originally the economic significance of any oil reservoir would deliberately ignore these phases of the problem. And it is equally certain that no one would reasonably expect the ultimate recoveries from two reservoirs, even with the same well spacing, to be identical regardless of these other factors. More reliable results might be expected from comparisons of the recoveries obtained from different leases with different well spacings, but producing from the same reservoir sand. Unfortunately, however, even conclusions for such studies may be subject to serious errors. The reason simply is that however much one may insist that an operator is entitled only to the oil immediately underneath his surface acreage he will nevertheless drain the surrounding properties as long as his reservoir

Jan 1, 1940

By J. R. Campbell

A DOZEN years or so ago, the general superintendent of our company, now the president, Mr. W. H. Clingerman, detailed me to make a study of the coal-washing problem and collect data, which threw me into contact with the best washery men of the country. and took me to those districts where the washing of coal for metallurgical purposes is carried out. I investigated many kinds of coal-cleaning schemes, made numerous tests on them, and collected voluminous data, yet I confess frankly that I have had but little practical washery experience and that little has been at the Middlefork washery of the United States Fuel Co. at Benton, Franklin Co., Ill., which was put in operation last fall. While this wash-cry installation may not be the "last word," I am quite sure it embodies some long steps in advance over older designs and constructions. From the washery man's standpoint, the removal of pyrites, or marcasite, a disulfide of iron, is the one vital problem, and the one productive of the most beneficial results, so far as elimination of sulfur is concerned. Sulfates and so-called organic sulfur occupy quite a secondary -position and are generally lost sight of in coal washing: The elimination of sulfur in coal in the past has usually been accomplished by jigging in water, but lately the use of concentrating tables has been employed with good success, and some mention may be made of the flotation process on fine coal, though hardly considered practicable. Coal washing, is rapidly coming into its own, due to the depletion of low-sulfur coals for coking purposes, and before many years we predict as careful attention being given to the design and construction of coal washeries, ,as is now being given to byproduct plants and other allied industries. Heretofore, coal washing has been considered only as an incidental and a necessary evil-instead of the big problem it is one worthy of the most careful study by men well trained along technical lines and capable of delving into the fundamental principles.

Jan 9, 1919

By Morris Muskat

Although the problem of well spacing is one of the most important involved in the production of oil, it must be considered at the present time as still subject to further development. The published literature on this question is so voluminous that we cannot enter here into a review of it, except to refer to the recent papers by L. L. Foleyl and E. A. Stephen-son,2 where other references are cited. However, a decisive and conclusive answer to the problem of well spacing in any general form does not seem to have been developed. And while we shall be unable to present the desired solution in the present paper, it is nevertheless felt that the material to be given here not only provides the physical ground work for the ultimate solution, but shows qualitatively the essential factors that enter the well-spacing problem. Field studies of the well-spacing problem, in which the ultimate recoveries from different fields with different well spacings have been compared, have generally suffered from the lack of knowledge as to the similarity of the inherent characteristics of the producing reservoirs being compared, such as the sand volumes, the sand porosities, the sand permeabilities, the original reservoir pressures, the presence or absence of gas caps, the presence or absence of effective water drives, and the economic limits of production rates at which the various fields were considered to have yielded their ultimate recoveries. Certainly no one who is evaluating originally the economic significance of any oil reservoir would deliberately ignore these phases of the problem. And it is equally certain that no one would reasonably expect the ultimate recoveries from two reservoirs, even with the same well spacing, to be identical regardless of these other factors. More reliable results might be expected from comparisons of the recoveries obtained from different leases with different well spacings, but producing from the same reservoir sand. Unfortunately, however, even conclusions for such studies may be subject to serious errors. The reason simply is that however much one may insist that an operator is entitled only to the oil immediately underneath his surface acreage he will nevertheless drain the surrounding properties as long as his reservoir

Jan 1, 1940

By T. T. Read

Personnel work is a term recently introduced to cover the great variety of activities in industrial work that deal with the human factor. Much attention has been focusscd upon individual phases of personnel work, such as accident prevention, sanitation, "welfare" work, reducing labor turnover, and so on. In most cases these activities have been carried on as though they were distinct and separate fields; as a matter of fact, they are only different phases of the single problem of human engineering, and each has important and fundamental relations with the others. Thus, for example, high labor turnover is one of the most important causes of a high accident rate, and unsatisfactory housing conditions are an important cause of labor turnover. In the early stages of the study of these problems, it was necessary to take them up separately; the time has now arrived at which it is desirable to consider them as a whole in order to bring them into the right relation to each other. When thus considered as phases of an interrelated whole, they may be grouped as personnel work. A discussion of the importance of personnel work as a means of increasing dividends in industry may be objected to by some as a too materialistic way of looking upon work that is humanitarian. Nothing could be more mistaken than such an opinion. Humanitarianism, per se, has no place in industry, and nothing is gained and much is lost in pretending that it has. The only reason why a corporation engages in business is to make profits, and any activity of the corporation that does not tend either directly or indirectly toward that end is poor business. It is equally poor business to overlook any activities that do tend indirectly to the making of profits. On this basis, personnel work can be justified as a corporate activity; there is no justification whatever for abstract *humanitarianism from the business standpoint. One characteristic of the American workman is a general high level of intelligence, and it is an insult to intelligence to ask a man to believe that anything so impersonal as a corporation is really desirous of benefiting

Jan 1, 1918

By W. J. Carlson, I. lwasaki

Manganese and silica in nonmagnetic tailings from the direct reduction-magnetic separation step were so closely associated that no physical concentration methods were effective. Dilute sulfuric acid dissolved manganese and iron rapidly; manganese in the form of silicates was virtually insoluble in sulfuric acid solutions, thereby governing the maximum extraction attained by leaching. Autoclave leaching at elevated temperatures and at high oxygen pressures reduced the iron extraction to less than one tenth without affecting the manganese extraction. There was an indication that autoclaving solubilized the manganese silicates appreciably. Elimination of iron from leach solutions was carried out by aerating the solution in the pH range of 6.5-7; a platinum-calomel electrode pair provided a reliable indicator for the end point of iron removal. The purified leach solutions were free of interfering impurities for the recovery of manganese as metal, dioxide, or carbonate. Manganiferous iron ores of the Cuyuna Range, Minn., are too low in iron content to be directly useful as iron ores, and too low in manganese content to be termed manganese ores. Common methods of physical beneficiation such as gravity concentration and flotation have not been successful in upgrading this material. The R-N process, when applied to manganiferous iron ores,1'2 produces sponge iron by direct reduction of iron oxides, while leaving manganese as manganous oxide. From fine grinding and magnetic separation of the reduced ore, a tailing is produced which is relatively rich in manganese and low in iron content. The nonmagnetic tailing can readily be leached with acids and then further processed to recover manganese in various forms. In this way, two processes, neither of which would be an economic solution to the Cuyuna ore problem by itself, may be combined to produce two marketable products, thereby rendering the over-all process economically more attractive. This article reports on the results of a leaching study on the nonmagnetic tailings, both in a batch agitation vessel and in an autoclave; on the problems involved in the purification of leach liquors by aeration; and on the recovery techniques used to produce manganese metal by electrolysis, manganese dioxide either by electrolysis or by autoclaving, and

Jan 1, 1968

By W. H. Bassett

ALTHOUGH brasses and bronzes have been made for ages, a systematic study of their physical properties has been carried out only during the years of the present century. Among these properties may be included those which are to be detected by means of microscopic examination; in other words by the science of metallography. The earlier workers in this field, both in this country and abroad, gave their attention to steel. When the senior author explored the situation in 1902, there was little encouragement to be found in undertaking the study of the non-ferrous alloys. A start was made, and the metallography of the brasses and bronzes, as well as of the copper-nickel- zinc alloys developed materially under his direction. Annealing experiments were begun in 1902, and in the succeeding years the effect of temperature, and the influence of previous working, on the grain size of brass were studied. The conclusions so well known and widely published today were largely reached during those earlier years. In 1905 the first complete annealing series were made. By this it is meant that brass and copper sheet, 5 B & S Nos. hard, was machined into tensile test specimens, then annealed under accurate control for 30 min. at temperatures up to the melting point of the material. Various determinations were made, including tensile strength and elongation in 2 in. There rapidly followed similar series on all of the copper-zinc alloys from 100 to 60 per cent. copper, on the bronzes, cupronickels, and on copper-zinc-nickel alloys. At this point there was published by Grard, in October, 1909,1 the very comprehensive and complete work on the tensile properties of cartridge brass, 90-10 copper-zinc, and electrolytic copper. The excellent photomicrographs in that paper illustrated the changes in structure produced by cold rolling as well as by annealing at different temperatures, but where Grard's work was confined to copper and to two alloys, the investigations in this laboratory have been over the entire fields of the commercial copper-zinc alloys, copper-tin alloys, representative copper-nickel and copper-nickel-zinc alloys as well as aluminum bronzes and others of a more special nature.

Jan 1, 1927

By W. H. Bassett, C. Davis

Although brasses and bronzes have been made for ages, a systematic study of their physical properties has been carried out only during the years of the present century. Among these properties may be included those which are to be detected by means of microscopic examination; in other words by the science of metallography. The earlier workers in this field, both in this country and abroad, gave their attention to steel. When the senior author explored the situation in 1902, there was little encouragement to be found in undertaking the study of the non-ferrous alloys. A start was made, and the metallography of the brasses and bronzes, as well as of the copper-nickel-zinc alloys developed materially under his direction. Annealing experiments were begun in 1902, and in the succeeding years the effect of temperature, and the influence of previous working, on the grain size of brass were studied. The conclusions so well known and widely published today were largely reached during those earlier years. In 1905 the first complete annealing series were made. By this it is meant that brass and copper sheet, 5 B & S Nos. hard, was machined into tensile test specimens, then annealed under accurate control for 30 min. at temperatures up to the melting point of the material. Various determinations were made, including tensile strength and elongation in 2 in. There rapidly followed similar series on all of the copper-zinc alloys from 100 to 60 per cent, copper, on the bronzes, cupronickels, and on copper-zinc-nickel alloys. At this point there was published by Grard, in October, 1909,' the very comprehensive and complete work on the tensile properties of cartridge brass, 90-10 copper-zinc, and electrolytic copper. The excellent photomicrographs in that paper illustrated the changes in structure produced by cold rolling as well as by annealing at different temperatures, but where Grard's work was confined to copper and to two alloys, the investigations in this laboratory have been over the entire fields of the commercial copper-zinc alloys, copper-tin alloys, representative copper-nickel and copper-nickel-zinc alloys as well as aluminum bronzes and others of a more special nature.