Search Documents

Jan 1, 1930

Jan 1, 1944

By E. Gybbon Spilsbury

(Pittsburg meeting, March, 1910.) THE recovery of gold and silver from their ores by means of the cyanide process has been so successful in the last few years that any radical improvement would seem impossible; yet the appliance to which I wish to call attention in this paper is really a radical departure from the methods now in general use. The most modern and approved of these, known as the all-sliming method, depends for its success on the grinding of the. ore so fine that practically 90 per cent. of it will pass through a 200-mesh screen. The slimes thus produced are then agitated and aerated in tanks of various types. The main object of this treatment is to insure such a thorough admixture of the pulp and solution that every particle of the ore is surrounded by a volume of solution sufficient to insure the dissolving of the whole of the gold- and silver-content. In addition, in order to expedite the action of the cyanide, and to oxidize such elements as would, if left in their active state, become cyanicides, air is blown in under pressure. In the Pachuca tank, this air is the active and sole means of agitation. The chief objections to all the methods off agitation used heretofore are the expense of operating and maintaining the mechanical devices for keeping the pulp in suspension, and the length of time required to obtain a fairly complete extraction. of the values. These objections are inherent to any method of agitation effecting a circulation of the pulp and the solution together, by giving the whole mass a circular movement, as in the low-tank system, or a vertical circulation, as in the Pachuca-tank system. In both methods, the particles of ore are kept traveling in the same direction as the solution, and with very little difference of speed; so that, while the whole mass is in

May 1, 1910

[ ]

Jan 1, 1938

Jan 1, 1944

Jan 1, 1924

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS W E WRATHER, Chairman A B KINZEL -EARLE E SCHUMACHER DONALD H MCLAUGHLIN - JOHN R SUMAN FINANCE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS ERLE V DAVELER, Chairman PHILIP KRAFT - CLYDE E WEED

Jan 1, 1952

JOSEPH W. RICHARDS, Chairman. J. E. JOHNSON, JR., Vice-Chairman. ARTHUR S. CALLEN, Secretary, 453 Chestnut St., So. Bethlehem, Pa. SUB-COMMITTEES IRON ORE DWIGHT E. WOODBRIDGE, Chairman. ERNEST F. BURCHARD, WILLIAM KELLY, CHARLES F. RAND, FELIX A. VOGEL. BLAST FURNACES II. A. BRASSERT, Chairman. WILLIAM H. BLAUVELT, AMBROSE N. DIEHL, JAMES GAYLEY RICHARD V. McKAY. STEEL WORKS HENRY D. HIBBARD, Chairman. GUILLIAEM AERTSEN, C. F. W. RYS, .1. S. UNGER. FRANK D. CARNEY, A. A. STEVENSON, WILLIAM It. WALKER. MECHANICAL TREATMENT CHARLES A. BUCK, Chairman. ROBERT W. HUNT, GEORGE MESTA, FREDERICK W. WOOD.

Jan 6, 1915

By John J. Collins

[CONTENTS PAGE Purpose and scopeI Core samplingI Sludge sampling.....7 Combining core and sludge assays13 Deviation and surveying of drill holes17 Conclusions24 Acknowledgments25 Bibliography25] PURPOSE AND SCOPE The purpose of this paper is to review a few of the problems involved in the interpretation of diamond-drill core and sludge samples, with the hope that it will stimulate discussion and bring forth some of the information on the subject that has been accumulated by various organizations. The release of these data would benefit the mining industry as a whole. Particularly valuable would be the details of drilling programs that have been tested by actual mining operations, as most of the available published material is unsupported by production records. The scope of this paper is limited to a few of the commonest problems of interpreting diamond-drill core and sludge samples and the deviation of holes. It does not include the description of routine operations performed by the drillers, nor the estimation of ore reserves. The methods of calculating reserves have been described 25,26,31,32.50,65 but more information is needed on the results shown by actual mining operations. CORE SAMPLING The accuracy of diamond-drill-hole sampling depends in large measure on the percentage of core recovery. As a general rule, the longer the run, the poorer is the recovery. Although the longer runs allow cheaper drilling costs, the determining factor should be the percentage of recovery desired. The problem is one of balancing accuracy against costs. Holes of larger diameter may show improved recovery, except as Joralemon* points out that there are some conditions in which small holes give better core recovery than large holes. This is particularly true, he says, in rocks like shattered quartzite, where larger core tends to break in angular fragments and grind up, while the diameter of smaller core is less than the distance between joint planes and grinding is not so serious. In a large measure the length of the sample run should depend on the type of deposit. Favorable drilling may allow uniform sample runs of 5 ft., 10 ft., or perhaps 20 ft. In veins or beds of relatively narrow widths and changing characteristics, however, the ore zone may be overrun and ground in a core barrel full of waste rock. Generally it is desirable to break the sample at a change in the rock or ore. Such a change, often indicated by a color change in the sludge water, should be a signal for the driller to make a "dry" block and to pull out that run regardless of the length. Such a procedure permits the segregation of waste from ore samples so

Jan 1, 1946

By D. Geiselman, A. G. Guy

Single cvystals were grown from high-purity magnesium containing known amounts of nitvogen in the range 0.0008 to 0.0048 wt pet. Crystals of known ovientation were tested in tension in an Instron ma chine to determine the yield strength and to obsevue wheather a yield point occurred. Slowly cooled crystals or those given a solution heat treatment did not show a yield point. However, crystals that were aged following a solution treatment showed a yield point for all of the nitrogen contents studied. It was concluded that nitrogen caused the yield point by the Cottrell mechanism. NITROGEN has been shown to produce sharp yield points in single crystals of cadmium, zinc,2'3 ß-brass,4 and iron,5,6 as well as in polycrystalline iron7 and molybdenum.8,9 Since magnesium has a structure similar to zinc and cadmium, it seemed reasonable that magnesium should also exhibit a sharp yield point provided it contained sufficient nitrogen. Bobalek and Shrader10 reported a total nitrogen content of 0.002 to 0.0065 wt pct in com- mercial magnesium alloys, an amount well in excess of that required by theory. However. magnesium differs from cadmium and zinc in that it forms a stable nitride, Mg3N2, which has a standard free energy of formation of -95,480 cal per mole at 25" c." If rather than being in solid solution, the nitrogen were predominantly combined as the nitride, it could not act to produce a yield point. This type of behavior is the basis for the elimination of strain aging and a yield point in steel by the addition of strong nitride formers such as titanium,12 columbium,13 aluminum,14 vanadium,15 and boron.16,17 Thus, there appeared to be factors both favorable and unfavorable to the production by nitrogen of a sharp yield point in magnesium, and the purpose of this investigation was to determine the actual behavior of magnesium crystals containing known amounts of nitrogen.

Jan 1, 1960

The Institute is custodian of funds for support of numerous gold medals and prizes and has representatives on boards awarding still others. Details regarding the Institute Awards are given below. The Institute is represented on the boards of the John Fritz Medal, the Hoover Medal, and the Alfred Noble Prize, in conjunction with the three national societies of Civil, Mechanical and Electrical engineers; and, also on the board of the Washington Award, on which the Western Society of Engineers also is represented.

Jan 1, 1940

By E. Gybbon Spilsbury

Everybody who has had his attention turned to the gold-deposits of the Southern States, is acquainted with the undisputed fact of the existence, at least in the Carolinas and Georgia, of enormous areas of gold-bearing rocks. Long before the discovery of the precious metal in California, gold-mining on a very extensive scale mas a well-estab-

Jan 1, 1887

By James Barr

WHEN phosphate mining operations first commenced in Tennessee the loss of both high- and low-grade material was large, because of the crude hand methods employed. Practically all rock smaller than 2 in. was thrown back into the pits and covered with the overburden of subsequent openings. With the advent of mechanical washers and other mining machinery, together with the abolishing of the contract system, the waste has been steadily diminished, until at present only the finest sand is being rejected; and even this is not lost, for in the majority of cases the water, slime, and sand from the washers are run into large settling ponds where practically all of the phosphate-bearing material is caught and stored for future use, or until it is profitable to ship lower grades. The latest equipment used to recover the fine and lower-grade phosphate sand includes Dorr thickeners, settling tanks, Dorr classifiers and settling ponds served by locomotive cranes with clam-shell buckets, making it possible to save material averaging as fine as 200 mesh. To attempt saving finer material would necessitate a different type of drier, which might be patterned after the multiple-deck roasters. The present tailing runs from 15 to 25 per cent. of available phosphate, which, however, as mentioned before, does not represent a total loss to possible future operations. The demand of the consumer is the greatest factor in regulating the recovery at present. In the mining of blue rock, which does not require washing treatment, the main waste material is the capping of low-grade kidney forma-tion, generally used for backfilling of the rooms. By reason of the introduction of improved methods in the early stages and the re-mining of territory skimmed over at the start, at the present time the net result of all operations is a comparatively small loss.

Jan 2, 1916

By E. A. Anderson

THE copper-zinc phase equilibrium diagram has been the sub-ject of many investigations. Until recently, however, the boundary of the terminal solid solution of copper in zinc (eta) has not been thoroughly investigated. This paper reports determinations of the solid solubility of copper in zinc at temperatures from 100° to 400° C., the course of the liquidus and solidus for the eta solid solution and determinations of the peritectic temperature and peritectic point for the reaction between epsilon and the melt to form eta. The liquidus of the eta phase was determined by thermal analysis and the solidus by the microscopical examination of specimens quenched from temperatures above and below the solidus. The temperature of the peritectic horizontal was obtained by thermal analysis and the com-position at the peritectic point was determined by extrapolation of the solid solubility boundary of the eta phase to the peritectic horizontal. The solid solubility boundary of the eta solid solution was investigated very carefully. Particular care was used to achieve equilibrium in the alloys at each temperature selected. The X-ray, electrical con-ductivity and microscopical methods were used in determining the solid solubility limits. The X-ray method measures the changes in the solvent lattice with increasing solute content and in this manner locates the composition of the alloy at which no further change in the solvent lattice takes place, the limit of solid solubility. The method of electrical conductivity measures the conductivity of the alloys of a graded series of compositions, whereby the solubility limit is indicated by a discontinuity in the conductivity-

Jan 1, 1934

By Eugene A. Alexandrov

The Minister of Geology of the Soviet Union P.Ya. Antropov, recently visited China and claims that this country occupies one of the foremost places in the world in reserves of tin, tungsten, molybdenum, antimony, iron ore, coal, and phosphates. Occurrences of economic value of chromite, nickel, gold, beryllium, tantalum, niobium, rare earths, and asbestos have also been reported. MINERAL RESOURCES Coal: The inferred reserves of coal are estimated at at 1,500 billion tons. A considerable part of the coal reserves is represented by coking coal, 80% of which is bituminous. Thicknesses of coal seams range up to 150 ft in the principal deposits located in northern and northeastern China. The total output of coal in 1958, 270 million tons, was produced by an army of 20 million people mainly in small mines operated by the agricultural communes. Modern hydraulic mining is applied besides primitive, obsolete methods and equipment

Jan 3, 1960

By John Hays Hammond

Discussion of the paper of John Hays Hammond, presented at the Chattanooga meeting, October, 1908, and published in Bi.-Monthly Bulletin., No. 24, November, 1908, pp. 1171 to 117S. PROF. HENRY Louis, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, En j. (communication to the Secretary'`) :-I welcome Mr. Hammond's paper as an. attempt to give definiteness to the best modern professional practice. Such a codification of our professional ethics is urgently needed, seeing how widely the views of mining engineers differ on some of the point-,. raised, for example, I have no hesitation it) performing a class of work, as to which Mr. Hammond seems to entertain some doubts, and, on the other hand, I strongly condemn a practice which he appears to recommend. I have not the least hesitation in making reports for vendors of mining properties, and am constantly doing so; . the best justification for this practice may be found in the fact that such reports have been repeatedly accepted by buyers as giving a correct representation of the facts of the case, which is all that should be demanded from any report. On the other hand, Mr. Hammond advocates that mitring engineers should take payment for their reports tin shares of a company to be floated upon the basis of such reports. I hold that this is ethically wrong, as even the most honest of men is liable to be unconsciously biased under these conditions. Indeed, I go much further, and maintain that a mining engineer who re¬ports or advises upon mining properties should never hold any-mining shares at all, or be himself interested in any mine,' and this has been my consistent practice for many years. A man who holds shares in a mine, and is called upon to report upon a neighboring property or a similar mine, can never be wholly unbiased, and even if lie could be, he would always lay himself open to the suspicion that he was giving a favorable report so as to-enhance the value of the property in which he himself is interested, or an unfavorable report so as to stifle competi-

Jun 1, 1909

By Earl H. Miller, Henry H. Bruhn

COMMERCIAL beds of sylvite ore were discovered by the Snowden & McSweeney Co. while drilling a wildcat oil well some 25 miles northeast of Carlsbad, N. NI., in 1925. After a preliminary core drilling program the U. S. Potash Co. sank a 1060-ft shaft within 4 miles of the original discovery. This shaft was in an isolated location in a sand desert area with only the roughest of dirt roads connecting it with the neigh- boring town of Carlsbad some 21 ½ miles west.

Jan 6, 1954

By F. C. Farnham

THERE has been very little, if any, uniformity in the reference datum used for magnetometer surveys. It has been the practice to choose a base station at which the magnetic field is assumed to be normal and call the difference in field strength between a given station and this base the anomaly at the given station. For small-scale surveys latitude and longitude corrections may or may not be applied, but for large-scale surveys such corrections usually are applied. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey maps showing lines of equal magnetic intensity are commonly used to determine the normal latitude and longitude variation by scaling values from the map for given points and computing the change per mile north and the change per mile east. This method has been quite satisfactory for isolated surveys, but when two surveys originating at different base stations were extended until they joined, difficulty arose, not only because of discrepancies between base-station values, but also because of differences between the latitude and longitude correction factors used for the separate surveys. It is the purpose of this paper to describe a reference datum for magnetometer surveys which, it is believed, will eliminate most of the difficulty arising from this source. In order to be satisfactory, a general datum for magnetometer sur-veys should be as close as possible to the observed field and still he based on some assumed distribution of magnet poles, in order that the "normal" value of any component of the field for any given point may be computed to as many significant figures as desired. Such a field has been com-puted, and a comparison of the intensity of its vertical component with the average vertical intensity for the United States as shown by the U.S.C.G.S. map of lines of equal intensity for 1935 is shown in Fig. 1.

Jan 1, 1939

PHILIP D. BLOCK, JR., vice president of Inland Steel Co., visualizes a fine future for the Menominee Range of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He sees a future unclouded by threat from foreign ore imports or the development of low grade ore processing in Minnesota. The statement was made during the opening of Inland's new Cayia mine near Crystal Falls. Inland, according to the vice president, is planning to use an increased amount of the high phosphorous ores found on the Menominee Range. He said that other steel companies will probably do the same, because the steel industry has learned how to use ores of high phosphorous content. He said: "I do not mean to imply that we can use an unlimited amount of high phosphorous ores or that we can burden our blast, furnaces with 100 pct high phosphorous ores, but we have reached the point where we can absorb a much larger percentage of these ores without any detrimental effects. Foreign ores and lowgrade Minnesota ores cost too much to offer real competition, Block said. Transportation costs from the Menominee range to steel producing centers in Chicago and on Lake Erie are less than for any other range in this country. In the meantime, the American operators of the Bomi Hills iron ore mine in Liberia, have reportedly signed a new agreement with the Government. Several months ago, President Tubman of Liberia expressed a definite dissatisfaction with the original contract. Informants state that the agreement only needs the approval of the Export-Import Bank, which loaned Liberian Mining Co. $4 million to develop the iron ore properties. Majority stockholder of the Liberian Mining is Republic steel, with 61.57 pct of the stock. Under the new contract, the Liberian Government will start to share in the profits when the indebtedness is liquidated and the return of invested capital accomplished, or April 1, 1957, whichever is earlier. Under the old agreement the Liberian Government received a 5 cent per ton royalty and an additional sum based on the price of pig iron. The royalty rate reached more than 17 cents per ton this year. After debt liquidation the Liberian Government will receive 25 pct of net profits for the first five years; 35 pct for the next ten years; and 50 pct thereafter. Until the Government starts to share in profits it will receive a royalty of $1.50 per ton in U. S. currency, in addition to royalties provided for in the old agreement.

Jan 1, 1952

By Owen Thornton

Recently equations have been presented by Rose and Bruce' and by Rose², showing how the relative permeability of a reservoir rock may be determined from the capillary character of the rock. In particular, equations were developed to show the relationship between capillary pressure and the effective permeability to the wetting phase in a poly-phase flow system. The equations are as follows (nomenclature the same as in the Rose and Bruce paper) Rose and Bruce assume that the average length of path (L,), which the wetting fluid follows in flowing through a porous media is independent of the saturation to the wetting phase, so that 1 is a constant dependent only on the k rock, and the permeability to the wetting phase is a function of the saturation and of the capillnry pressure: In measuring the flow of ekctric current through partially saturated core samples, it has been observed that the electrical resistance usually is not a simple linear function of saturation. This fact indicates that the average length of path in the flow of electric current is not independent of saturation, but rather that the tortuosity of the path depends upon the average saturation to the conducting fluid as well as upon the characteristics of the rock. itself. Inasmuch as the flow of fluid and the flow of electric current in many respects are analogous, it may be indicated further that the length of path for fluid also may not be independent of saturation. The following relationship can be derived to express the resistance to flow of electric current through a core sample partially saturated with conductive wetting phase, the non-wetting phase being non-conductive: where L is the average length of path followed by the current in flowing through a length L of partially saturated core, where L is the length of current path when the core is fully saturated, and where Rs and R, are the specific resistivities of the partially saturated and saturated core sample, respectively. It will be noted that R., the specific resistivity of the core sample when S, = 1.0, is equal to the "formation resistivity factor"' multiplied by the specific resistivity of the saturating fluid. If it be assumed that the average lengths of path for fluid flow and for the flow of electric current are the same, then equation (5) may be combined with equations (l), (2) and (3) to give the following relationship: The above equation suggests including a correction for tortuosity when calculating the relative permeability of a reservoir rock to a wetting phase. The correction factor may be obtained from the resistivity-saturation relationship. For instance, the following calcu- lations are obtained for the unconsoli-dated sands described by Leverett Kw Kw Sw R°/Rs Pt/Pc¹ (Calc.) (Obs.) 0.30 0.08 0.88 0.02 0.0 0.40 0.16 0.94 0.06 0.04 0.50 0.27 0.97 0.14 0.11 0.60 0.40 0.98 0.26 0.21 0.70 0.53 0.98 0.39 0.35 0.80 0.68 0.99 0.57 0.54 0.90 0.84 0.99 0.77 0.76 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 It will be noted that the agreement between the calculated points and the observed data is rather good. Further investigation of the above method for obtaining relative permeabilities may be merited. For many sands within specified ranges of saturations the following relationship has been found to hold approximately': — =SW"......(7) Rs The exponent n in the above equation has been found to equal two for many sands so that equation (6) reduces to the following: The writer acknowledges the permission of The Texas Co. to submit this note for publication. 1. Walter Rose and W. A. Bruce—Jnl. of Pet. Tech., Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 127 (1949). 2. Walter Rose—Jnl. of Petr. Tech., Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 111 (1949). 3. G. E. Archie— -Trans. AIME, 146, 54 (1942). 4. M. C. Leverett— Trans. AIME, 142, 152 (1941). 5. M. C. Leverett—Trans. AIME, 132, 149 (1939).

Jan 1, 1949