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ARTHUR H. STORRS, Scranton, Pa.-I would like to ask whether this same process is applicable to bituminous coal? FELLS A. VOGEL, New York, N. Y.-This Dutch process is applicable to bituminous or any other kind of coal. The Berwind Fuel Co. has had a plant in operation, in Superior, Wis., for about 2 years, using the Dutch process, and it has made a very satisfactory briquette, using Pocahontas coal. There is just one item in Mr. Frey's paper I would like to discuss; that is, the matter of cost. Mr. Frey figures a total cost of $3.35, based on the use of 7 per cent. of oil. Of course, the price of oil has advanced seriously within the last year or two, and any possible reduction in the percentage of oil required in the manufacture of briquettes is very important. I believe that Mr. Frey will agree that very good briquettes can be made with considerably less than 7 per cent. of oil; in fact, actual experience has shown that it can be clone with less than 5 per cent. The only possible effects of a low percentage of oil, particularly in anthracite briquettes, are that the briquette might not burn so freely, and that it might not be quite so hard. Briquettes made by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co., using 7 per cent. of binder, are extremely tough. Those briquettes have been handled in one of the local yards in Brooklyn, chuting them from railroad cars into boats and digging them out by grab buckets, and the losses average less than 2 per cent. This compares very favorably with domestic anthracite coal, with which the losses from breakage amount to between 7 and 10 per cent.

Jan 4, 1918

By Francis Church Lincoln

I. SITUATION AND SURROUNDINGS. THE Promontorio mine is situated at the northern end of the Sierra San Francisco de Coneto, in the town of Promontorio, Partido of El Oro, State of Durango, Mexico. As shown in the sketch-map, Fig. 1, the nearest railroad station is Chinacates on the Mexican International Railroad, 82 miles north of the city of Durango. The mine is 16 miles north of the station by air-line. It is reached by means of a good wagon-road which first crosses the Guatimapé Plain, passing the ranches of San Antonio and San Julian, to Estacion-a distance of about 15.5 miles-and then entering the mountains crosses the Sierra to Promontorio-a further distance of 11.5 miles¬making in all a distance of 27 miles by road from railroad to mine. Promontorio is just beyond the summit of the range, at an elevation of about 8,000 ft. above sea-level, or 1,350 ft. above the Chinacates station. The Castillo de San Francisco, the highest peak in the Sierra, has an altitude of 10,000 ft., and the Promontorio road crosses the summit of the ridge at an elevation of 9,000 ft. by a pass just below this peak known as the Puerto del Almagre. The Promontorio mill is situated at Santa Ives, 2 miles by tram or 3 miles by wagon-road to the north of Promontorio and about 600 ft. lower. The Sierra San Francisco de Coneto decreases in height towards the north and west till it comes to an end at the Melchor Arroyo on the ranches of Melchor and Ramos. Beyond this arroyo another range, the Sierra de la Candela, begins. In the vicinity of the Promontorio mine the hills are very rugged and the surface is furrowed by ravines which contain running streams during the rainy season-July, August and

Jan 1, 1908

By Harold Roast

THE object of this investigation was to compare the arsenical antimony-lead alloy with some of the regular bearing-metal alloys. With this end in view, the following tests were made: 1. Chemical analyses to show the composition. 2. Thermal analyses. 3. Macroscopic examination of fractures. 4. Microscopic examination. 5. Tensile tests. 6. Crushing tests. 7. Scleroscope tests. 8. Brinell tests, at temperatures from 80° to 400° F. Tests 3 to 8 were conducted on both sand-cast and chill-cast specimens. For the purposes of this paper the alloys have been numbered from 1 to 6; their composition is as follows: LEAD, ANTIMONY, TIN, COPPER, ARSENIC, NUMBER PER CENT. PER CENT. PER CENT. PER CENT. PER CENT. 1 82.64 12.95 4.40 0.01 none 2 27.54 9.94 59.87 2.65 none 3 77.65 20.75 none 0.13 1.47 4 82.95 16.85 none 0.20 none 5 83.78 15.35 none 0.05 0.82 6 0.15 7.87 84.13 7.85 none The analysis, in the case of the antimony, was made by solution in sulfuric acid and titrated with permanganate. For tin, the ferric-chloride method was used; for copper, the alkaline separations, and the thiocyanate methods; for arsenic, volatilization of arsenic and titration with iodine. The lead, with the exception of alloy 6, was taken by difference.

Jan 2, 1922

By M. D. Everell

A study has been made of the relationships between grinding selection functions and physical properties of rocks, particularly the failure loads of irregular particles and the compressive and tensile strengths of large regular specimens. The rocks used were limestones of various structures and impurity contents, a carbonatite, and a high-purity crystallized calcite. The selection functions were obtained from carefully performed grinding experiments on selected narrow size ranges in various grinding machines-a laboratory batch ball mill, a Hard grove grindability machine, and a mill of the type suggested by Yang, Mempel, and Fuerstenau. The specific rates of breakage during milling and the failure loads of irregular specimens correlated well for the rocks studied. The testing of irregular particles is suggested as a means of predicting the behavior of commercial mills.

Jan 1, 1973

By J. S. Johnson, W. C. McCulloch

All phases of plant operation must be synchronized so that the A number of interruptions in the flow of material may be reduced to a minimum. In the majority of plants operating under a labor agreement, time lost during the operating shift cannot be made up with overtime. With the work week restricted to 35 hr., the ratio of productive time to total time justifies extra effort in keeping the plant operating at capacity during the productive shift. This does not apply when central plants with adequate storage are operated by multiple shifts. In such installations the problems become similar to those of any factory or mill where added units, parallel circuits, or excess capacity serve to maintain the average production during intervals of maintenance shut- down. These plants, by special agreement, may run continuously, barring mechanical interruptions. The control of plant operation is in those procedures that are practiced to obtain from the run-of-mine product a high recovery of clean coal products to meet adopted trade standards and consumer specifications at the lowest possible cost. Correlation of all factors for continuous operation requires more than mechanical perfection in the plant. The run-of-mine coal must be delivered to the preparation plant without delays and the clean coal and refuse products taken away. Power supply and water requirements must be adequate. Signal systems must be established for emergency stops and to facilitate resumption of coal flow.

Jan 1, 1943

By Everett D. Jackson

The largest deposits of chromite in the United States occur in tabular layers in the lower part of the Stillwater Complex, Montana. Nearly 900,000 long tons of chromite concentrates have been produced from mines and mills in this area, and reserves equivalent to more than 2,500,000 long tons of Cr2O3 remain in the ground. Layered concentrations of chromite (known as chromitite zones) occur only within olivine-rich layers of the Peridotite member of the Ultramafic zone of the Stillwater. As many as thirteen chromitite zones, lying conformably one above another, have been found, but only five of them are thick enough to be of any conceivable economic interest, and only two of them have been mined to date. Individual chromitite zones can be recognized by their distinctive internal character and by their stratigraphic position in the Peridotite member. The chemical composition of chromite varies consistently between and within the different chromitite zones. The zones range in thickness from about an inch to more than 12 feet, and the Cr2O3, content of their chromite ranges from 36.6 to 49.2 weight per cent. In any given area, the G chromitite zone is the thickest, but the chromite of the H chromitite zone has the highest grade. Laterally, the thickness of the chromitite zones is related to the thickness of the Peridotite member; in general all are thicker in the eastern part of the Stillwater than in the western part.

Jan 1, 1968

By H. J. Rahilly

MINE FIRES, in the Butte District, have been a source of trouble and expense for the past thirty years, for while the actual fire area in most of the mines has been comparatively small, the handling of the gas has generally been a much larger problem than the actual putting out of the fire. The chief causes of these fires have been: Defective electrical equipment, incendiarism or carelessness, and spontaneous combustion. While fires from the first two causes have been numerous, they have generally been discovered and extinguished before they became very serious. Spontaneous combustion has been the cause of most of the large fires. Sufficient heat has been generated by ground movement, high rock temperatures, and decomposition to set fire to inflammable materials (tarred ropes, canvas, dry timber, manure, and hay) left in the gobs some years ago. Also, the heat resulting from the oxidation of the fine broken sulfide ore is sometimes sufficient to set fire to the timbers. In 1906, a fire was discovered on the 1100-ft. level of the Minnie Healy mine about 400 ft. (122 m.) west of the Minnie Healy shaft, which presumably originated, in one of the upper levels, from spontaneous combustion. The fire was walled off by concrete bulkheads and a pillar of ground 100 ft. (30 m.) thick was left below and mining resumed underneath. During subsequent operations, this pillar became cracked and broken and the fire passed into the new workings. It travelled downward and spread rapidly until, in 1917, it had become necessary to wall off portions of the Tramway, Leonard, and West Colusa mines on the 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1800, 1900, and 2000-ft. levels, and the top of the 2200-ft. raises were sealed. The fire area now consists roughly of a block 1000 by 1200 ft. and from the 600-ft. to the 2200-ft. level. This block is composed largely of a series of parallel northwest-southeast nearly vertical veins and stringers that form a large orebody, with no well-defined walls but badly fractured and faulted, and known locally as "Horsetail Ore." These veins, or orebodies, are mined by the square-set or the rill method.

Jan 2, 1922

By R. G. Davies

WeERTMANI has shown that the high temperature steady state creep rate, i, in lead and indium-base alloys obeys an equation of the form where AH is the activation energy, o the applied stress, n the stress exponent, and R and T have their usual meanings. He observed a variation in n from 4.5 for pure metals to 3 for concentrated alloys, which he interpreted as due to Change in creep mechanism from the climb of dislocations in pure metals to a micro-creep mechanism in the alloys. The Cottrell-Jaswon microcreep mechanism of the moving dislocation taking its impurity atmosphere with it was considered to be the most likely process, although short-range order and the segregation of solute atoms to a stacking fault will also give a stress exponent of 3. Steady state creep has been investigated in a Au - 27 at. pct Cu alloy at temperatures above 1/2 TIM where TIM the absolute melting temperature. As the oxidation resistance of this alloy is excellent all tests were carried out in air with a furnace built to give a temperature variation of less than 1°C along the 60 mm gage length. A lever-arm arrangement applied the stress with a load being adjusted between each creep test to maintain a constant stress. As each test produced less than 0.5 pct creep strain, the variation in stress during the test was negligible. The creep strain was measured by a transducer at the end of one of the alloy-steel grips, with the out of balance potential being finally recorded on a variable speed chart recorder. A typical creep curve is shown in Fig. 1. The results, Fig. 2, confirm that n is nearer to 3 than to 4.5; the creep mechanism could be any of those given above. The activation energy, AH, which is independent of stress, is consistent with a diffusion controlled process; the activation energies for the self-diffusion of gold and for the diffusion of gold into Copper are both -45 kcal per ml., There is now considerable evidence, that, when the steady state creep is dependent upon diffusion, irrespective of the actual creep mechanism, the activation energy is independent of the stress. The author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, and the Argentine Atomic Energy Commission.

Jan 1, 1962

By W. W. Stephens, W. J. Kroll, H. P. Holmes

THE only two methods for producing commercial quantities of malleable zirconium, up to now, have been using magnesium reduction of the anhydrous chloride under a neutral gas, and using purification of raw zirconium by the iodide dissociation method on a hot filament. The purity of the metal obtained by the latter process is about the same as that resulting from the chloride reduction, with the exception of the oxygen content, which may be about 0.05 pct lower in the iodide metal. Even traces of oxygen have a strong hardening effect on zirconium. Since, in the iodide process, the impurities, Si, Al, Fe, Ni, and Mg in the raw zirconium used, are carried over, it would appear uneconomical to use this method of refining solely to eliminate the traces of oxygen, unless very soft metal is desired. One important step to improve the iodide method, namely, dissociating pure iodide made from carbide and recycling the iodine, which would change this refining process into a method for extracting zirconium from the ore, has not yet been made. The Bureau of Mines, by using the chloride reduction, wanted to produce quantities of a reasonably pure and malleable metal at low cost for large-scale industrial use. This aim has been achieved, and a pilot plant permitting production of 600 lb of malleable zirconium per week will be described (fig. 1). Briefly, the Bureau of Mines process consists of reducing purified gaseous anhydrous zirconium chloride with fused magnesium under a noble-gas atmosphere. The reaction product, magnesium chloride, and any excess magnesium metal present are removed from the sponge zirconium in the next step by fusion and evaporation in a good vacuum at about 925°C. In this process, care is taken to keep air out of contact with the hot metal, which otherwise would contaminate the product with oxygen and nitrogen. Both these impurities embrittle zirconium even when present in an amount as low as 0.1 pct. A number of previous reports1-3 describe the method and the various improvements that finally led to a workable process. The major steps made were the production of large quantities of carbide, which is the raw material for producing the chloride, its chlorination with reasonable efficiencies, and the elimination of iron trichloride contained in the raw chloride, as well as that of the zirconium oxide which is always present in this product. The physical nature of the anhydrous chloride, which sublimes at 331°C at atmospheric pressure and melts at 420°C under a pressure of 25 atm, made it necessary to provide a special safety device on the purification and reduction vessels in the form of a lead-alloy seal, permitting escape of excess gases if pressure tended to build up. The main difficulties encountered in the reduction and in the following step, salt separation in a vacuum at elevated temperature, were caused by the material from which the reaction pot was constructed—iron. This metal reacts with zirconium at about 940°C with formation of a eutectic. The last step, salt separation by evaporation of the magnesium and magnesium chloride in a vacuum, is quite unconventional and has not been used before on such a scale. It is only due to the improved construction of high-vacuum pumps, especially oil-diffusion pumps, that such a method could be used. The various steps of the Bureau of Mines process, as described in the general outline above, may be summarized as follows: (1) production of the carbide, (2) chlorination of the carbide, (3) purification of the raw chloride, (4) reduction of the pure chloride with fused magnesium, (5) separation of excess magnesium and magnesium chloride in vacuum at elevated temperature, and (6) melting of the sponge obtained. Production of Carbide The arc furnace, described in a previous report,' was improved both to reduce the graphite consumption caused by the burning of the bottom plates and to concentrate the heat in order to obtain better power efficiency. This was achieved by providing the bottom with graphite plates entirely embedded in refractory bricks, the contact with the current being made with three water-cooled copper plugs. Figs. 2 and 3 show the arrangement. The crucible, made

Jan 1, 1951

By W. H. Emmons

MANY mineral veins occupy faults, and movements on certain warped fault planes have resulted in openings. On normal faults the [ ] steeper parts have the widest openings, and on reverse faults the flatter parts have the widest openings. Theoretically the width of the opening is the sine of the angle of deflection times the amount of movement on the fault plane, but actually the widths of some of the openings are probably less because of readjustments of walls along joints or of other readjustments. The first treatment of the subject seems to have been in a book on mineral veins by John Leithart, published in Newcastle, England, in 1838. Later the subject was treated in various texts published in Germany, in England, and elsewhere. The subject was not given much prominence in the earlier American literature on economic geology, but has interested several workers in that field in the past decade. In this paper examples of districts showing ore shoots on warped faults, with relations noted, are described. Fault veins of the three depth classes of veins are noted. Many epithermal veins are in normal faults, and commonly the larger ore shoots are in their steeper portions. Many mesothermal veins are in reverse faults and many others are in normal faults. The flatter parts of veins in reverse faults are commonly wider than the steeper parts, although they are not always as rich as the steeper segments of the veins. There are not many hypothermal veins in faults of measured displacement.

Jan 1, 1943

By Henry Newton

It may seem somewhat a work of supererogation to present to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, composed largely of gentlemen with whom the subject is so familiar, a paper on iron ores and their distribution. To many of them, however, it possibly will not be without interest, as there may be some, like myself, who hare nowhere found a connected account of the character of the deposits and the circumstances upon which are founded the great iron-producing centres of the world. This blank I have endeavored to fill,

By Henry Newton

IT may seem somewhat a work of supererogation to present to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, composed largely of gentle- men with whom the subject is so familiar, a paper on iron ores and their distribution. To many of them, however, it possibly will not be without interest, as there may be some, like myself, who hare nowhere found a connected account of the character of the deposits and the circumstances upon which are founded the great iron-producing centres of the world. This blank I have endeavored to fill,

Jan 1, 1875

By F. C. Bond, J. T. Wang

H. J. Kamack (E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc., Wilmington, Del.)—Rittinger's law usually is stated to the following effect: "The work (or energy) consumed in particle size reduction is proportional to the new surface area produced." The law has been stated substantially in this way by Taggart20 Berry21 Dalla Valle22 Coghill and DeVaney,23 Richards and Locke," Gross,25 and many others, and, according to Gaudin,26 was originally expressed by Rittinger in the same form. Consequently there can be little doubt that this is the understanding of the law among most workers in the field of particle size reduction. Bond and Wang, however, express the law in the form "the useful work accomplished . . . ." (italics theirs). The distinction is critical, for in the form used by Bond and Wang the law becomes, as they themselves remark "merely a more or less arbitrary definition of useful work," while in its usual sense the law expresses a physical hypothesis which has been verified experimentally within certain limitations. Considering the way the law has been used, it might be stated more explicitly as follows: "In a given machine operating under a given set of constant operating conditions, the work consumed in the particle size reduction of a given material is proportional to the new surface area produced." Or, as Coghill and deVaney have said,27 "the (Rittinger) law holds only when the tests being compared are made under analogous conditions." There are occasions when the law transcends these limitations; for example, the surface area produced per unit energy consumption for a given material in a ball mill does not vary much over a fairly wide range of operating conditions. But by and large, the surface area production per unit energy consumption will vary with the operating conditions, the type of machine, and the material. The essence of Rittinger's law is that the surface area production per unit energy consumption is independent of the particle size, and this has been verified experimentally by numerous workers for numerous materials, within certain limits. An important limitation is that when one grinds to very small particle sizes, agglomerative forces may tend to interfere with size reduction so that the surface area increases less rapidly than Rittinger's law would predict. Within such limitations, Rittinger's law can be regarded as empirically established. The law has, however, certain theoretical implications, and it seems to be chiefly against these that Bond and Wang direct their criticism. Solids are believed to possess surface energy which is proportional to surface area. Thus, Rittinger's law implies a proportionality between surface energy produced and mechanical energy expended (for a particular material in a particular machine). It does not imply that all or most of the mechanical energy is transformed into surface energy; in fact it is known that most of the mechanical energy is transformed into heat. Bond and Wang assert that most of this heat arises from the damping of elastic vibrations of stressed particles. This may possibly be true for crushing (with which they are chiefly concerned), although in grinding it is probable that much of the heat arises from friction between particles. However, the fact that the surface energy is small compared to the heat energy does not invalidate Rittinger's law, which implies merely that they are proportional. The authors also criticize Rittinger's law on the grounds that "this theory cannot be justified mathematically, since work is the product of force times distance, and the distance factor is ignored," and "energy input must be the product of force times distance, and the Rittinger theory completely ignores large variations in the distance (strain dimension or deformation) throughout which a force must act to produce breakage of different materials." However, the quantities force and distance as such are irrelevant to Rittinger's law, which considers energy input as an integral quantity. The fact that different materials require different forces and strains (hence, different amounts of energy) to break them is incontrovertible but again is irrelevant to Rittinger's law, which, as mentioned before, applies -only to a single material. Even in theory, it would not be expected that the surface area produced per unit energy consumption would be the same for different materials, because the surface energy per unit area is presumably specific to each material. Bond and Wang advance another argument of a

Jan 1, 1952

By R. E. Somers

I. Introduction...........................604 1. Location, Topography, and Climate...............604 2. Scope of Work and Acknowledgments...............606 3. History and Mining......................606 11. General Geology.........................609 1. Introduction...........................609 2. Granite. :..........................610 3. Quartz Porphyry......................... 612 4. Monzonite........................... 614 5. Volcanic Breccia........,................ 618 6. Gravels............................. 619 111. Economic Geology......................... 619 1. Introduction........................... 619 2. Mineralogy........................... 619 3. Occurrence of the Ores...................... 622 4. Oxidation and Downward Enrichment............... 630 5. Rock Alteration........................639 6. Genesis of the Ores........................ 643 I. Introduction 1. Location, Topography, and Climate The Burro Mountains are located in the southwestern part of New Mexico, in Grant county. The group is made up of two distinct mountain masses, known as the Little Burros and the Big Burros, the former lying about 6 miles southwest of Silver City, and the latter about 9 miles farther in the same direction. They are separated by the valley of the Mangas River, a tributary of the Gila, and a stream only in name, except after a heavy downpour of rain. The Little Burros attain an elevation of 6,625 ft. above sea level, and the Big Burros 8,054 ft., with the surrounding country averaging about 6,000 ft. To the south of these mountains stretches the desert plain, while to the north are the more frequent elevations of the mountainous country.

Jan 1, 1916

By J. C. Irvine

Meramec Mining Co. has put into operation a crushing and conveying system on its newly established 2475-ft level, 200 ft below the lowest production. To develop this level without interrupting hoisting or mine haulage, a 15.8% decline was driven from the 2275-ft level. A 5-cu-yd LHD diesel loader and a diesel-powered drilling jumbo were put into operation midway down the decline, and were used to develop the remainder of the decline and the entire level. Development of the ore pass system to the crusher required the construction of Swedish-type dumps on the main haulage-ways of all production levels with a minimum disruption of ore haulage. Concrete was handled by both rail-mounted and rubber-tired vehicles. The system features four Swedish-type dumps with control chutes at the lower three dumps, a 42-in. gyratory crusher with attendant feeders, and an 1800-ft long roof suspended conveyor feeding two 5000-ton ore bins. The crushed ore from these bins is conveyed to the lower of the mine's two original loading stations for hoisting. The retention of the original dumping and ore pass system as an alternate route has given mine production a unique flexibility. Operation for 22 months has permitted evaluation of the system from a long-term standpoint.

Jan 1, 1973

By James E. York

AT a meeting of the American Society for Testing Materials at Atlantic City, June, 1908, Dr.. C. B. Dudley, in his presidential address,' showed the vital necessity of not only making a steel rail as good as in the past, but of making it considerably better in order to meet the present and prospective require¬ments of railroads. Doctor Dudley requested the co-operation of all who from personal experience could give information that would result in bringing about the production of a steel rail that could be relied upon to meet the present requirements. I have had considerable experience in the practical manufacture of steel of almost every grade, during the past 40 years, and I shall suggest changes that will bring about the results desired. Doctor Dudley has had a long experience as chemical and metallurgical expert for the Pennsylvania railroad, but he frankly admits that up to the present time both he and other metallurgical experts lack the practical knowledge of steel-making that is necessary to state correctly the reasons for the unreliability of the steel rails now produced. The necessity is self-evident for more positive practical knowledge on the part of these experts of what is possible and what is impossible regarding the practical manufacturing of steel rails from the ingot to the, finished product. Chemical knowledge in steel-making is far in advance of what it was years ago, and might be said to cover every requirement (in that department) for producing reliable steel. The study of the metallography of steel has been of great value, also the physical testing of steel, but this knowledge will only de-

May 1, 1909

By Clifford Frondel

THE aluminum oxide known as corundum has several varieties that have been used as gem materials since ancient times. These include the red variety called ruby, the blue variety sapphire, and the asteriated types of ruby and sapphire. Asteriated sapphire was known to the ancients under the name of astrios, and descriptions of this gem were given by Pliny and other early writers. The relation of these gem materials to each other as varieties of a single species, corundum, was first clearly established by Haüy in 1805 and J. M. Güthe1 in 1809. Natural gem corundum is obtained principally in Ceylon, Siam, Burma, India, and Australia. Star sapphires and rubies always have been highly prized and in recent years have become particularly popular in the United States. Natural star rubies of large size and fine quality are extremely rare and rank with large and fine emeralds and diamonds as the most valuable of gem stones. Interest thus attaches to the recent success in commercially synthesizing star sapphires and rubies of a size and perfection unmatched by nature.

Jan 1, 1954

By Herbert Haas

GEORGE W. HAWKINS, Tucson, Ariz. (communication to the Secretary*).-The paper by Mr. Haas will no doubt be followed with considerable interest, as it covers the power-plant problem in quite a comprehensive way, including not only the usual operating costs but also the fixed charges on the investment, and for load factors ranging all the way from 25 to 100 per cent. and fuel oil ranging from $1.25 to $2 per barrel. The very fact, however, that his paper does cover such a wide range of conditions, makes it the more imperative that any conclusion drawn from his analysis be very carefully considered for any specific case, for in making such analysis the type of prime mover and size must be selected for some one condition which might not be the proper selection had some other condition been assumed as the basic one, resulting in an unfavorable comparison under all conditions except that condition assumed. From the reasons given by the author for his selection of the large turbine units, it is evident he had in mind very high load factors, ranging

Jan 12, 1916

By R. Dawson Hall

WHAT are the opportunities for the services of engineers in the coal mines? The best answer perhaps can be made by detailing the present lines of development in the bituminous coal mining regions. They are just at the beginning of a period that can be conservatively termed revolutionary. A few glimpses of new possibilities in economic mining that will reduce the cost of bituminous coal at the mines by at least one half have convinced almost everyone that a change must shortly come about. The cost of housing has become such a burden, especially in mountainous regions, that development which demands the hiring of more men and constructing more houses would not be profitable. The introduction of mechanical aids to mining, transportation and dumping suggests a way of obtaining a large tonnage with the same or a smaller number of men with no further house construction. At the same time the restriction of immigration has made it increasingly difficult to obtain men inured to hard labor. Modern civilization is not productive of muscular energy and at the same time it provides men who are not indisposed to the use of the mental effort required to direct the physical forces now available for the replacement of such energy.

Jan 1, 1924

By G. G. Sarkar

SHARPNESS of separation and washing efficiency are often confused. The sharpness index indicates the precision of a washing unit; the washing efficiency takes into account not only the unit's precision but also the washability characteristics of raw coal and the near-gravity materials at the effective density of cut. A sound basis for evaluating the sharpness index is essential in comparing the sharpness of separation attained by different cleaning units. Sharpness Index and Related Criteria: Washing plant sharpness of separation has been well represented by Hancock's efficiency chart and Tromp's curve of migrated materials. Some useful coefficients derived from Tromp's curve—the error area, probable error, and imperfection value—have been widely used to measure sharpness of separation. These are defined in a number of papers presented at the first and second International Coal Preparation Colsference held in Paris (1950) and Essen (1954).1-5 In evaluating the performance of a dense medium separator at four different gravities, Yan-cey and Greer6 bserved that even with similar operating conditions and the same size grading of feed, the imperfection value of a washing plant varies through a greater range than the probable error. The present writer also observed the same type of anomalies in comparing the imperfection values of one plant which were determined under almost identical conditions. He therefore devised a graphical method to evaluate a washing unit's sharpness of separation and define it by a single coefficient, which is substantially independent of coal characteristics under normal operation of the unit. Unlike imperfection value, the new coefficient can be expressed on a percentage basis. Coal preparation engineers generally agree that the amount of misplaced material resulting from any separation in a washing plant is almost directly related to the amount of +0.10 sp gr (near-gravity) materials. In actual practice, however, misplacement is not restricted to the 20.10 sp gr range. It will be evident from a study of Tromp curves that this misplacement often extends over unequal specific gravity ranges on the two sides of the actual density of separation. The same condition exists for near-gravity ash distribution and the resultant misplacement of ash units during any separation. But so far as the same unit is concerned, the total misplacements bear a definite ratio to the amount of near-gravity zone materials that is affected by misplacements. This ratio should be constant not only for various densities of separation but also for different qualities of feed coal treated in the same plant. This ratio, multiplied by 100, directly represents the inefficiency of the plant. When the plant inefficiency value is subtracted from 100, the re- ' sult is designated as sharpness index. Evaluating the Sharpness Index: The method of evaluating the sharpness index is explained here with reference to Fig. 1. Fig. 1 is a reproduction of the familiar diagram used by Cerchar of France to represent the inefficiency of a separation in terms of "triangle of errors," which is a measure of organic loss. It will be observed that the characteristic (yield/fractional ash) curve of the raw coal represented by GHAPR

Jan 1, 1958