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By Edmund Shaw

IN THE year just past there were produced in the United States about 170,000,000 tons of sand and gravel. Much of this was pit-run material used for gravelling roads and as railroad ballast on lines that did not carry heavy traffic. But more than half of it was marketed as washed and sized, or graded, material. The methods used for preparing sand and gravel for the market have long been used in ore dressing and, as in ore dressing, depend on differences in the specific gravity of two substances or in the size or weight of particles. But many changes in the design and operation of plants and machines have been necessary. In ore dressing, the concentrate is only a small part of the feed; in sand and gravel washing, it is much the larger part of the feed. In addition, such close work as is needed when con¬centrating a metallic ore is not needed when washing gravel; the ability to put through a large tonnage is more important, and sizing, which is only a preliminary process in ore dressing, is an end to be attained. Rock crushers are found in most sand and gravel plants and they are used to break up the larger pieces from the deposit (known as boulders and cobbles) which are removed by a scalping screen. The crusher discharge is usually sent back to the scalping screen, the perforations in this screen setting the maximum size of the finished product.

Jan 2, 1926

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Jan 1, 1938

By J. O. McCaldin, P. Duwez

ALLOTROPIC transformations between 1000° and 1900°C have recently been reported for several metallic elements. Since the proposed transformations are based on limited evidence, it was decided to examine the elements in question as well as some refractory metals by thermal analysis with a photoelectric technique similar to that described by Hug-gins, Roll, and Udin.1 In this method, a lead sulphide cell was used to detect thermal radiation from an electric-resistance heated strip specimen. A thermocouple spot welded to the specimen was used to calibrate the temperature of the system under steady temperature conditions, and recording was accomplished with a cathode ray oscilloscope. In the method used by the present authors, the temperature calibration was omitted and the cathode ray oscilloscope was replaced by a recording galvanometer. This technique, in which electric current passing through the specimen heats it, will be referred to henceforth as Method 1. Another arrangement was required for those cases where the specimen could not be formed into a wire or strip suitable for resistance heating. In such cases the specimen was a sintered compact heated by thermal radiation from a hot tungsten strip, Fig. 1. The specimen was insulated from the heating strip with a thin layer of thoria powder or suspended on 0.004 in. tungsten wires. The take-up spring had just sufficient tension to prevent buckling of the heating strip due to thermal expansion. This technique will be called Method 2. Both methods were tested with specimens of iron and titanium and the well known allotropic transformations, a toy and ? to 8 in iron and a to in titanium, were very clearly detected. Fig. 2 shows one of the records obtained for titanium. For this particular experiment, the iodide titanium specimen was a square rod 0.080 in. on an edge and 3 in. long.

Jan 1, 1955

By Osamu Fukuta

The geological and geochemical characteristics of the Japanese iodine-rich brines are outlined. The iodine-rich brine in Japan is primary in its origin and its occurrence is limited in the younger marine sediments. The iodine-rich subsurface water is saturated or over- saturated by natural gas, but the water saturated by natural gas is not always rich in iodine. The iodide and bromide contents decrease with time. The bromide content decreases much more rapidly than that of iodide. It should be emphasized that the genetic environment of the Japanese type of dissolved gas and iodine deposit is not peculiar to the Japanese islands.

Jan 1, 1985

By Richard Moldenke

ONE of the gravest problems of the iron foundry today is the accumulation of sulfur in commercial scrap and its effect on the castings made therewith. The ordinary jobbing castings today show a sulfur content of 0.18 per cent., and occasionally as high as 0.22 per cent. The product of the foundry during the war is undoubtedly .to blame for this rapid increase and conditions will become worse as the millions of tons of gray-iron castings of the war period return to the foundry in the form of commercial scrap. In the ordinary cupola remelting of pig and scrap, at least 0.02 per cent. sulfur is taken up; often double that amount. The high cost and difficulty of obtaining pig iron during the war period compelled the use of considerable scrap in the mixtures; frequently charges containing. 90. per cent. of bought scrap were melted. Naturally the sulfur content of the castings increased. Until the advent of the basic-hearth electric furnace, the only method of holding the sulfur within reasonable limits was to use high percentages of pig in the foundry mixtures. Pig iron seldom contains over 0.05 per cent. sulfur, if well made. With pig iron forming 60 percent. of the .charge and the gates, runners, rejections, and bought scrap the other 40 per cent., the sulfur content of the castings can easily be held down to 0.10 per cent. Pig iron, however, costs more than scrap even when melting loss differences are considered, hence as small a percentage as possible will be used.

Jan 2, 1921

By F. C. Schrader, Alfred H. Brooks

Last fall (1899) we had the good fortune to be able to spend a few weeks in the new placer gold-mining region of Alaska, which is known as the Nome region. Cape Nome, after which the region has been named, and which forms the southeastern corner of the Nome Mining District, is an unimportant promontory on the southern coast of the Seward Peninsula (see map, Fig. 1). The name Seward has recently been given to the great peninsula which forms the northwestern extremity of Alaska. To the north of it is the Arctic ocean, to the south Bering sea, while its wesbernmost extremity, Cape Prince of Wales, is separated from the Asiatic coast by the Bering straits. The coast line of the peninsula is of a cuspate character, consisting of a succession of sandy, crescent-shaped beaches and rocky headlands. The interior has been but little explored; but we know that it is comparatively rugged, the higher mountain peaks rising probably from 4000 to 5000 feet in elevation. The mountains have an easterly and westerly trend, and the water-shed between the two oceans probably nearly bisects the peninsula. At Golofnin bay, the southeastern part of the Seward peninsula, some spruce is found, but to the west the region is entirely timberless, except for a sparse growth of stunted

Jan 1, 1901

By Stein Wennberg, Snorre Tessem

INTRODUCTION The mine is situated in the middle of Norway 150 km north of the town Trondheim. The iron ore deposits were discovered in 1906 and have been continuously mined since. The first owner was A/S Nordiske Grubekompagni. In 1912 Fosdalens Bergverks-Aktieselskab was established; since World War II it has been a wholly state-owned company. The location is advantageous, with mining facilities, ore dressing plant and stockpile situated near the northern head of the Trondheimsf jord. The iron ore always occurs in Ordovician lavas and sediments, now altered to greenschists, keratophyres and limestone. The ore bearing zone is 150 km long. The deposits consist of two parallel linear ore bodies lying one above the other in the same stratigraphic horizon which dips 70' to the south. The upper body is 50-100 m high, the lower one 250 m high, while the distance between the two bodies in the East mine varies between 20 and 60 m. The ore width varies between 5 and 8 m. The ore bodies strike WSW and plunge between 10' and 15" in this direction. To date continuous ore has either been worked or opened up along a total strike length of 10 km. Until 1969 all ore was mined in the western part of the deposit called the Western mine. In the spring of 1969 production started in a new mine, the Eastern mine. The ore bodies in this new mine are geologically the same as in the old mine, but they have been displaced 700 m downwards along a major fault in the Fosdalen valley.

Jan 1, 1981

By F. H. McDowell

For more than two hundred years Mexico has been enriching the world from her inexhaustible wealth of precious metals. From this source alone, over three thousand five hundred millions of dollars have been poured into the coffers of Europe and America. During these centuries the wants of the country in manufactured goods have been supplied from the mills and machine-shop of the Old World. English, French and German merchants in Mexico have vied with each other in their efforts to control the importing of these goods from their respective countries. The overthrow of Maximilian, the departure of the French and the restoration of the Republic, largely influenced by the strong stand taken by the United States Government during our own civil war, established a new order of things. Americans were encouraged to visit the sister republic, examine into the needs of the country, as well as its resources, and interest themselves in the work of development. More recently, under Presidents Diaz and Gonzales, liberal inducements have been extended to American capitalists to build railroads, open mines, erect reduction-works, raise cattle and improve the crude systems of agriculture. The Mexican Central Railway has been pushed south from the Rio Grande to the Capital, and, by its branches and connections, makes the whole mineral belt of the country accessible.

Jan 1, 1885

By Augustus Locke, Edward H. Perry

In the exploration of a copper deposit by drilling, obvious advantages are to be gained from a distinction between primary and secondary ore.' Perhaps the chief of these is the aid which such a distinction renders in determining where a given hole should stop. The copper assay, often a sufficient guide, cannot always be exclusively relied upon. Primary ores may extend downward indefinitely and may fluctuate in value independently of depth: if primary ores are consistently lean for a considerable vertical distance, there is little reason to expect that, still deeper, they will increase to the commercial grade; on the other hand, rich primary ores may persist uninterruptedly downward or may come in again below a lean interval. Secondary ores, however, have a comparatively limited vertical extent; in a large way enrichment decreases with depth and finally gives out. It follows then, that when a hole descends from profitable ore into ore of less than the commercial minimum, the practical significance of the situation depends upon whether this decrease results from a decrease in secondary enrichment or is a variation in primary content: if the copper of the ore passed through has been chiefly secondary, little is gained in the average case by extending the hole much below the point at which the commercial limit is reached; but, when copper is chiefly primary, due weight must be given to the possibility that, still deeper, the ore may again improve. The distinction between primary and secondary ore may of course be effected through an examination of the drillings. It has been found, however, to be facilitated by curves made by plotting assays against

Jan 1, 1916

By G. M. Ritcey

Purification of solutions can involve various treatment methods. In the normal sequence of metals recovery by hydrometallurgy, the ore is initially prepared for leaching by grinding to the desired optimum mesh size as dictated by the leaching parameters. Following leaching and liquids- solids separation, the resultant solution is ready for purification. The use, or introduction of solvent extraction into a plant, can be either a major or a minor part of the metal recovery process as shown by the following list where solvent extraction is normally considered: a) recovery of a metal by a simple leaching of the broken ore, e.g., copper from dump leaching where there are only the three main steps of leaching, solvent extraction, and electrowinning (1);

Jan 1, 1978

By C. M. Warner

In both the Flat River district of southeast Missouri and the Joplin district of southwest Missouri the lead concentrates are of very high grade, free of arsenic, antimony and bismuth, and contain no gold and very little silver. The general practice in both districts is to smelt the concentrates containing 70 to 85 per cent lead on Scotch hearths, to recover 70 to 85 per cent of the lead, and then smelt in a blast furnace the slag formed in the Scotch hearths to bring the total recovery of lead from lead concentrates to over 97.5 per cent. At the lead smelter of the St. Joseph Lead Co. at Herculaneum, Mo., no Scotch hearths are used. In the other smelters in the district the blast furnace plays a minor role to the Scotch hearth . The concentrates produced from the Flat River district are either table concentrates or flotation concentrates containing: Both types of concentrates are received at Herculaneum in box cars after being sampled. Great care is taken in weighing and sampling of cars of concentrates and in the determination of moisture and lead contents. The concentrates are unloaded into bins by an adaptation of scoop grain unloader. Four men unload and sweep a 40 to 45-ton box car of concentrates in 30 minutes. The same grade of concentrates is received each day and no metal-bearing fluxes are available. The problem is to get as high a recovery as possible as cheaply as possible from the high-grade lead concentrates produced by the company's concentrating mills. Sintering The bulk of the sulphur is removed from the concentrates and the fine concentrate particles are agglomerated by double roasting on typical Dwight and Lloyd sintering machines.

Jan 1, 1937

Sec. 1. The membership of the Institute shall comprise six classes, namely: 1. Members; 2. Honorary Members; 3. Senior Members; 4. Associates; 5. Junior Members; 6. Rocky Mountain Members. All shall be equally entitled to the privileges of membership, excepting that no member of any class whom residence shall be outside of the United States of America, except those residing in Mexico and Canada, shall be entitled to vote. SEC. 2. Members: A person to be eligible for election or transfer into the claw of Member must be at least 27 years of age and must have had at least six years' employment in the practice of engineering, mining, geology, metallurgy, or chemistry, during at least three years of which he must have held positions of responsibility in one or more of these fields. This shall not apply to Rocky Mountain members.

Jan 1, 1941

By A. H. Miller, G. W. H. Norman

This survey is one of the more recent tests of geophysical methods of prospecting by the Dominion Observatory and the Geological Survey of Canada, of which the purpose is to find out what application such methods may have to geological problems in Canada. The Malagash salt deposit lies on the north shore of Nova Scotia about 40 miles east of the New Brunswick boundary, arid forms a part of faulted and folded Carboniferous strata. The salt beds are exposed only in the mine workings, which are about 1000 ft. deep and at one place extend for 1000 ft. along the strike. Lack of rock exposures, complicated folds, and faults make it impossible to predict the location of salt away from the mine. A survey of an area in the vicinity of the mine was therefore undertaken to find out whether the salt could be located by the torsion balance and whether its extension from the mine workings could be traced. As the gravitational effects at Malagash may be fairly typical of those at other concealed salt deposits in the Carboniferous rocks of the Maritime Provinces of Canada, the survey has a direct bearing on prospecting for other deposits. The survey was made in 1934 by A. H. Miller in collaboration with Dr. W. A. Bell, of the Geological Survey of Canada. Observations began on June 15 and were completed four months later, on Oct. 15. Definite gravitational effects including a lowering of gravity were observed over the deposit. The survey also disclosed one other area of low gravity cast of the mine hut whether this area is underlain by a large body of salt is not yet established.

Jan 1, 1938

By W. J. Reagan

A SURVEY of the literature on bottom-cast practice gives but scant information as to some of the real facts concerning this most interesting method of steel manufacture, and some of the information available is very misleading.1 An exceptionally good description of this method of pouring or teeming is to be found in an English publication2 on the heterogeneity of steel ingots. Quoting from this paper: (a) With bottom teeming, the metal rises steadily and progressively in the mold with the minimum possible agitation, the main force of the stream coming from the ladle being broken down or retarded by the down gate or runner. Further, the stream of metal from the ladle, under these conditions of casting, is invariably main-tained at a much more continuous rate and is steadier than with top teeming. (b) In view of the facts referred to in (a) it follows that with bottom teeming the metal is not exposed to atmospheric oxidation to anything like the same degree as with top teeming. In this paper it is intended to detail briefly some of the advantages of bottom-cast practice and to discuss the possibilities of iron-oxide control in the basic open-hearth furnace. A description of the type of charge, ingot mold set-up, etc., is found in detail in an earlier paper.3

Jan 1, 1934

PRIOR to the World War most of the barite used in the United States for manufacturing lithopone and barium chemicals was imported. Germany, by virtue of an abundance of high-grade ore and low labor costs, was in a position to dominate the world market. With the cessa-tion of imports and with the war demand for barium chemicals, the barium chemical industry and the mining of barite became well estab-lished in the United States. This industry has continued to expand because of the increasing use of lithopone. In 1914 the sales of domestic crude barite was 52,919 tons and in 1934 it was 209,850 tons. Barite deposits of economic importance occur in at least 20 states, but the principal producers in 1934 were Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, California and Arizona. The main mining centers are located near the crude barite markets of the three principal marketing districts-the Pacific Coast, the Midwestern area, and the Eastern area. The Pacific Coast is supplied entirely by California, Nevada, and Arizona. The Midwestern area uses most of the Missouri crude and a small amount from the southern states. The eastern market is the chief competitive area. Practically all of the imported crude is marketed there; also the bulk of the southern crude and ground barite. In addition, this area absorbs a small part of the Missouri crude and 80 per cent of the ground barite. Besides the advantage of low delivered costs and purity of product, the imported barite has commanded a price differential because it is soft rather than hard, like many of the domestic ores. The inherent physical properties of the southern ores remain, but the purity can be controlled to a great extent by beneficiation. Simple washing or gravity concentra-tion has sufficed in the past, but in many cases a more efficient process now becomes imperative to remove impurities not amenable to these methods. Certain deposits now being opened are of lower grade and require more precise milling conditions. In some ores, the kind of impurities has changed as the mining advanced.

Jan 1, 1936

By Robert Berggren

THE hot-milling process for reconditioning rock-drill bits is not new. It has been employed by a few mines for years and in the past decade it has been widely adopted, as its advantages have become better known. Because of the extensive commercial development in England and Canada of machines to operate on this principle, general acceptance has been largely in the British possessions and until recently has been chiefly in the field of conventional steel. In the past two years there has been a definite trend toward hot-milling of detachable bits in Canada, t but only in the past year has any considerable attempt been made to build special machines for this type of work. Generally a machine designed for con-ventional steel has been used and special holders employed to manipulate the bit. As early as 1934 at least one operator in the United States had adapted hot-milling to conventional steel with a substantial saving in resharpening costs. Several other operators have taken it up but there has been no widespread adoption of the method in this country by users of conventional steel. This may be partly explained by the fact that until recently no American manufacturer produced this equipment and operators have been obliged to build their own hot-millers or import them. Several years ago a few machines were built in Seattle, Wash-ington, and operated in some mines in the northwest, but, for reasons not generally known, the effort was abandoned.

Jan 1, 1940

By C. H. Jr. Herty

THE elimination of metalloids in the open-hearth process depends on oxidation of the metal by diffusion of FeO from the slag (or absorption of FeO by the metal), with subsequent reaction between dissolved iron oxide and the metalloids carbon, manganese, phosphorus, and silicon. During an investigation on deoxidation with silicon, data on rate of oxidation of the metal were obtained, and these combined with certain other information, are presented here in an attempt to show the fundamental principles governing the diffusion of FeO from slag to metal. Inasmuch as the aim of the investigation was not a study of diffusion, certain data are lacking and it has been necessary to make assumptions on metal viscosity and effect of temperature on diffusion. These factors are known to exert a considerable effect on diffusional processes. Overoxidation, or supersaturation of the metal with iron oxide, is not taken up in this paper. Overoxidation has little effect on diffusion except under a few special conditions, and the discussion has therefore been limited to diffusional processes. Though the results given in this paper should be regarded as preliminary, certain of the conclusions drawn are definitely applicable to any steelmaking process.

Jan 1, 1929

By K. C. Li

ARSENIC and antimony are always grouped together by chemists, since they are both members of group V of the periodic table of elements and exhibit a general similarity in the formation of compounds. Metallurgists generally think of them as less closely related because they do not have similar uses. In metallurgical operations, especially lead and copper smelting, arsenic tends to go off as a vapor phase and collect as fume in the flues, while antimony tends to remain with the bullion. Broadly speaking, the frequency of occurrence, practical utility and the effects on associated metals of arsenic and antimony are such that the metallurgist is inclined to think of arsenic as a troublesome impurity in ores, but of antimony as a valuable constituent that is recovered either as a byproduct or through the metallurgical treatment of antimony ores. Estimating the world production of arsenic as about 40,000 tons annually, probably not more than about 200 tons yearly is produced and used in metallic form, whereas one half of the approximately 40,000 tons of antimony produced annually is metallic. ARSENIC The modern uses of arsenic differ little from ancient ones. Though it has been known from early times, its poisonous quality is almost the only one that yet finds extensive use. The shift in the past century from its utilization in poisoning people to the poisoning of insects, beginning in 1860, has not only led to a considerable increase in

Jan 1, 1953

By John S. Brown

IN 1925 the writer undertook a detailed statistical study of all producing areas in the Joplin district as a basis for evaluating programs and measuring objectives. For this purpose, the published figures in the yearly volumes of Mineral Resources were used, supplemented for earlier years by publications of the Missouri Geological Survey and other local and less official sources. When all else failed, the available data were projected backward to hazard a reasonable guess as to the unrecorded early output of important areas. Fortunately, the proportion of such prehistory production is not a large factor in any of the totals. These results were used during the next few years to measure the relative importance of various producing areas and to predict the peak period of development of the all-important Picher field. For the purpose of this review, the charts have been completed to the end of 1950. During World War 11, the U. S. Bureau of Mines became interested in a similar study and issued comprehensive statistical tabulations of data up to 1945 ( Info. Circular 7383), which have been checked against the figures used herein. This tabulation, however, does not include all the earlier data used by the writer nor does it offer any estimates of the wholly unrecorded era in the beginnings of the earlier camps.

Jan 9, 1951

By H. W. Turner

The axis of the middle portion of the Ural mountains is made up chiefly of highly compressed igneous and sedimentary schists, considered of Devonian age by the Russian geologists, with large areas of serpentine (peridotite originally) gabbro, etc,, intrusive in the schist series. In addition there are large areas of probably older granitic and gneissic rocks. The nickel deposits referred to in this paper are found in the Devonian schists and their associated igneous rocks. The gabbro-peridotite intrusions probably took place in late Devonian or early Permian time, inasmueh as the Permian and Carboniferous beds lie at gentle angles on the Devonian series on the west slope of the Urals. Perhaps the first attempt to work a nickel deposit in the Urals was made about 1866 in the Revdinsk district, which is situated southwest of Ekaterinburg. 3 was informed by a Russian that a wet method of extracting the nickel was tried but was not a commercial success. This deposit has been described by Muller,l Foullon, and Karpinski.3 Beck4 gives an abstract of these papers. ; Lying to the southeast of the Revdinsk district, the Sissert estate intervening, is the Verkhne-Ufalei district, which is traversed by the railroad from Ekaterinburg to Cheliabinsk, as shown on the map, Fig. 1, there being a station on this railroad at the iron-smelting town of Verkhne-Ufalci. About 7 versts (4.6 miles) north of this town is the Nijni-Karka-dinsk iron mine, which is a limonite deposit. In one of the shafts in this mine a serpentine rock showing a green mineral was encountered. A sample of this mineral collected in 1910 was tested by Mr. Wyatt, chief chemist of the Karabash laboratory of the Kyshtim Mining Works, and determined as nickel ore. A thin section of one piece of the serpen-

Jan 1, 1915