Search Documents

By O. C. Wheeler

There was a marked increase in the investigation of undeveloped areas in Colombia during 1936. The Shell company commenced geological and geophysical investigations on an intensive scale in the Upper Magdalena Valley and at the end of the year had several geological and geophysical parties working in that area. These investigations were supplemented by aerial photography and it is understood that negotiations are under way for having this work continued. The Shell is reported to have acquired some options and leases on private properties in the Upper Valley region and in the western part of Cundinamarca. The Socony Vacuum was making preparations to begin seismograph work on its property north of the Sogamoso River, acquired in 1934 from Sefior Luciano Restrepo. This company will probably start drilling on the property during 1937. The Richmond Petroleum Co. (Standard of California) is said to have renewed geological investigations in the Upper Magdalena Valley above Honda. Local Colombian interests took an active part in applying for concessions on nationally owned lands in the area between the Carare and Magdalena Rivers. The application of the Sociedad National del Carare for a concession in this area was granted during the year. Subsequently an agreement was reached between this

Jan 1, 1937

AN indication that Mesabi Range iron use companies may develop their own flotation processes for low grade iron ores is the report that Cleveland Cliffs Iron Co. is adopting a variation of one of the oldest known methods at its new Michigan treatment plant. Basically, the method involves using fatty acids and fuel oil reagents. The idea was developed many years ago and should be free of patent control. With other laboratories working on the same tack, it seems to be a pretty good bet that they will come up with their own processes. Any outside process will have to offer considerable advantage or low royalty rate to get consideration. Much of the appeal of the fatty acid process is the cheapness of the reagent. One source is pulp paper liquor in semi-refined form. With stream pollution legislation acting as a strong pressure, paper companies have been seeking ways to dispose of the material. Wisconsin has even attempted to use it for road binder.

Jan 5, 1953

THE ladle is a small hearth made on a cage of iron bars like a bird-cage, and has a handle so that it can easily be taken from the forge and carried wherever desired. It is a common device and is much used among masters for small castings, but with a large weight you would have difficulty in lifting it by hand even though you were aided by levers and winches. If you should indeed do it, it would be just as if you had lifted the aforesaid hearth by force, and this would be unwise if you could do anything less difficult. A forge is likewise made for this, with a good pair of large bellows that are well covered with cloth. When the small hearth has been made with good clay, baked, and well covered with ashes, it is placed in front of the mouth [of the bellows] and a crown of two or three brick ends is built around it on top of the rim so that the charcoal may be held better and in greater quantity. Then, having lit the fire and heated the ladle and the charcoal, the pieces of material that you wish to melt are gradually put on

Jan 1, 1942

Raymond Weir Smyth, born Nov. 3, 1888, was the son of Herbert Weir Smyth, professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University. He graduated (A. B.) from Harvard in 1909 and later pursued advanced studies there in chemistry and in metallurgy. He held the position of metallurgist for the American Steel and Wire Co. at Worcester, Mass., and also for the Steel and Tube Co. at Youngstomn, Ohio. For a time he was inspector of munitions for the British Government and stationed at the Railway Steel and Spring Co. at Latrobe, Pa. For a short time, in 1917, he was Inspector of Ordnance for the U. S. Government, and the following year, having entered the U. S. Naval Reserve Force, he was ordered in a similar capacity to the Midvale Steel Co. In September, he removed to the Navy Yard, League Island, Philadelphia, to train for the obligatory minimum of six months' sea duty. There he contracted influenza, which was followed by pneumonia, from which he died, September 27, at the Navy Yard Hospital. Captain Braxton Bigelow* Captain Braxton Bigelow was the son of Major John B. Bigelow, U. S. A., retired, and grandson of the late John Bigelow, author, and Minister to France under President Grant. Captain Bigelow graduated

Jan 1, 1920

The importance, validity, and acceptability of the Paley Report has become the great issue of the minerals industry. A 12-man panel made up of representatives of various facets of the industry sat down at the 1952 Mining Congress Show in Denver in an attempt to clarify the many opinions currently held concerning the report. Howard Young, deputy administrator of the Defense Materials Procurement Administration, noted that the report had caused more discussion and serious thinking than any other government report, He did not subscribe to the "have not" principle, however, but called it a "need more" principle. Horace M. Allbright, president of U. S. Potash Corp., believes industry should continue to develop the report. He cited the editorial appearing in the September, 1952 edition of Bining Engineering,,, "Don't Let It Die," as expressing his feelings. Edward Snyder, president of Combined Metals Reduction Corp., says the statistics used in the report were used to promote a false international policy. He sees the report as a master plan for the development of the superstate. He also stated that the-ore reserves given in the Pales, report represent only 10 pct of what is actually available.

Jan 1, 1952

Pursuant to notice duly given in accordance with law and the constitution, a special business meeting of the members of the Institute was held at the office of the Institute on June 27, 1919, at 8.30 P.M., 1573 members were present in person or by proxy. On resolution duly made and seconded, the change of name to American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Incorporated, was authorized and the officers of the corporation were instructed to take the necessary steps to accomplish this result. The votes were 1565 in favor of the resolution and 7 against. It was then moved and seconded that the certificate of incorporation be amended to define the purposes for which the corporation was formed as follows: "To promote the arts and sciences connected with the economic production of the useful minerals and metals, and the welfare of those employed in the industries by all lawful means, " etc., etc.-the remainder of the article reading the same. The purpose of this change was to allow the Institute to take any legal means it desires to accomplish the objects mentioned above instead of restricting it within narrow limits. The vote was 1573 in favor of the resolution and none against.

Jan 8, 1919

By T. V. Falkie, Robert Stefanko

Coal Mine Health and Safety Act in December 1969, the most comprehensive law in the history of the coal mining industry went into effect. Hardly anyone will quarrel with the philosophy that all miners in the United States should be afforded equal protection under the law irrespective of the state in which they reside. Furthermore, it appears contrary to any sound judgment that a competitive advantage should appear to accrue to a mine operator because his operations are located in a state with less stringent (and costly) health and safety laws Yet it is recognized that the quality of state mine laws and inspection agencies has been extremely variable. Why, then, should there be such resentments over the passage of the Act? The Act was written In the highly emotionally charged atmosphere following the Consol No. 9 disaster: the technical expertise within the industry was discredited and largely ignored; and those directly involved in the writing of the Act were non- technical and largely nonmining people. The result was that the law incorporated certain requirements that were impossible to meet (automatic brakes are the classical example) and certain parts that were too ambiguous and consequently open to interpretation.

Jan 1, 1971

By J. R. Thoenek S. L. Windes

The amplitudes and frequencies of vibratiolls of a four-story stucco building were measured by specially developed electrocapacitive seismometers. Records were made on three floor levels with as many as 10 seismometers recording simultancously. Sources of vibration were: (1) an electric motor with unbalanced pulley, maximum speed 1800 r.p.m., maximum centrifugal force 90 lb., (2) truck traffic (both solid and pneumatic tires) moving over inequalities in the street in front of the house, (3) falling weights dropped on the street pavement from different heights, (4) miscellaneous sources, including a man jumping on the floor of the house and slamming doors. Tests were made to determine the natural frequencies of floor and wall panels by varying the speed of the unbalanced motor and by exciting the panels with a single impulse. The vibrations recorded were compared to records of vibrations from quarry blasts and it was observed that the vibrations from truck traffic were comparable to those recorded from quarry blasts and in no instance was there any damage to the building. As the tests were all of a negative character as far as damage was concerned, no index of destruction is formulated. Instead, the records are presented simply as vibration measurements obtained in an ordinary house under typical conditions.

Jan 1, 1940

By S. S. Deshmukh

An important element of evaluating a materials- handling system by simulation lies in being able to examine the details of the proposed operation in a fashion which closely approximates real behavior. The added factor of flexibility permits including or deleting those parts of the problem which can be shown to be important or trivial. Used carefully, simulation can match manpower and equipment far more efficiently than conventional calculations. The same is true of interacting equipment systems. This efficiency results from being able to simulate the real fluctuations in a system by using empirical probability distributions compiled from existing operations. Simulation eliminates guessing as to efficiency, absenteeism, bunching, and the broad host of delays that influence productivity and substitutes operating data in place of the usual factors. In this respect, simulation improves detail and confidence in the reliability of engineering estimates.

Jan 1, 1970

At the Kidd Creek mine operated by Ecstall Mining, Ltd. near Timmins, Ontario, Honeywell has installed a sophisticated new quick- thinking computer system that keeps tabs on conditions along three separate processing streams at once and relays continuous 60-second data to the mill operator. Believed to be the first of its kind, the system picks up data from two independent x-ray spectrometers simultaneously. A digital computer from Honeywell's Computer Control Division receives and interprets real-time information gathered by online x-ray analyzers, and the system then advises control room operators of the relative amount of each of five elements at five points in each of the three process streams. The system is reported to provide a quantitative analysis of the five elements at a given point in the process within one minute-which is about 120 times as fast as a chemical laboratory assay could be performed. With this instant data at his command, the mill operator can make timely process adjustments to correct any deviation from optimum flotation results, thus salvaging valuable minerals that would inevitably be lost with slower detection methods. The minerals recovered at Kidd creek are copper, lead, iron, silver and zinc.

Jan 8, 1968

By J. A. Eisele, D. J. Bauer, L. E. Schultze

Approximately 100 million mt of magnetic reject tailings, which contain apatite and about 1% yttrium and rare-earth elements, exist in the eastern U.S. as a result of iron ore mining operations. At the present time, no economic process is available for recovering yttrium from this material. The U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) studied the problem to determine if an effective low-cost method could be found, thereby increasing our domestic yttrium reserves. [Fig. 1] is a line drawing of a photograph taken during microprobe analysis of a sample of the tailings, and shows the distribution of yttrium. Typical analysis of this material is 0.14% yttrium and 1.1% rare-earth elements (mainly lanthanum through neodymium). Over half of the yttrium is present as a hydrated Ca-Y silicate deposited along interfaces in the grain structure; whereas, the remainder of the rare-earth elements occur as Ca-Fe-RE silicates. The remaining yttrium and rare-earth elements are in solid solution with the

Jan 1, 1977

By Jerry L. Taylor

Utah Power & Light Company is an electric utility serving approximately 1.8 million people in Utah, Idaho, and waning. In order to supply coal to fuel power plants, Utah Power & Light awns three mines in central Utah. Planning for these mines is aided by a computer program developed by the staff mining engineers. This program, when supplied with the pertinent seam and mining configuration data, calculates the time to mine each section. This allows the planning engineer to estimate accurately the time required to extract pillar sections or develop longwall panels. The program's greatest benefit, however, is its ability to allow the engineer to examine quickly, different combinations of possible mine layouts to determine the most efficient plan. Computer aided mine planning has been used at Utah Power & Light Company since 1979, and has significantly improved the accuracy and quality of mine planning.

Jan 1, 1983

THERE are two general classes of problems in connection with electric furnaces. First, those relating to the best utilization of the electrical power inside the furnace; second, those connected with the bringing of the electrical power to the point where it is to be utilized. Referring particularly to the latter class of problems, many calculations have been made, covering a wide variety of furnaces, to check the electrical capacity and power factor found from test. The following analysis, made for the purpose of determining the maximum capacity and approximate performance of a new furnace, to operate at 160 volts on a 60-cycle circuit, may be of interest. The first characteristic necessary to determine is the inductance, since this is the factor that limits the amount of power which can be put into the furnace. Inductance is calculated from the dimensions of the furnace, according to formulas of the U. S. Bureau of Standards,1 as

Jan 10, 1918

By F. H. McDowell

About a year ago Dr. Raymond, as engineer of Messrs. Cooper, Hewitt & Co., together with Mr. Rothwell, was considering the removal of the ore-floors and pillars from the Peters Mine at Ringwood, N. J., where the limit of profitable working by the old method of mining had been very nearly reached. Mr. Ferdinand Ruttmann was engaged to make the survey which forms the basis of the accompanying diagrams. At first it was thought that some method of mining and filling might be introduced with advantage; but after a careful study of the operations at the Tilly Foster it was decided to adopt the system of stripping.

Jan 1, 1890

The first production on the Island of Trinidad was discovered 29 years ago; 13,275 acres were proved for oil and gas to the end of 1937, and 145,076,700 bbl. was produced from 2661 wells, or 10,928 bbl per acre. The production of oil in 1936 was 13,237,030 bbl. and in 1937 a new peak of 15,498,350 bbl. was reached. During November 1937, the daily average production was 43,350 bbl., or 35 bbl. per well, while the maximum gas production was 45 million cubic feet daily. Two hundred fifty wells were completed during 1937 and 15 abandoned. At the end of last year, 800 wells had been temporarily shut down, 1235 were producing oil and gas, and 2 were producing gas only. Six hundred seventy-nine dry wells had been drilled to the end of 1937. At the end of November 1937, the following oil-producing methods were in use: 395 wells flowing, 491 pumping, 97 on air-gas lift and 252 wells miscellaneous. There were no flooding operations. The oil is produced from the Miocene and Eocene and is of both asphalt and paraffin base. The gas produced averaged approximately 1050 B.t.u. per cu. ft. with 0.8 gal. of gasoline per 1000 cubic feet.

Jan 1, 1938

By W. L. Freyberger

In a study of the kinetics of flotation of coal, employing a single-cell continuous flotation system, Jowett and Safvi1 pointed out that it was experimentally impossible to float all of the coal which could be floated in a batch tests. On the other hand, deBruyn and Modi, in a discussion of their paper, suggested that under certain conditions the recovery of floatable material from a similar one-cell continuous system would have been 100%.2 Both of these pairs of authors make the assumption that a state of perfect mixing exist in the flotation cell. This assumption, usually made by investigators studying flotation kinetics in a continuous system, has been confirmed experimentally on several occasions. The work is summarized by Arbiter and Harris.3 It is the purpose of this note to demonstrate that, for conditions of perfect mixing, one of two conditions exist: 1) the recovery of floatable material is 100%, and the flotation is infinitely fast, or 2) the recovery of floatable material must be less than 100%. This theorem can be proved simply in the following manner: 1) If recovery, R, of the floatable material is 100%, the concentration in the tailing must be zero. This follows from the definition of recovery as

Jan 1, 1964

The Sixty-fifth Congress was a "War Congress." Perhaps nothing else than war work should have been expected of it, but it had time and opportunity to do much more. Engineers have good reason for sorrow over the engineering legislation that died merely because there was no opportunity for a vote. The mineral resources of the public lands of the United States are, except the precious metals, locked away from development. For more than eight years there has been an attempt by both the executive and legislative departments of the nation to secure legislation which, under proper conditions and without detriment to the public interest, will open up these lands for development. After eight years of study, argument, conciliation, and compromise, Congress agreed in conference of the two Houses upon a measure satisfactory to it and to the Executive Department and the final draft was passed by the House of Representatives, but in the Senate it was talked to death by Senator LaFollette of Wisconsin. Some of its proponents plan to, reintroduce the bill identically as agreed to in conference into the 66th Congress, where it is hoped that by reason of its peculiar fate in the 65th Congress it will be regarded in the nature of unfinished business and thus receive early consideration and passage.

Jan 5, 1919

By W. G. Fischer

This paper attempts to close the gap between extensive rock testing with field measurements and the mine operator's need for safe mine layouts and alternatives. It was found that many of the variables that influence mine geometry and worker safety are relatively unimportant while others are critical. The development of empirical relationships that tie the critical variables to the safe useful life of a trona mine layout and observations made in 140 production areas where the variables were researched over a 15-year period are discussed. The concepts presented may have applicability in mine design for other bedded deposits.

Jan 1, 1986

By D. W. Brunton

The erection of large metallurgical establishments for the treatment of gold, silver, copper, and lead-ores, at railroad arid topographical centers, where fuel and fluxes, together with proper oremixtures, can be cheaply and constantly obtained at all seasons of the year, has led to the very general introduction of a system of ore-handling known as "public sampling." By this system the ore, instead of being shipped direct to the mill or smelter, is sent to a public sampler, where it is crushed and sampled. Guaranteed samples are sent to the different metallurgical establishments, and the ore is then sold to the highest bidder. Though differing in many respects from the English system of "ticketing," the underlying principle is nearly the same, while the greater rapidity with which a lot of ore can be disposed of renders

Jan 1, 1885

By S. W. Parr

The extent to which geological carbonization has taken place in the process of coal formation is a fundamental factor in all considerations relating to classification, oxidation, deterioration, spontaneous combus tion, and especially in all considerations relating to destructive distillation having as an objective the production of marketable coke and by-products. Moreovcr, it may be readily shown that a striking relationship exists between the geological decomposition or geological carbonization processes and those artificially produced by heat. This may be well illustrated by bringing again to view some of the charts more commonly mct with 25 years ago, as in Fig. 1.' In this figurc the line of geological decomposition by decay, pressure, etc., because of its relation to the line of carbonization by destructive distillation, becomes of special significance when we attempt to formulate any system of classification which shall be reasonably scientific and at

Jan 1, 1927