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By V. F. Swanson

At the AIME meeting in Tampa in Oct. 1966, an empirically developed equation was presented which allowed the calculation of free settling velocity for any sized particle: 1 [ ] This equation requires the use of two parameters a and p which are coefficients derived from boundary layer theory.2 It was possible to develop values of a and p for several minerals by back calculation of published data. The original equation had one major flaw. When the fluid density exceeds the density of the solids, the solution to the equation becomes imaginary. A flaw was indicated also by the fact that galena and sylvite both having cubic cleavage, did not have similar values for a and b. Galena gave calculated values of a = 1.082 and g = 3.11, while sylvite gave values of a = 1.870 and p = 2.56. These flaws prompted further study of the equation, resulting in the following empirical modification: [ ] It is obvious a real solution of the equation is possible for all values of ps and p. When PL > PS, V is negative, indicating that the particles will rise against the attraction of gravity. The validity of the modification is borne out by the fact that when values of a and p were back calculated for galena and sylvite using the modified equation, both minerals gave values of a = 1.038 and p = 3.01. With the modification shown in Eq. 2, Newton's friction factor becomes [ ]

Jan 1, 1976

By J. R. Guard

Development of electrical power in coal mining has been an outstanding example of adaptability. It has accommodated itself to new inventions, changing mining methods, increasing demands, increasing safety requirements and many other new conditions. With the appearance of the continuous miner in the mining machinery picture, those engineers interested in the application of electricity to mining have been thinking about what new combination of electrical apparatus will best suit this newcomer. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the relative costs of supplying d-c versus a-c power to mining equipment with particular reference to continuous miner setups. Assume that a-c power will be delivered to the mine at some high voltage suitable for transmission to the various substation locations. Typical voltage for this purpose is 4000 volts. The problem then is to change the power to some kind of power suitable for driving the motors of mining equipment. For safety and other reasons the voltage to be delivered to the motor terminals must be under 600 volts.

Jan 1, 1950

By I. D. Hagar

WHEN the history of American business during these momentous war years is written, an absorbing chapter will be devoted to the Maclntyre Development, in northern New York. It will tell of a timely mining project, deep in the wilds of the Adirondacks, blasted into being by Axis torpedoes. It will recount the labors of 1500 engineers and workmen, miles from a highway, rail line, or power source, who built a huge enterprise in a few short months' time. And it will list these major contributions to the war effort: more than a quarter million tons per year of ilmenite, source of titanium dioxide-man's most opaque white pigment-to be used in paints for warships, tanks, guns, planes and the plants that build them; as a co-product, over 500,000 tons each year of magnetite-an important type of iron ore- to help feed the cavernous maw of America's wartime steel industry.

Jan 1, 1942

By J. Parke Channing

ALTHOUGH the original thought of investigating waste in industry came from a mining engineer, Herbert Hoover, and although the chairman of that committee was a mining engineer (although the real work was done by the vice-chairman, L. W. Wallace), it is an interesting commentary that when the report first saw light, at St. Louis, on the first of June, 1921, some people most violently went up in the air when it was submitted by the representatives of the mining engineers. At the time they resented most markedly the report of the committee that 50 per cent. of the waste in industry, or as Mr. Ingalls in his paper has properly said, inefficiency in industry, was to be laid upon management. The reason for that seems to have been that, as a whole, the mining industry is pretty well organized and is superior to a large number of manufacturing industries including those studied by the Report. However, this very meeting shows that even the min-ing engineers have finally realized that there is waste or inefficiency in mining and that a large proportion of it can, with propriety, be assessed against management.

Jan 3, 1922

By Cyril S., Smith

THE phenomenon of air-hardening is well known in connection with special steels. It occurs when the rate of decomposition of austenite to marten- site is so retarded that it takes place on free cooling in air rather than on more rapid cooling in a quenching bath. If an air-hardening steel is quenched sufficiently rapidly it will remain in the soft austenitic state, while if it is cooled very slowly it will again become soft owing to growth of the carbide particles. It depends on a critical adjustment of the decomposition velocity and diffusion rate, and such alloys are rather rare, especially in the non-ferrous field. In carrying out some experiments on some copper- rich copper-cobalt alloys, the author found that these possess very marked air-hardening properties. The alloys are covered by a patent issued to M. G. Corson (1,723,022-1919), which states that an alloy containing between 2 and 5 per cent cobalt is hardened by simple quenching from above 850° C.

Jan 1, 1930

By H. J. Struth

AN unusual engineering achievement in the Gulf Coast last year was the drilling of a wildcat well in the swamps of Louisiana, using direct current. More unusual was the fact that it was necessary to house a diesel engine and generator on a barge in order to supply power. The remoteness of the well made it necessary to transport living quarters and drilling equipment to the location by means of barges, and involved the digging of a canal from a lake to the location, approximated one mile. The drilling equipment used on this well consisted of two generating units, each having one 210-hp. six-cylinder @$-in. bore type VDMA, 600 r.p.m. diesel engine, direct connected to a type CD-169, 125-kw., 250-volt direct current generator, which in turn is direct connected to a type CD-105, 15-kw. 250-volt exciter. One of these motors operates the draw works, one the mud pump, and one a duplicate spare. The generating equipment on the barge was approximately 250 ft. from the derrick, the control wires being brought from the derrick to the generator barge enclosed in a standard fire hose. This is an original idea for confining the con- 11.01 wires in one cable; obtaining minimum space and ample protection. Both control and power lines were suspended on poles. This well was at Lake Grande Ecaille Dome, which was located by seismograph in 1928. Fig. 1 shows the derrick, power barge and living quarters where direct G. E. current was used with rotary drilling equipment.

Jan 1, 1932

By A. C. Fieldner

DURING 1939, 286 by-product coke ovens were completed and put into operation. These included 140 Witputte ovens for the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., at Gary, Ind.; 61 Koppers-Becker ovens for the Ford Motor Co., at River Rouge, Mich.; 65 Semet-Sotvay ovens for the Great Lakes Steel Corp., Zug Island, River Rouge, Mich.; and 20 Curran-Knowtes ovens for the Midwest-Radiant Corp. plant at Mitlstadt, Ill. The Millstadt plant is unique in carbonizing a washed coat containing 3.50 per cent sulphur. The gas contains approximately 2500 grains sulphur per 100 cu. ft.; this is successfully removed with sodium carbonate solution by the Seaboard liquid purification process. The coke is intended primarily for use as a smokeless domestic fuel in the city of St. Louis.

Jan 1, 1941

By Sherwin F. Kelly

PLAIN mining engineers usually avoid any gathering of geo¬physicists because of the incomprehensibility of their discussion to the uninitiated. This being so, gradients, gravity and gammas will be deferred to the end of this review, the first part of which will be devoted to what has been done in applying geophysics to the solution of real field problems. From the West, J. J. Jakosky reports that International Geophysics has had its activities fairly well 'divided between mining (both placer and lode), oil structural work, and clans-site and reservoir investigations. In oil exploration, electrical methods are used for depths down to 2500 ft., beyond which they utilize seismic methods. They find in their placer work that the many 'magnetic anomalies encountered in the bedrock of the Southwest render the electrical techniques more satisfactory, and with them they are obtaining thickness and tonnage of gravels, depth to and contour of the underlying bedrock as well as important structural features therein, and water-table elevations.

Jan 1, 1934

By A. B. Young

T HE smelting industry in Utah is represented by four plants: The Midvale of the United States Smelting, Refining & Mini.ng Co., the Murray of the American Smelting and Refining Co., the Garfield of the same company and the Tooele of the Inter- na.tiona1 Smelting Co. The first two are lead smelters, the Garfield plant is a copper smelter while the last named embraces both a lead and copper smelter. A total daily smelting capacity of over 10,000 tons is represented, of which 4000 tons is lead smelting capacity. With the exception of Tooele, forty miles distant, all of these smelters are within twenty miles of Salt Lake City. Pyrometallurgical operations in this district are con- fined entirely to the production of unrefined bullion, which is shipped east to the various refineries of the respective companies. The smelting industry in this state had its beginning away back in the latter days of the Civil War, many years before the completion of the trans-continental railroad. Ox teams were still bringing their companies of better fixed Mormon emigrants across the plains to the valley of the Great Salt Lake and those in lesser circumstances were still pushing their hand- carts over the same roads to the temporary abode

Jan 1, 1925

By C. MeCulloch

A NOVEL practice in the bituminous coal industry is the accelerated method of burning coal to ash used in the laboratory of the Fidelity washery of the United Electric Coal Companies, Du Quoin, Ill. Development of this method has supplanted the tedious float-and-sink process for plant control at this plant. In normal operation the plant operators have available within thirty minutes the accurate ash percentage of the coal loaded in the railroad cars and can therefore make adjustments to maintain a practically uniform quality of washed coal, regardless of the variations in washery feed.

Jan 1, 1937

By Verne D. Johnston

ALTHOUGH the stocks of Lake Superior iron ore on dock or at furnaces at the beginning of the year were about 6,000,000 tons less than at the beginning of 1938, the steel industry was operating at only 52 1/2 per cent of capacity and continued at approximately this rate to about Aug. 1. Consequently the iron mines in the Lake Superior district during the winter and spring period were almost all on a curtailed production basis, governed mostly by the needs of the communities rather than by anticipation of ore demands. Many of these properties gave extra employment by prosecuting heavy strip- ping programs, and the underground mines by shaft sinking and rock development. All underground mines re- turned to full operation in September, mostly two-shift, five days per week. A few operated the sixth day. The ship- ping schedules were increased so that the actual delivery for the year exceeded early expectations by about 20 per cent. Final Lake shipments were slightly in excess of 45,000,000 gross tons.

Jan 1, 1940

By AIME AIME

AT the meeting on Engineering Education on Mon- A day afternoon E. A. Holbrook, of the University of Pittsburgh and chairman of the Committee, presided as chairman with W. B. Plank acting as vice- chairman. About sixty members of the educational fraternity were present. Dean Holbrook, after a few introductory remarks, introduced the first speaker of the afternoon, Charles Y. Clayton, who then presented his paper, "Why Do So Few Elect Metallurgy?" in which he stressed the fact that ,one of the things the study of metallurgy ,now needs is publicity and public education on what metallurgy is and 'does. Another thing he brought out is that the study of metallurgy has been looked on for many years merely as a branch of other departments. He gave tables showing past and present enrollment in the course of metallurgy in various schools.

Jan 1, 1930

By R. J. Corfield

MODERNIZATION of the entire electrical system and improvement of Rotation process efficiency is the twofold goal of the improvement program underway at the Arthur and Magna concentrators of the Utah Copper Div., Kennecott Copper Corp. Copper ore from the Bingham pit goes to these two concentrators where an interlocking program calls for complete electrical modernization and increased flotation process efficiency through additional capacity and flow scheme revisions. Flotation plants at the two mills are essentially duplicates, and while this article deals with the changes at the Arthur mill similiar improvements are being made at the Magna mill.

Jan 3, 1953

By R. W. Vander Laan

Conneaut has a long and illustrious history as a major Great Lakes port for coal and iron ore. The first dock was built in 1892 for unloading iron ore from the Mesabi Range for shipment to the Pittsburgh steel mills via the Shenango & Lake Erie Railroad, later to become the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad. The Pittsburgh & Conneaut Dock Company was incorporated in 1893. The world's first Hulett automatic ore unloader was constructed at Conneaut in 1899. Steam operated, it was the model for the giant electric Huletts used today, named after its inventor, George Hulett, who was a Conneaut resident.

Jan 3, 1974

By L. C. Noakes

Despite a long history of mining. Australia had no Commonwealth organization dealing specifically with the mineral industry until 1946, when the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics was established. Once formed, this new organization quickly expanded to include a Mineral Economics Section, which was established in 1947. Australia's slowness to develop a Federal bureau for the mineral industry can best be explained in the light of her political history. From a group of British crown colonies, Australia evolved into six sovereign states which had no unified federal government until they formed the present Commonwealth in 1901.

Jan 1, 1970

By Frank Firmstone

The material described below was made at Furnace No. 2, Longdale, Va., Oct. 28, 1907, during a sudden derangement of working, in the course of which the furnace became entirely bridged over and for some time no solid material whatever descended into the hearth. This caused the hearth to become so completely emptied that, at the tuyere-level, a pricker put in at one tuyere could be seen by looking in at the opposite one. The tap-hole was opened and the iron got out with some difficulty. It ran sluggishly, throwing many sparks, but was not

Jan 1, 1909

No. 576.-Graduate mining engineer, married, 32 years of age. Have had 10 years' experience in mining from position of mucker to that of general superintendent. For past four years have been in Copper River District of Alaska as mining engineer, and superintendent of gold and copper mines. Desire position in U. S. Best of reference. No. 577.-Member, technical, age 27, married. Open for engagement. Past year in war mineral field work, operation and production. Ten years thorough experience in both subordinate and executive positions, gold, silver and copper in the U. S., Mexico and South America. Devel-

Jan 5, 1919

By Claudio Gutierrez

It has been claimed (Eadington and Rosser, 1969) that when freshly precipitated lead sulfide is in contact with oxygen-containing water, there is an "induction period" of at least a few hours during which no detectable oxidation of the lead sulfide takes place This effect would be of the utmost importance for the adsorption of xanthate on galena in flotation mills. It was tried here to reproduce the results obtained in (Eadington and Rosser, 1969), but no "induction period" was found. Besides, reasons are given to prove that the oxidation mechanism proposed by Eadington and Prosser (1969) is not realistic.

Jan 1, 1982

By M. P. Nackowski, Armond H. Beers, W. T. Parry

Three hundred soil samples were collected on a one-mile grid in a 400-square mile area of the Oquirrh Mountains, Utah, including the Bingham-Lark, Ophir, Rush Valley, and Mercur mining districts. The soil samples were analyzed for copper, lead, zinc, silver, molybdenum, manganese, and iron by X-ray fluorescence using arsenic as an internal standard. Anomalies coincide in most cases with the mining districts. However, in the Mercur district no anomalies were detected. Also samples collected one mile from the Bingham mine barely reflect this major producer. No samples were collected within the Bingham mine area.

Jan 1, 1973

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N M Requests for publications should be addressed to the Librarian of the University Papers of the Geological Series of the University are bound in volumes: Vol 1, vol 2, pt 1, and vol 2, pt. 2, and vol. 3 are out of print, but separates of the following papers may be had at a uniform cost of 25 cents each. Vol. 1? No. 1, Geology of the environs of Albuquerque (1898); 2, Occurrence of copper and lead in the San Andreas and Caballo Mountains (1898), 3, Geological reconnaissance in western Socorro and Valencia counties (1898); Geology of the San Pedro and Albuquerque districts (1898). , Vol 2: No. 1, Geology of the Albuquerque Sheet (1900); 2, Miscellaneous economic papers by Herrick (1900); 3, Geological reconnaissance in western Socorro and Valencia counties (1900); 4, Geology of the White Sands of New Mexico (1900); 5, Identifi¬cation of an Ohio coal measure's horizon in New Mexico (1900); 6, Cyanide process in New Mexico (1900). Vol. 3. No 3, The oil situation in New Mexico (1920), 4, Geology of Sandia Mountains (1922); 5, Oil and gas m New Mexico in 1923.

Jan 1, 1933