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By PERCY E. BARBOUR

SECONDARY copper1 has &come more or less of a bugbear generally. What is its influence is often the subject of heated argument. The inedapable fact usually quoted is that since in 1929 primary production of copper in the United States was 1,026,348 tons and secondary production was 626,550 tons, there- fore, 0.6 lb. of secondary is produced for every pound of primary, and "How can you get around that?" The matter seems very plain, now that I have reached my conclusions, but they are the result of much laborious study and research. I shall show that' the production of secondary copper is not 0.6 per lb. of primary, in spite of statistical appearances; that the production of secondary is a function of primary production rather than of price; that secondary production has 'only a sub-. ordinate influence on the price of copper and then only in abnormal times; that there is not an accumulating reservoir of secondary from which the country is some- time to be drowned in copper, as is believed by some, or a reservoir from which we are going to draw much needed and more or less inexhaustible stores in the future, as is believed by others; and finally, that the United States always produces more copper than it uses and exports the surplus. These are all controversial points, and for that reason and to anticipate argument I have set forth my reasoning in considerable detail.

Jan 1, 1931

By WILLARD HAYES

(Glen Summit Meeting, June, 1911.) THE determination of the question whether the Mayari and Moa mining-claims of the Spanish-American Iron Co. have been rightly denounced under the third section of the law of bases rests on the findings in the following questions of fact: 1. Is the mineral an iron-ore? 2. Is the iron-ore a bog iron-ore? 3. Is the iron-ore ocher? 4. If ocher is present, can it be mined separately and independently of the iron-ore ? 1. IS THE MINERAL AN IRON-ORE? Since the material is shown by a large number of analyses to contain from 41. to 50 per cent. of metallic iron and less than 0.02 per cent. of phosphorus, and since it has been and is being actually used on a commercial scale for the production of iron and steel, it must be classed as an iron-ore. 2. IS THE IRON-ORE A BOG IRON-ORE? Bog iron-ore has certain invariable characteristics of chemical composition, physical appearance, geological relations, and origin by which it can always be recognized with certainty. In chemical composition, it is the hydrated sesquioxide of iron, limonite, or a mixture of limonite and other closely-related iron hydrates. It never contains the anhydrous oxides-hematite or magnetite; is never magnetic, and never contains either nickel, chromium, or cobalt oxides. On the other hand, it is invariably high in phosphorus-content. In physical appearance and texture it is a yellow or reddish-brown amorphous spongy material, and always contains water-worn sand-grains, silt, clay, and plant-remains. In its geological relations it is wholly independent of the rock

Mar 1, 1911

By Frederick W. DeVries

Since we first agreed to present this talk we have learned that some of you may have been covering ground we intend to discuss: Bob Schechter, Daryl Tweeton, Don Seidel, Herb Burgman; however, the ideas were original when we began, "novel" as in the title of the talk, and whether our results are news or merely corroborative, we feel they point a direction that could be valuable to all. We worked with many of you in the past on using hydrogen peroxide in in-situ uranium leaching. Our talk today is not directly related to peroxide; it is, I hope, illustrative of Du Pont&apos;s interest in providing service to this industry in any way we can. The scouting work we are presenting was stimulated by field inputs: First, ammonium carbonate leaches cause restoration problems, primarily because ammonium ions exchange on clays with calcium. Second, sodium carbonate solutions, especially in South Texas deposits, can cause intolerable swelling of clays. From discussions with Dr. van Olphen, who wrote the book on clay chemistry, we inferred by comparison of the radii of the hydrated ions of the elements in these clay systems, that since potassium had about the same radius as ammonium, and sodium was much larger, potassium occupied a unique position to solve both problems. We have shown: FIGURE 1 Potassium bicarbonate systems leach uranium without loss of permeability found with sodium Potassium salts are very effective in restoring ammonia-leached sites Before reviewing the details of our work, which was performed by Hazen Research, Inc., I should like to stress its scouting nature. We are trying to assist the in-situ industry by pointing out new, potentially important directions. But, as with our previous work on sodium silicate to restore permeability, we feel the development phases can generally best be carried out in cooperative programs with companies directly involved with operations. DISCUSSION Test Parameters Now for the details: Our leaching tests were designed to note pressure-drop changes across the ore sample as the uranium was leached. Figure 2 shows the apparatus. The [ ] packed length was 20.5 inches (52 cm) with fifteen hundred grams of ore in the two-inch (5 cm)-diameter bed. Pressure drop was measured by manometer and feed rates were maintained constant with a tubing pump. The samples, from a South Texas leach site, were sealed in "Zip Loc" bags, frozen with "dry ice", crushed (still frozen) through six mesh, and blended before placement into the columns. The ores analyzed as shown here: FIGURE 3 Ore Analyses [Sample A Sample B U308 015% 0122% Mo 0004% 0086% Se0012% <0001% Fe3,078%076% Fee- 098% 044%]

Jan 1, 1979

By W. B. Mather

GEOLOGICAL studies have revealed the occurrence of hundreds of pegmatite dikes in north- east Brazil, Fig. 1, in the three states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, and Ceara. Heretofore data have not been available on the possible production of lithium minerals from these areas, and in March, April, and May 1953 the author undertook a reconnaissance survey covering a cross-section of the pegmatites. Sixty-one pegmatites were examined. The pegmatites of Rio Grande do Norte and Paraiba are located in an arid region (Seratao), and except in the most southerly portion there is a mini- mum of vegetation and overburden. The region is easily prospected and relatively accessible by jeep or truck. The pegmatites examined in Ceara are in an area of lush vegetation along the flanks of the Jaqueribe River valley. It is therefore more difficult to prospect, and the dirt roads, as a means of access, leave much to be desired. For all practical purposes rail transportation, except in Ceara, is not available. The rocks of the area1-4 are composed of Pre-Cambrian schist, gneiss, quartzite, and marbles. They have been intruded by granites, monzonites, and diorites and cut by quartz veins and pegmatites.

Jan 9, 1954

By S. M. Shelton

SINCE the Saar started. the real progress in scrap-metal recover is in the change of point of view regarding secondary metals. The tendency had been to regard scrap as the normal outgrowth of obsolescence, fluctuating somewhat from periods of depression to periods of prosperity. but nevertheless an unwieldy economic factor more to be contended with than embraced. Now, metals above the ground are being looked upon as semi-permanent reserves or stock piles in various stages of repeated use or revolving life cycles. The change in point of view is due to the forced realization that domestic supplies of new metals are limited and many foreign sources are at least temporarily closed. The stock piles must be cultivated. The reserves must be made more nearly permanent. Steps are being taken : (1) develop methods for recovery of scrap metals heretofore not recovered, and (2) restrict strategic metals to uses ensuring a large percentage of re-use, which in turn means substitute materials in the dissipative uses.

Jan 1, 1942

By AIME AIME

THE American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers will hold its annual meeting in New York City, Feb. 9-12. The technical sessions, excepting the Sunday afternoon and evening sessions of the Mineral Industry Education Division (see the M.I.E.D. program) will be held in the Engineering Societies Building. The "All-Institute" luncheon on Monday will be at the Commodore Hotel; the Annual Banquet and President&apos;s Reception, the Smoker, and the Informal Dance will be at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The dinners of the Petroleum Division and the Institute of Metals Division will be at the Roosevelt Hotel.

Jan 1, 1942

By L. Ekstrom, J. P. Dismukes

The homogeneity and microstrcture of zone-leveled Ge-Si alloys haw been investigated by sellera1 physical techniques and by metallography as a function of growth rate in the range 3 x 10 1x10 cm-sec&apos;, and as a system of alloy composition throughout the system. The temperature gradient at the solid-liquid interface was about 50 deg-cm-&apos; Cellular or dendritic structures char-acteristic of constitutional supercooling were ob-served except at very slow growth rates, which ranged from about 2 x 10 cm -sec for Ge 1 sio alloy to about 2 X 10&apos;5 cm-sec&apos;1 for Ge .sSio.s alloy. Using a simple model similiar to that employed for dilute solid the dependence upon compo-sition over the entire system of the critical growth rate for the onset of constiutional supercooling was calculated, and was .found to he in good agreement with the experimental results. THE recent discovery of the low thermal conductivity of Ge-Si alloys&apos; at high temperatures has revealed that these alloys have high efficiencies for thermoelectric-power generation.&apos;, Therefore, a reliable method was needed for the preparation of homogeneous samples required for definitive measurements throughout this alloy system. Due to the low diffusion rates in the solid alloys, the segregated samples obtained by quenching a melt are not readily homogenized by annealing.475 However. isothermal solidification from a melt of constant composition can produce uniform material. Of the available semiconductor crystal-growth procedures, the zone-leveling technique6 applied to a complete solid-solution alloy system by Wang and Alexander&apos; and by others provides a simple method of doing this. In the present work, the homogeneity and microstructure of zone-leveled alloys have been correlated with growth conditions, and the conditions for preparing homogeneous Ge-Si alloys have been established. This has provided insight into the solidification process of alloy semiconductors. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Sample Preparation. The Ge-Si alloy phase diagram4 shown in Fig. l(a) consists of a complete series of solid solutions. The zone-leveling technique used to prepare most of the samples consists of moving a zone of liquidus composition (C1) through charge material of the corresponding solidus composition (C,), as is illustrated in Figs. l(b) and l(c). To prepare the charge materials, high-purity germanium and silicon were pulverized in a steel hammer mill, cleaned magnetically, and melted together to make uniform chill castings. The zone leveling was carried out in a resistance-heated furnace similar to that of Mitrenin et al.&apos; shown in Fig. 2. However, a few specimens of high silicon content were prepared by the Czochralski technique. The growth rate ranged from 3.5 x X6 to 1.2 X 10~3 cm-sec-&apos;. Temperature gradients in the solid and in the melt were determined by recording the temperature as the molten zone passed over a Pt-Pt 13 pct Rh thermocouple contained in a small

Jan 1, 1965

By Linn Bradley

Introduction MARKED differences of opinion have been expressed by engineers interested in cleaning iron blast-furnace gases for use in hot-blast stoves and under boilers, in reference to the advantages of a hot-dry method over a cold-wet method. One point at issue involves the sensible heat energy in the moisture contained in the gas. Some advocates of the cold-wet methods claim that the condensation and resultant removal of the greater portion of this contained moisture by wet scrubbing, spraying or similar methods, results in a saving of some of this sensible heat energy, by reason of the fact that water vapor has a high capacity for sensible heat energy and may carry from the exit of a hot-blast stove, for example, more heat units than are sacrificed or lost when the gas is cleaned by this cold-wet method. Other advantages claimed for the latter method are: That gas burns more readily when it is free from moisture in any form; that because gas is made denser by cooling and removing the moisture it has a higher calorific value than hot gas carrying moisture; and that higher flame temperatures are obtained when the gas is cleaned by the cold-wet method. A search through the available literature fails to disclose any extensive calculations or records of conditions obtained in practice, bearing upon these phases of gas cleaning. This paper deals with these problems from the standpoint of the economy of using a gas of higher flame temperatures, of improved stove design, and of economy in the gas-cleaning department. Calculations have been made which show that by cleaning the gases by a cold-wet method the sensible heat energy of the blast-furnace gases is greatly reduced; and, in general, this loss of heat energy is far greater than that lost from the stoves or boilers due to the sensible heat capacity of the water vapor if carried away by the exit gases. By making use of the

Jan 2, 1917

In uranium metallurgy, the main purpose is to obtain a product containing 80-85% U308 (yellowcake) from ores whose average grade is a mere 0.21% U30& Essentially, the task of extraction and concentration involves dissolving the ore&apos;s U308 values, followed by purification and concentration of the uranium-rich solution (using such operations as filtration, clarification, and ion-exchange), and then selectively precipitating and isolating U308. Leaching is First Step In yellowcake production mills, the first chemical change occurs by leaching the ore with either sulfuric acid-as done by Anaconda and Kerr-McGee-or with an alkaline solution of, say, sodium carbonate, as done by United Nuclear-Homestake Partners. The choice of either acid or alkaline leaching is not an arbitrary one: it depends on the chemical and physical characteristics of a particular ore. That is, on the presence of clays, organic compounds (usually of carbonaceous origin), and soluble impurities, as well as on the ore&apos;s wetness and grindability.

Jan 8, 1974

By M. R. Geer

Coal washing assumed an important role in the mining industry of the Pacific Northwest long before washing practice became firmly established in the Appalachian field. A Scaife washer was operated in the state of Washington in 1887; and by 1927, the fist year for which complete statistics were compiled, nearly a third of the state&apos;s coal production was washed, in comparison with only about 5 pct for the country as a whole. Mechanical preparation was adopted in Alaska in 1922 in a plant constructed by the United States Navy at Chickaloon to provide bunker coal for naval forces operating in northern waters. Many of the coal beds mined in Washington and Alaska contained more impurities than those mined elsewhere, and this circumstance contributed to the early interest in mechanical cleaning. A much more important factor, however, was the inclination of the coal beds. With steeply pitching beds, hand sorting by the miner at the face is impossible; consequently, all material must be loaded and dealt with on the surface, just as is now proving the case with mechanical mining of flat beds. Thus "full-seam" mining afforded the same stimulus to the early development of coal washing in the Northwest that - it is providing under mechanization in the rest of the country today.

Jan 1, 1949

By Robert T. Ault

The nature of fracture in unnotched tensile and notched tensile sheet and round specimens and V -notched and precracked Charpy-type sheet specimens of both wrought stress -relieved and re-crystallized molybdenum was investigated over the temperature range of -78° to 300°C. The sharp rise in fracture stress, for unnotched tensile samples, as the temperature is increased above the brittleness transition temperature (Tb), is found to be a result of an increase in flow stress due to plastic constraint and an increased strain rate which results from the onset of necking at Tb . Quasi-brittle fracture in notched tensile samples is found to occur when the tensile stress at the elastic-plastic interface, beneath the root of the notch, reaches a maximum critical value, which is independent of test temperature over the range from —78° to 25°C, but dependent on microstructure. In the temperature range between 150° and 300°C, unnotched tensile and notched tensile samples alike are found to fracture by a ductile fibrous tearing process which is discontinuous in nature, as a result of the competition between the processes of tearing, through continued plastic flow, and local work hardening. Results from the V-notched and fatigue-cracked Charpy-type impact tests demonstrate that crack initiation is the governing factor in the low-temperature (-78° to 25°C) fracture process for molybdenum. In recent years, there has been considerable interest, and a commensurate number of investigations, concerning the duc tile-to-brittle transition in refractory metals. There has not developed, however, a satisfactory explanation for the uniaxial tensile fracture-stress transition which accompanies the well-known ductility transition. This matter therefore warranted investigation. In a similar manner, the increased importance of notched tensile strength values in evaluating materials and in design criteria requires a better understanding of the factors which control the fracture behavior of notched tensile samples. In a previous investigation1 of the nature of initial yielding and fracture in notched sheet molybdenum at room temperature, it was suggested that plastic constraint was the controlling factor in governing the fracture behavior of notched samples. The final portion of this investigation was concerned with the fracture toughness of molybdenum. Of particular interest was the comparison of effective surface energies for fracture in V-notched samples with fatigue-cracked, Charpy-type samples in order to ascertain the relative importance of the initiation and propagation phases of the fracture process. MATERIALS AND TEST PROCEDURE Sheet tensile, notched tensile, and V-notched Charpy specimens were prepared from 50-mil, stress-relieved molybdenum sheet.* Half of these specimens were vacuum-annealed for 1 hr at 1200°C and 7.5 x l0-5 Torr and furnace-cooled to produce a relatively uniform grain size of 0.30 mm diameter. Round notched and unnotched tensile specimens were prepared from warm-rolled and swaged 5/8-in.-diam bar.* These specimens were vacuum-annealed for 1 hr at 1350°C and 5 x lom5 Torr and furnace-cooled to produce a grain diameter of 0.11 mm. Material analyses in ppm were: C N O H Sheet 290 10 4 1 Bar 50 30 30 2 The unnotched tensile sheet specimens had a 1/4-in. gage width and a 1-in. gage length. The unnotched tensile round specimens had a 9/32-in. gage diameter and a 1-1/4-in. gage length. The sheet and round notch tensile specimens are shown in Fig. 1. All of the notched tensile specimens tested were tandem-notched in order to study the location and mode of fracture initiation. The tandem-notched specimens were carefully machined so that the largest variation in notch depth on a single specimen was 0.001 in. Thus, when fracture occurs, the extent of plastic deformation that exists in the un-fractured notch section is that which exists just prior to fracture. All of the tandem-notched sheet specimens were electrolytic ally polished and chemically etched prior to testing. The V-notched Charpy-type specimens machined from the 50-mil sheet material had the standard dimensions of 2.125 in. long, 0.394 in. deep, and a 0.010-in. root radius. The unnotched tensile and notched tensile tests were conducted over the temperature range of -78° to 300°C, in a 10,000-lb Instron Universal Testing Machine, at a constant crosshead speed of 0.020 in. per min. The V-notched Charpy-type

Jan 1, 1964

Jan 1, 1886

By Forest Mintz

Many oil and gas producers find it advantageous to borrow against the value of their hydrocarbon re- serves. This paper considers the requirements for a reserve based loan and the calculations that a bank would perform to arrive at a loan amount. Three of the most common loan structures, i.e. a term loan, a production payment, and a revolving credit/term loan will be discussed. A typical outline for each type of loan is presented. Finally, a comparison of major considerations in the three financing techniques is shown.

Jan 1, 1982

By Oliver Bowles

AMONG mining men as well as in the popular mind the conviction has held sway that mining is pre-eminently a western industry. True it is that gold, silver, copper and other metals have made the States of California, Colorado, Montana, Utah. Nevada and Arizona famous. The prominence attained by these States as mineral producers is, however, not measured alone by the money value of the products of their mines. While the metals are without doubt indispensable in industry, the glamour of the precious metals, and the lure of copper, lead and zinc have given to their ore deposits a sentimental interest that often quite out-weighs their commercial importance. Today a great group of more commonplace minerals are finding a place in commerce and industry rivaling that of the metals, but there is little sentiment attached to them, and,. therefore, they attain relatively little publicity. This is the great group of the non-metallic minerals, exclusive of fuels and oils, including stone, sand and gravel, cement, lime, gypsum, asbestos, mica, phos-phate rock and many others. Almost unnoticed they have grown in production to almost unbelievable pro-portions. The estimated value of metal production for 1925 is given as $1,380,000,000, of the non-metals (ex-cluding fuels) $1,294,000,000. The non-metallic industries are not new, many of them date back almost to pre-historic times; but, as the greatest of them (on a tonnage basis) provides raw materials for the construction industries, it required the activities of the present age of construction to bring about their enormous development. Many of them enter manufacturing as well as con-struction. Non-metallic minerals constitute the back-bone of our great chemical industries. While construction and manufacture reach to all parts of the country their widest development has been in the great industrial centers of the eastern Seaboard and the middle West. Consequently the raw materials of mineral origin required for these great industries have attained a remarkable growth in the eastern half of the- United States. In compiling figures of mineral production for 1924, for which more complete data are available than for later years, the surprising fact is brought to light that the non-metallic mineral produc-tion alone of some of the eastern and middle-western States exceeds by a substantial margin the total min-eral production of some of the western States that have been classed as essentially mining States. Thus the non-metallic mineral production, exclusive of coal and petroleum, of the State of Ohio, was approximately $150,000,000; of Pennsylvania $175,000,000; and of New York $107,000,000. For the same year, 1924, the total mineral production of Utah was $84,357,000; of Montana $70,632,000; of Colorado $61,488,000; and of Nevada only $26,226,000. Even Minnesota, with its enormous iron ore production, reached only $107,845,-000, or a sum about equivalent to the non-metallic min-eral production of the State of New York.

Jan 8, 1927

By I. S. Levy, J. L. Brimhall, B. Mastel

Specimens of&apos; Hastelloy X-280, a low-cobalt version of the solid-solution- hardened nickel-base alloy Hastelloy X, were given a series of thermomechanical treatttzents. They were then Lensile-tested at room temperature and 1350°F. The Microstructures of the specimens tested at 1350°F were studied by electron Microscopy. Microscopy showed that dislocation tangling, caused by the cold working, mas still in evidence after aging-for 24 hr to temperatures as high as 1550oF. (Cr, Mo)23 C6, (Fe, Mo)6 C&apos;. as well us an unidentifiable phase precipitale due to the combination of the thermomechanical treatments and subsequent tensile strain. The room -temperature and 1350°F tensile properties show a general increase ill strength and decreccse in ductility with increusing cold-work level. This is due to the dislocation taangling-. PerLurbatiot~s to this general trend occur- due to solid-solution weakening at the higher cold-work levels as a direct result of the preciplitation reactions. THE requirements for corrosion resistance and high-temperature strength place nickel-base alloys among the more promising materials for advanced nuclear reactor applications. However, when these alloys are irradiated at service temperatures, they generally suffer severe embrittlement&apos;" and reduction in rupture life.3 Certain experimental treatments resulted in improvements in the tensile and stress-rupture properties of Hastelloy X-280, a solution-hardened nickel-base alloy.&apos; To provide a basis for understanding these improvements, unirradiated tensile specimens were examined by electron microscopy. The results are reported in this paper. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS Material. Hastelloy X-280, a low-cobalt version of Hastelloy X, is a member of the solution-hardened class of nickel-base alloys. The Hastelloy X-280 was obtained from 4- and 1-in: thick plates in the mill -annealed condition. Table I gives the chemical composition of the material as reported by the National Spectrographic Laboratories. ~x~erimental Treatments. Plates of suitable size, 12 by 3 by 1 in., or by + in., were cut under a water jet from the stock material and examined ultrasonic -ally for homogeneity of grain size and absence of voids. The acceptable plates were solution-treated at 2150°Ffor 1 hr and air-cooled. These plates were then reduced in thickness by cold rolling 0, 10, 15: or 20 pct along the original rolling direction. The plates were machined into buttonhead tensile specimens with a gage diameter of 0.125 in., with a gage length of 1.125 in., and with their tensile axes parallel to the rolling direction. The specimens were examined for quality of finish with a penetrant dye, ultra son ically checked for voids, and finally given a dimensional tolerance check with an optical comparator. The acceptable specimens were aged for 24 hr at either 1000" or 1500 F and air-cooled. These specimens were then held at 540°F in a water loop for approximately 18 days to qualify as controls for similar specimens irradiated under the same conditions of time, temperature, water chemistry, and flow rate. Table U summarizes the treatments. These treatments were investigated to establish whether prior precipitation and stabilization of carbide phases at strain sites within the matrix could reduce the amount of carbides available for precipitation at grain boundaries during service. Tensile-Test Conditions. Specimens were tested to fracture at room temperature or 1350 F in air on an Instron tensile-testing machine at a crosshead speed of 0.05 in. per min. The time for the furnace to reach equilibrium at 1350°F was approximately 30 min; soak time prior to testing was 15 min; and test duration was approximately 5 min.

Jan 1, 1968

By AIME AIME

IN furtherance of the policy of acquainting those members of the Institute who live at a distance from New York with all the details of administration, the thirty delegates sent by the local sections and the technical divisions were invited to attend the meeting of the Directors on Tuesday evening as well as the Directors&apos; dinner immediately preceding. Including the Directors and officers, new and old, the members of the Papers and Publications Committee and the section delegates, more than 70 sat down at the dinner table in the Engineers Club. The attendance at the business meeting that followed was not quite so large, doubtless for the reason that the ladies&apos; fashion show, held in connection with the informal dance, offered attraction that eclipsed that of watching the wheels of Institute business go around.

Jan 1, 1930

By T. Egleston

THE works of the Ore Knob Copper Company are situated in the county of Ashe in the northwestern part of the State of North Carolina, about ten miles from the Virginia line, at an elevation of 4600 feet above the sea. The nearest railroad station is at Marion, Smythe County, Virginia, about forty-five miles distant. The roads from the railroad to the works have been constructed by the company for the transportation of their material, and are very hilly, and in certain seasons of the year in bad repair. Transportation is therefore always limited and never easy, although it is done by contract at a very low price. The main difficulty with the transportation is not so much its cost as the fact that it puts a limit to the production of the works. These unfavorable conditions make it necessary for the owners of the mine to smelt their ores and to send to market nothing except the metal, which alone will bear the cost of transportation. The mine was opened previous to 1860, but has only been worked systematically during the last five or six years. The vein is a fissure vein from ten to twenty feet in thickness in the gneiss of the

Jan 1, 1882

By T. Egleston

The works of the Ore Knob Copper Company are situated in the county of Ashe in the northwestern part of the State of North Carolina, about ten miles from the Virginia line, at an elevation of 4600 feet above the sea. The nearest railroad station is at Marion, Smythe County, Virginia, about forty-five miles distant. The roads from the railroad to the works have been constructed by the company for the transportation of their material, and are very hilly, and in certain seasons of the year in bad repair. Transportation is therefore always limited and never easy, although it is done by contract at a very low price. The main difficulty with the transportation is not so much its cost as the fact that it puts a limit to the production of the works. These unfavorable conditions make it necessary for the owners of the mine to smelt their ores and to send to market nothing except the metal, which alone will bear the cost of transportation. The mine was opened previous to 1860, but has only been worked systematically during the last five or six years. The vein is a fissure vein from ten to twenty feet in thickness in the gneiss of the

Jan 1, 1882

In the Bowen Basin of central Queensland, coal production has gone from virtually nothing in 1961 to more than 24 million tons today4ut there&apos;s a cloud over this success.

Jan 1, 1977

By J. A. Rowland, C. W. Funk

THIS investigation is a part of the United States Bureau of Mines work in conserving the Nation&apos;s resources. The isothermal sections presented were developed as a guide to a comprehensive investigation of the properties and fabricating characteristics of copper-base alloys containing manganese and tin. These alloys are being investigated as possible replacements for the commercial bronzes containing substantial quantities of tin. Development of the isothermal sections has, therefore, been limited to the area between 0 to 20 pct Mn and 0 to 25 pct Sn. Since Heusler1 reported the ferromagnetic properties of the Cu-Mn-Sn alloys in 1903, the system has been the subject of several investigations. These studies were largely concerned with correlation of magnetic properties and crystal structure.2-6 Vero,&apos; however, established the solidus surface of the system, between 20 pct Mn and 40 pct Sn, by thermal and microscopic methods. The a, ß, and y solid solutions were also observed by Vero and reported to extend into the interior of the ternary system. For the present study, the annotated diagram of the Cu-Sn system prepared by Raynor&apos; and the Cu-Mn diagram by Dean and coworkers9 were used as the binary borders of the ternary system. Procedure The metals used in this investigation were electrolytic manganese, washed cathode copper, and three-star tin. The manganese, produced at the Boulder City pilot plant of the Bureau of Mines, had a purity of 99.9 pct; the copper contained less than 0.004 pct Bi and 0.001 pct S; the tin contained 0.070 pct Pb, 0.070 pct Sb, 0.050 pct Fe, and 0.065 pct Si. Heats of 1 lb were melted in alundum crucibles with a 3-kw induction furnace. The heats were chill-cast in iron or copper molds to form 6-in. ingots 3/4 in. in diameter. Molds were washed with graphite or zirconia, depending on the manganese content, and preheated to 150°C. The maximum impurity content of any alloy was 0.03 pct Fe, 0.02 pct Si, and 0.02 pct Al; in most cases, they contained less than half this quantity of any of these impurities. Composition of the alloys and their treatment prior to homogenizing are shown in Fig. 1. Designations adjacent to each composition refer to the heat numbers. With a few exceptions, ingots containing 20 pct Sn or less were hot-swaged. These ingots were swaged, after a 24-hr preheat at 650°C, to obtain a total reduction of 70 pct in cross section. Intermittent reheating was necessary, and reductions were limited to either 0.025 or 0.050 in. in diameter per pass. Selection of a 200-hr homogenizing treatment was based on extensive experiments which indicated that virtual equilibrium was reached after 150 hr. Structures were retained by quenching in water. Grain sizes in the specimens homogenized at 350" and 450°C were generally small. These homogenizing treatments were preceded by a 50-hr anneal at 650°C to facilitate phase identification by increasing the grain size in these specimens. The specimens were furnace-cooled from this temperature to the homogenizing temperature, and the heat treatment was continued for the standard 200-hr period. The homogenized samples were bisected to provide an internal section for metallographic examination. Optimum definition of the microstructure was obtained by successive polishing and etching. Quarter-strength ASTM copper reagent No. 13 gave the most satisfactory results.10 Filings from interior sections of the samples were used for diffraction studies. These filings were annealed in evacuated glass tubes at homogenizing temperatures for periods exceeding 50 hr and quenched in water. During this treatment the manganese content was reduced by significant amounts, probably by vaporization. This change in composition was considered in applying the diffraction data, which were used only as a means of identifying phases where the data were consistent with the metallographic evidence. Phase Identification The a solid solution is readily distinguished by the copper-colored, twinned, polyhedral grains, as shown in Fig. 2, and a face-centered cubic X-ray pattern. Tukon indentations, using a 25-g load, indicate a Knoop hardness of 155 for a quenched from 650°C. Using white light developed by a Wratten 78 A filter, the ß grains in etched specimens have a dark brown tint in contrast to the lighter copper-colored grains of the a phase. Knoop hardness values of 284 were obtained for the ß structure in specimens quenched from 650°C. The ß structure was also distinguished from the a phase by its body-centered cubic lattice. The acicular structure appearing in Fig. 3 was evident in several alloys of higher tin content after quenching from either 750&apos; or 650°C. Since a trans-

Jan 1, 1954