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By Ralph H. Espach

Wyoming contains many petroleum and natural-gas fields, and more than 250 geological structures have been mapped; however, only about 85 have been found (July 1938) to contain petroleum or natural gas, or both, in commercial quantities. To January 1938 approximately 434 million barrels of oil and 915 billion cubic feet of gas have been produced, and it was estimated that proved oil reserves in Wyoming amounted to 300 million barrels.' The Salt Creek field, the largest in the Rocky Mountain area, alone has produced 64 percent of the State's oil and 46 percent of its gas. This field ranked thirteenth among the producing fields of the United States in total cumulative production as of January 1, 1938. On this basis it ranks with the Kern River and Huntington Beach fields of California and the Butler County fields of Kansas. The Salt Creek field has declined in relative importance; in 1937, while still the largest oil-producing field in the State, it produced 31 percent of the oil and 11 percent of the gas extracted from all wells in Wyoming.

Jan 1, 1941

By K. K. Kelley, L. B. Pankratz, W. W. Weller

Mullite is a substance of prime importance in ceramic technology . Despite this fact , its thermodynamic properties have received little attention . A Bureau of Mines literature survey disclosed the absence of lowtemperature heat capacity data , the absence of an experimental entropy value for 298.15 ° K , and the lack of heat content data beyond the temperature range from 298° to 576 ° K. Data supplied in this Bureau report fill these gaps in the thermodynamic knowledge of mullite . According to equilibrium phase studies of Aramaki and Roy ,3 the mullite phase melts congruently at 2,123 ± 15 ° K , and the equilibrium crystallinephase composition extends from Al Si2013 to Al6.8 Si₂ Q4.2 . The results in this report are for the stoichiometric composition , Al Si¿Qз . • Heat capacity measurements were made over the temperature range from 50 ° to 298 ° K , and the entropy at 298.15 ° K was evaluated . Heat content measurements covered the temperature range from 298 ° to 1,800 ° K. Heat content

Jan 1, 1963

By Joseph A. Olmstead

Literature concerned with management and supervisory training was reviewed and analyzed from the perspective of relative effectiveness of various training methods for improving knowledge and awareness, changing attitudes, improving problem solving skills, improving interpersonal skills, and improving on-the-job performance. Conclusions were drawn relative to each method and the current state of the field of management and leadership training. A 168 item annotated bibliography is presented.

Jan 1, 1980

By Charles G. Patmon

This paper describing the methods of dredging and treatment of gold-bearing gravels at the Lancha Plana Gold Dredging Co.'s dredge is one of a series of similar papers being prepared by the Bureau of Mines on mining practices, methods, and costs in the various mining districts of the United States. The dredge is located near the Mokelumne River, 12 miles west of San Adreas, Calif.; it is accessible by an improved dirt road from Jackson, which is about 20 miles distant.

Jan 1, 1932

By William W. Adams

A larger measure of safety attended the operation of the stone quarries and related plants in the United States during the calendar year 1935 than in any other year for which annual records are available for the industry. The accident rate, covering fatalities and nonfatal injuries that disabled an employee beyond the remainder of the day on which the accident occurred, was 38.19 per million man-hours of work performed. The nearest approach to this favorable record was in 1932 when the rate was 38.48. The rate for 1934 was 41.82; hence the record for 1935 was 9 percent better than that for 1934. Reports from operating companies showed that 51 men were killed by accidents in 1935 and 4,152 men were injured. (See table 37.) The industry employed 73,005 men and performed 110,033,341 man-hours of labor, an average of 1,507 hours of work per man. Measured in man-days, the total volume of labor was 14,623,303, or an average of 200 days of 7.52 hours per day for each man employed. These figures are not strictly comparable with similar figures for the preceding year, as the, coverage of the industry was more complete for 1935 than for 1934 because special facilities were available to the Bureau of Mines for conducting the 1935 canvass that were not available for the 1934 canvass. Reports covering identical plants that were active both in 1934 and 1935 indicate a reduction of about 7 percent in the number of men employed in 1935. This fact suggests that the apparent increase in the number of workers in 1935 is attributable chiefly, if not entirely, to the more complete coverage of operating plants in 1935. The plants from which this inference is drawn employed 21,799 men in 1934 compared with 20,248 in 1935.

Jan 1, 1937

By D. D. Harbuck

To decrease reliance on foreign sources for the strategic and critical metals gallium and germanium, the U.S. Bureau of Mines identified and developed processing technology for two domestic sources of these metals: a Tennessee zinc residue and a Utah ore. Sulfuric acid (H2S04) solutions were used to solubilize gallium and germanium in both sources. Statistically designed experiments showed that the most important parameter for high metal extraction from zinc residue was the H2S04 concentration. At a concentration of 2.9M H2S04, 95 pct of the gallium was extracted, and at a concentration of 0.6M H2S04, 73 pct of the germanium was extracted. Controlled H2S04 concentration was also the key for high metal extractions (97 pct Ga, 87 pct Ge) from the Utah ore. Such control was achieved using a two-stage countercurrent leach circuit. Testing showed that the insoluble germanium in both the residue and ore was tied up with silica. Several methods for overcoming this problem are given. To recover gallium and germanium from the leach solutions, the solvent extractants octylphenyl acid phosphate (OPAP) (for gallium) and LIX 63-OPAP (for germanium) were identified. These extractants were tested in separate, continuous, solvent-extraction circuits yielding a gallium recovery of 94 pct and a germanium recovery of more than 90 pct.

Jan 1, 2010

By W. W. Weller

Heat capacities of ferrous molybdate (FeMoO4) and ferrous tungstate (FeWO4) were measured over the temperature range 51° to 298.15° K. Ferrous tungstate has a lambda type heat capacity anomaly at 74° K. The 298.15° K entropies are FeMoO4) 30.9 cal/deg mole and FeW04) 31.5 cal/deg mole.

Jan 1, 1966

By Ellis S. Hertzog

[The relatively large amount of phosphorous occurring in many iron ores limits their usefulness mid sometimes renders them valueless under present conditions of pig-iron manufacture. A practical method for removing the phosphorus would be valuable to the iron and steel industry. Gravity concentration has been of little value as far as the removal it of phosphorous is concerned, because the compounds of this element are, as a rule, disseminated very finely. Removal of the phosphorous by leaching is not a new idea and has been the subject of some investigation,3,4/ but few data have been published. W. R. Crane published analyses of various ore bodies in the Birmingham district. The hard or unleached ores are much higher or in phosphorus than the soft, leached ores along the outcrops. Tips fact indicates that as mild a leaching agent as water removes phosphorus effectively if enough time is allowed for it to react.]

Jan 1, 1935

By Ronald W. Stingelin

This study undertook the development and implementation of a methodology for estimating the impact of coal seam interaction on the eastern bituminous underground reserve base as published in USBM Information Circular 8655. The effects of previous mining in multiple coal seam areas on currently mined and reserve seams are predicted as a percentage coal loss by an engineering assessment model called the Coal Loss Calculation Model. The model utilizes twelve input variables easily derivable from mine maps or other existing data sources and calculates the effects of subsidence and high-stress due to remnant pillars in the previously mined seam. Extensive literature review resulted in the identification, definition, and quantification of the critical variables of seam interaction. Export opinion surveys were made of mining experts, MESA mine inspectors, and coal mine operators. Statistical analysis was used to establish the redundancy of the critical variables and to develop a total coal loss prediction algorithm. A regional analysis resulted in the production of a series of thematic maps on coal characteristics and distribution. A derivative map showing the areas of commonality within the eastern bituminous coal region served as the basis for implementation of the coal loss calculation model. The model was developed and tested using data from four coal mines in western Pennsylvania and southern West Virginia.

Jan 1, 1976

By C. H. Riggs, Kenneth H. Johnston

The application of modern secondary-recovery methods has made possible the the extraction of more than 13 million barrels of crude petroleum from the eastern part of the Delaware-Childers field Nowata County, Okla., over and above the production that might have :been expected by continuing primary production methods, including the use of vacuum. Foremost among the secondary-recovery methods used in this foil was the repressuring of the Bartlesville sand with air and gas through injection wells spaced on sym-metrical patterns. Between 1925 and 1945, about 51 billion cubic feet of air and gas were injected into the producing formation, and the total recovery was increased from, 25 million to about 40 million barrels of oil. To produce as much as possible of the 28 million barrels of recoverable oil remaining in the sand will require the initiation of systematic water-flooding projects on many properties and the continuation of air and gas injection on others.

Dec 1, 1946

By Ellis S. Hertzog

The relatively large amount of phosphorous occurring in many iron ores limits their usefulness aid sometimes renders them valueless under present conditions of nip-iron manufacture. A practical method for removing the phosphorus would be valuable to the iron and steel industry. Gravity concentration has been of little value as far as the removal of phosphorous is concerned, because the compounds of this element are, as a rule, disseminated very finely. Removal of the phosphorous by leaching is not a new idea and has been the subject of some investigation,3,4/ out for data :lave been published. W.R. Crane published analyse of various ore bodies in the Birmingham ham district. The hard or unleached ores a .re much higher in phosphorous than the Soft, leached ores along the outcrops. This fact indicates that as mild a leaching agent as water removes phosphorus effectively if enough time is allowed for it to react. As the forms in which phosphorous occurs in the iron ores are important in the consideration of any leaching operation, much time was expended in devising a method for determining them. According to Professor McVey, University of Alabama, the phosphorous-bearing minerals in the red iron ores of Alabama have not been positively identified by any microscopic methods.

Jan 1, 1935

By Thomas Fraser

"INTRODUCTION The Santa River Valley of northern Peru contains extensive deposits of a good-grade anthracite that offer one of the most accessible sources of solid-fuel supply for South America. This region is served by the narrow-gage railroad of the Corporation Peruana del Santa, which taps the coal fields along the Chuquicara River and terminates at the port of Chimbote, where facilities have been provided for loading coal into ocean-going vessels.This Government-sponsored corporation is prosecuting a vigorous program of development in this region, envisaging an intensively industrialized area around Chimbot Bay, fueled and powered by the anthracite of the upper valley and a hydroelectric generating plant now being constructed in the Cahn del Fate, where the Santa River has cut through the coastal range of the Andes.This development also includes the construction of extensive irrigation works to greatly expand agricultural production in the valley and thus estab¬lish the basis for a prosperous, well-balanced, industrial and agricultural community. It is hardly necessary to point out the importance of the local anthracite-mining industry to this general plan.At the invitation of the Peruvian Government, through the agency of David Dasso, chairman of Corpoacion Peruana del Santa, a technical mission was sent to Peru in March, April, and May 1945 to examine these coals and assist the corporation in promoting preparation of the coal for most effective use in the contemplated expansion of industry and trade."

Feb 1, 1948

By James C. Fowler

The design and field testing of a seismic miner detection and location system arc described. This work was carried out over a period of three years. The first two and one-half years were sponsored by Continental Oil Company, while the last period of tests were done as the first part of a one-year contract with the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Laboratory and field experimentation in three different nines under simulated emergency conditions have led to three important results: (1) Taps on roof bolts with normally available objects can usually be detected up to horizontal distances of 1,000 ft. (2) The origin of the tans can be located by on-site processing with a small computer. (3) Some predetermination of the approximate location is necessary for a quick and successful rescue. This report also includes preliminary specifications an,d cost guidelines for construction of a transportable field system capable of matching the performance characteristics of the one used during the field tests.

Jan 1, 1973

By R. L. Grayson, L. L. Probert

"A three-year project focusing on the depth profiling of respirable coal mine dust particles using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray analysis resulted in the development of statistically classified particle-behavior models. The models depict the changing silicon fraction for particles at 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-keV accelerating voltages, thereby giving a clear indication of the nature of various types of mineral particles. This paper focuses on the results for respirable quartz particles sampled from five underground coal mines across the US. Through statistical analysis of results the relationship between the fraction of surface available quartz in respirable dust samples and coal rank is established for three Pennsylvania coal seams. IntroductionThis is the last in a series of papers detailing the results of SEM/EDX-based analyses of respirable coal mine dust particles collected from field sampling. Previous papers have detailed preliminary results and the statistical validity of the methodology (Grayson, Andre, and Simonyi, 1990; Grayson, 1991). This paper presents the final results of the analysis of respirable dusts from five coal seams with a range of coal rank:• Lykens Valley seam (anthracite), eastern Pennsylvania• Brookville (A) seam (mid-vol bituminous), central Pennsylvania• Pittsburgh seam (high-vol B bituminous), western Pennsylvania• No. 6 seam (high-vol C bituminous), Illinois• Wadge seam (sub-bituminous A), ColoradoSEM/EDX-based techniques were applied to try to clarify the role of quartz as an etiologic agent in coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). It was hypothesized that previous studies were hampered by the restrictions of bulk analysis techniques and that particle-level analyses were needed to answer a number of questions concerning the role of quartz in CWP and its progression.Since 1985, a large number of the respirable dust samples submitted to MSHA are analyzed for free silica (Tomb, Parobeck, and Gero, 1986). Our reasearch shows that conventional bulk analysis techniques may not give a true indication of the biologically available, or active, quartz in mine dusts. Analytical evidence indicates that respirable dust samples may contain many quartz particles that are occluded, or coated, resulting in a bulk analysis for ""free silica"" that may not be indicative of the biologically available quartz surface."

Dec 1, 1996

By R. C. Adams

This report describes the feasibility of mining the oil-shale deposits of the Piceance Creek basin in Colorado by an integrated open pit system. The study is based upon a comprehensive analysis of pertinent environmental, economic, and engineering factors. Ten mining cases are investigated, and the mine design and cost estimates for each case are presented in this report. Nine of the cases represent three cutoff grades, defining oil shale ore as equal to and above 15 gallons per ton (gpt), 20 gpt, and 25 gpt, at three ore production levels of 500,000 tons per day (TPD), 1,250,000 TPD, and 2,500,000 TPD. The tenth case is an alternate design of the 500,000 TPD production rate at the above 15 gpt cutoff grade. The report consists of Volume I, a technical and cost comparison of the ten cases; Volume II-Part I, a detailed explanation of the estimating methods used; and Volume II-Part 2, a more detailed discussion of the technical and cost features of the ten cases than is presented in Volume I.

Jan 1, 1976

By John P. McDonnell

Cable supports offer several advantages over traditional secondary support methods by enhancing stress redistribution to pillars and gob areas, minimizing or eliminating timbers and cribs that reduce ventilation, eradicating material-handling injuries related to placement of crib supports, and providing a cost-effective alternative to secondary support. The U.S. Bureau of Mines, in researching alternatives to traditional roof support methods, designed and installed high-strength cable supports to improve the stability of longwall gate road and bleeder entries in a Western U.S. coal mine. With the cooperation of industry, methods were developed to install cable supports in a tailgate and bleeder entry test area using traditional resin cartridges. Resin-grouted cable bolts were also installed and evaluated in additional longwall gate road and bleeder entry systems at the study mine. The cable-bolted areas successfully maintained roof support throughout the tailgate and bleeder entries. Cable supports replaced wood cribbing as secondary support in the bleeder entry system and minimized the use of cribbing in the longwall tailgate entries. This report describes the theory, application, and advantages of cable supports and presents mine measurements made to assess the cable performance during the retreat process of longwall mining.

Jan 1, 2010

By Robert M. Becker

This investigation (in five parts) extends the theory of sample reliability from a sample consisting of a fixed number of items to a sample consisting of a fixed amount of items. Examples of a fixed amount of items per sample are samples consisting of a fixed weight or a fixed volume of unequal size particles. The extension of the theory is confirmed by experimental laboratory sampling using standard procedures. The probability distribution functions (the binomial, hypergeometric, multinomial, generalized hypergeometric, and those here called the compound binomial and compound multimomial functions) are developed from fundamentals. Their distributions are generalized to include some measured characteristic of the items. Infinite population moments are derived from moment-generating functions, and finite population moments are developed from corresponding infinite population moments using a newly defined mathematical operation. The first three experimental moments in laboratory sampling to given weights of particles are compared with the theoretical moments of their corresponding compound mult.inomial distributions. The agreement is striking. The study is divided into five parts. Part 1 deals with probability or random sampling to n items and with all sampling to n items per sample from some one probability distribution. This is the area of sampling covered by well-known theory. Accordingly, the procedures may be different but many of the results are well known.

Dec 1, 1964

By Robert L. Lagace

The purpose of the work reported herein was to investigate whether available telephone multiplexing equipment offered a means to rapidly upgrade the traffic-handling capacity of present mine telephone systems and provide for selective calling for safer and more efficient mine operation. Common sense was used to decide whether or not an item could be termed "available." Since conventional telephone gear is not designed to interface pager phones for example, existing shelf items would require adapters to compatibly interface these two types of gear for independent operation over the present single twisted pair used in mines. These and similar small items were allowed, but if a system required any extensive design work to adapt it for the mines, we ruled it "not available."

Jan 1, 1975

By Thomas F. Anderson

(Measurements of stable isotopic variations (sulfur, carbon, and oxygen), supplemented by chemical, mineralogical, and petrographic analyses have been used to investigate the processes responsible for : (1) the incorporation of sulfur in coal, and (2) the (development of permineralized peat zones ("coal balls"). Sulfur isotopic results indicate that there are two principal sources of sulfur in the Pennsylvanian coals from the Illinois Basin: (1) "primary" sulfur assimilated by plants (low-sulfur coals), and (2) "secondary" sulfur produced by reactions involving H2S that was produced by the anaerobic reduction of sulfate in seawater which permeated the peat during post-depositional marine transgressions (the dominant source of sulfur in high-sulfur coals). Sulfur isotopic compositions of low-sulfur coals in Several Tertiary basins of Wyoming are consistent with a plant sulfur source. However, the inverse correlation between content and isotopic composition of sulfur observed in coals from the Powder River Basin suggest some "secondary" additions to these low-sulfur coals. Seveeral Quaternary (freshwater pears which were submerged by sea-Level rises during deglaciation over the past 30 ka have sulfur contents and isotopic compositions similar to high-sulfur coals. Carbon and oxygen isotopic compositions of calcareous coal balls from North America and Europe suggest that (1) the carbonate was derived from variable proportions of oxidized plant matter (typically predominant) and inorganic carbonate, and (2) the carbonate minerals were precipitated from fresh-to-brackish waters. Local geochemical and hydrological conditions were apparently more important than regional depositional environments in controlling the source of carbonate and the development of coal balls.

Jan 1, 1983

By G. W. Jones

"INTRODUCTION As part of its work in promoting safety, the Bureau of Mines is investigating various means of eliminating or mitigating the explosion hazards of combustible gases encountered in mining and industry. Information has been obtained and a procedure developed whereby the explosibility of many complex gaseous mixtures may be calculated in a rather simple manner without the necessity of performing laborious laboratory experiments. An earlier publication 3/ described the method of determining by calculation the limits of inflammability of gaseous mixtures, including methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. The information published in the above report permitted calculation of the limits of inflamnability of such gases as are liberated by mine fires, gases from explosives, automobile exhaust gases, gases present after mine explosions, blast-furnace gas, and other gases of similar type.Gases liberated in certain potash mines in the western part of the United States sometimes contain ethane, in addition to the gases named. An investigation was made to obtain data from which the limits of inflammability of such gaseous mixtures could be determined by calculation. 4/Similar data have been Published covering all types of natural gases containing wide ranges of concentration of nitrogen and carbon dioxide.5/"

Dec 1, 1944