Search Documents

By Joseph A. Holmes

Iv all new movements unavoidable misapprehensions arise, which should be cleared away, lest they retard the progress of the movement itself. An impression has gone abroad that the movement for conservation of resources is a new movement. No one knows better than the engineer that this is not the case. Men like Douglas and Raymond and John Fritz and Edison and McDonald, and hosts of others, have preached and practiced conservation as applied to mineral resources throughout a long and useful life-time; and, in general, the work of the engineer and the chemist, both in this and in other countries, has been along the line of continually greater efficiency in the use of all available materials. And the results already accomplished through the efforts of these experts are now saving annually many millions of dollars to the people of the United States in materials and labor. It is true, however, that the need for conservation, that is, for a wiser and more efficient use of the natural resources, has taken on a new life, and is being brought home to the people of the United States in a manner which is awakening public interest and even the public conscience. It is, therefore, both appropriate and fortunate that the engineers, the chemists, and the thinking men of all classes are availing themselves of the present impetus to the movement to emphasize anew the lessons which heretofore they have found it more difficult to impress upon the American public or even upon the captains of industry. Still another of these misapprehensions is to the effect that many of the leaders in the present movement hope to bring about conservation of resources through legislation or execu-

May 1, 1909

By Alfred Weiss

Over the past 25 years hard-rock mining companies have developed a number of profitable computer applications which appear applicable to operations in the coal industry. The evolution of these applications are described and the most profitable discussed. The basic nature of these systems is that they must cut across organizational boundaries. While technological advances contributed significantly to the successful implementation of computers within mining, the human aspects related to organization, management and control of systems projects remain as key to future success in coal as they were and still are in hard-rock mining.

Jan 1, 1983

By MARIUS R. CIMPBELL, Edward W. Parker

DESCRIPTION. ACCORDING to the estimates prepared by the U. S. Geological Survey, the area underlain by workable coal-beds in the United States is 496,776 sq. miles. Of this total area, 480 sq. miles contain the entire anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania. The bituminous coal-fields are estimated to be contained in areas aggregating 250,051 sq. miles. The grade of coal between bituminous and lignite, and which is designated by the Geological Survey as " sub-bituminous," is estimated to be contained within areas aggregating 97,636 sq. miles, while the areas containing lignite aggregate 148,609 sq. miles. The coal-fields are divided, for the sake of convenience in classification, into six main provinces, as follows: 1. The Eastern. Province, containing the anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania and the bituminous coal-fields of the Appalachian region-namely, those of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and small outlying areas in North Carolina. 2. The Interior .Province, containing the bituminous coal-producing regions of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, western Kentucky, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. 3. The Gulf Province, containing the lignite-areas of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. 4. The Northern or Great Plains Province, containing the lignite and sub-bituminous areas of North and South Dakota, eastern Montana, and northeastern Wyoming. 5. The Rocky Mountain Province, containing the bituminous and sub-bituminous areas of western Montana and western Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. 6. The Pacific Coast Province, containing-the areas of Washington, Oregon, and California.

Apr 1, 1909

By V. D. Perry

Carlisle: Reno, let's start off by asking "When was the first day that you began working in your profession?" Sales: I began in Butte, Montana, on August 22, 1900 as an assistant engineer for the Boston & Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Co., and continued at that job for about a year. The general manager was C. S. Batterman, and the mines- Mountain View, Pennsylvania, Leonard, East Colusa, and one or two others-were part of Boston & Montana.

Jan 5, 1966

By John Hays Hammond

This is an era of " expansion; and, conformably with the change in commercial conditions, the function of the mining engineer, as well as that of his confreres in many other professions, has also expanded. From the position of an engineer, limited to the determination of technical questions, the engineer of to-day has come to assume an economic importance in those branches of industry dependent upon engineering skill for their development. He is indeed an engineer of limited usefulness who does not go further professionally than to submit a purely technical report on subjects presented for his consideration. While he has the same responsibility as formerly in the solution of the technical problems involved, he is further expected to supplement his report with advice on the financial and commercial aspects of these problems. For the great majority of problems presented to the engineer ultimately involve the determination of the pecuniary, relations of the propositions under consideration. The great corporation lawyer no longer earns his fee by merely submitting his opinion as to the legal issues involved in law-suits affecting the corporation; he now assumes charge of the entire legal work, including both the organization of the corporation and the maintenance of its legal status thereafter. In like manner, the engineer, whose report was, as I have said, formerly confined to the determination of the geological and other cognate features of a mining enterprise, is now expected, not. only to embody information on these subjects in his report, but also to give his opinion whether the property offered for sale in pursuance of such an enterprise is worth the price asked for it. Moreover, if he recommends the purchase of a property, he incurs a certain moral responsibility for its efficient manage-

Nov 1, 1908

By GEORGE D. RAMSAY

ABOUT three miles west of Fontana San Bernardino County, California, and fifty miles east of Los Angeles, the Kaiser Co., Inc., has built an integrated steel plant. By integrated, I mean that from its wholly owned iron ore and coal supply, the Kaiser Co. is producing in its own mills iron and steel products. Pig iron to meet the West Coast needs has been produced at Fontana since Jan. 1, 1943; steel ingots were first poured there May 14, 1943; and steel plate for ships was first rolled Aug. 15, just sixteen months after ground was broken. Briefly, the plant consists of: (I) Two batteries of by-product coke ovens, totalling ninety ovens, carbonizing about 1740 tons of coal per day at capacity; with by-product facilities for the production of tar, ammonia, and ammonium suIphate, light oil distillates, and tar distillates. (2) One blast furnace producing at

Jan 1, 1944

By Will H. Coghill

WITH gold at $35 for the last four years, almost double the old figure, and 'an unlimited market, there is perhaps more activity in the mining and milling of that metal than in that of any other of the widely distributed ores. Despite threats from Russia, the Rand district is still dominant. In South Africa in 1936, 48,200,000 tons of gold ore was crushed after sorting out about 10 per cent of that mined. The pounding of 5914 trusty stamps on the 60 mi. of Rand reefs is noteworthy. At the end of 1935, 466 tube mills were operating on the Rand, the popular size being 6 1/2 by 20 ft. The grinding medium normally consists of ore pebbles picked from the ore but recently a composite load of 3-in. steel balls and pebbles has found favor for added capacity, a ratio of 2.5 tons of pebbles to one ton of halls being maintained. The total ore fed to the mills is only about 0.14 ton per hp.-hr. Such a slow rate 'of feed cannot help but result in overgrinding. Ball mills, 9 by 8 ft., some of which have come from Canada, are now being tried. Stamps have been ousted from all new flow sheets, but the old stamp mills are continually renovated and kept on duty as they are at the Homestake in the United States. Half of the world's gold and silver ores is still crushed by stamps, a few of which are single, dropping in individual mortars.'

Jan 1, 1938

By L. C. Binon

Exploration budgets are commonly determined by rules of thumb, such as a percentage of earnings or other fiscal measure. An appropriate exploration budget is the amount needed to achieve company goals. It can be determined by discounting the income expected from achieved goals. Budgets for individual projects are determined in a similar manner except that risk of failure is included in the computation.

Jan 1, 1984

By Hannu Penttila, Harrison R. Cooper, Olli Mattila

Two approaches to automated operation in metallurgical processes involve the conventional analog control or, more recently, digital control. The expanding use of digital controls applied to process automation is a comparatively new development. Several current technical reports describe digital control systems in concentrator grinding control, 1, 2, flotation, 3 and smelter operations. 4,5 The principle factors influencing trends to digital control are:

Jan 10, 1976

By J. H. Wernick

IN a study of the rate of decomposition of %-in. cubes of limestone, dolomitic limestone, and dolomite in a sweeping nitrogen atmosphere, Joseph, Beatty, and Bitsianes' found that the zone of calcination advanced at substantially a constant rate at a given temperature. The purpose of this paper is to show that their data indicate at least two processes occurring when the above carbonates decompose. It is suggested that there are two processes occurring consecutively, one the limiting process in a given temperature range and the other the limiting process over another temperature range. The data of Joseph and co-workers have been extended by use of the Arrhenius equation, Eq. 1, a relation beween the velocity constant k of a reaction and the absolute temperature T. d In k A ' dT Rr2 A is the activation energy in calories per mol (additional energy that must be added for an average molecule to react), and R is equal to 1.986 cal

Jan 1, 1955

Jan 1, 1883

By W. J. Keep

Almost without exception, writers on the subject say that sulphur in cast-iron will cause it to be white, and is in every way injurious. All founders believe that a small amount of sulphur in the fuel will work great damage, and that if any castings crack, or if anything out of the general run occurs, it may be charged to sulphur in the fuel. Fuel rarely contains more than 1 per cent. of sulphur, and if this can produce so marked an effect, one would suppose it an easy matter to introduce sulphur into cast-iron, so as to produce castings containing different desired percentages of sulphur. We have be-

Jan 1, 1894

By O. E. Palasvirta

Close examination of most so-called new processes in mineral dressing reveals that they were conceived and developed a long time ago. High-intensity magnetic separation is no exception. Although its application in iron ore beneficiation seems new, in Germany the process has been commercially successful for almost two decades. High-intensity separators have long been standard equipment in the glass sand industry; they have also been used in concentrating some of the more unusual paramagnetic minerals. The basic features of an induced-rotor, high-intensity magnetic separator were described by Désiré Korda in Paris in 1905,1 and many patents have since been issued for improvements on the original design. Fig. 1 shows the basic design of an induced-rotor separator. Several U. S. manufacturers have been supplying induced-rotor separators for many years, but these are all devices of relatively low capacity, not suitable for treating such low-cost commodities as iron ore. On the other hand, two German manufacturers are offering induced-rotor separators of high capacity, both proven in the field.

Jan 12, 1959

NEW MEMBERS The following list comprises the names of those persons who became members during the period of Septa 10, 1917, to Oct. 10, 1917. ALDER, ALFRED 1020 Kansas City St., Rapid City, So. Dakota. AUBEL, VERNE WALLACE, Night Supt. of Works, Broken Hill Proprietary Co., Ltd., Newcastle, N. S. W., Aust. BAKER, ROBERT EARL Works Mgr., Keokuk Electro-Metals Co., Keokuk, Iowa. BALLAMY, JOHN H., Min. Engr., Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co,Scranton, Pa. BRADLEY, ALLEN PALMER, Met., American Smelting & Refining Co., Murray, Utah. BRIGGS, WALTER M Pres. Regal Mines Co. Dedham, Mass. BRONSON, EDMOND B., Pres., Bagdad Copper Co., 120 Broadway, New York, N. Y. BROOK, NILES WINFIELD, District. Mgr., Cleveland Min. Co., 625 Bank & Insurance Bldg., Dubuque, BUSKETT, EVANS 1V., Assayer, Custom Assay Office, 620 Joplin St., Joplin, Mo. CAMPBELL, JOHN HATES, Chem. Engr., Robert W. Hunt. & Co., 2200 Insurance Exchange, Chicago, Ill.

Jan 11, 1917

By G. R. Fitterer

BY means of the C-SiC thermocouple1, liquid metal temperatures have been found to vary much more than was previously supposed, and fortunately these variations can be directly associated with some of our former knowledge which combined to form the "art" of liquid-metal manipulation. COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS DEVICE Several types of installations are operating in different plants. There are so many variables in steel plants in regard to operation, pro-cedure, arrangement of pouring platforms, ladles, etc., that most of the installations now in service in this country are "tailor-made"; never-theless, it is felt that satisfactory gains have been made inasmuch as each installation has indicated some effect of temperature upon the metal-lurgical operation, and has pointed the way toward technical and finan-cial benefits. In most cases, it has been necessary to accumulate the temperature data until sufficient metallurgical information is available for the drawing of conclusions. When mechanical difficulties have been eliminated, a distinct correlation of these factors has been obtained. The installations now in service. are used for the determination of temperatures in the basic open-hearth furnace prior to tapping and in ladles from both acid and basic furnaces prior to pouring. Some of the installations are in shops making the higher priced steels; others are in "tonnage shops." The errors of human element, smoke screens and emissivity corrections connected with the use of the optical pyrometer do not affect the C-SiC thermocouple readings. The accuracy of the C-SiC- thermocouple and the temperatures measured are discussed later in this paper.

Jan 1, 1936

By Blamey Stevens

The object of this paper is to show how igneous intrusion is governed by definite mechanical laws. A distinction is made between dikes and fissures, and the various characteristics of intrusions are explained on an exact scientific basis. The modification of rock-stresses by intrusion is then considered and extensive isostress regions are recognized. Finally, a complete classification of intrusions is constructed covering all possible cases. The generalizations of observed data, taken from Geikie's Text-Book of Geology, confornl to the laws of intrusion herein stated, and the deductions based upon these lams. No authority, however, is quoted for the type which I hare named a corrugated intrusion. Its existence is a necessary deduction from the laws of intrusion, and even the entire absence of examples in technical publications cannot disprove its reality. In all probability, corrugated fissures would have remained undiscovered, but for the nrorking of mineral veins. As intrusions of tabular form are seldom worked for commercial purposes, it has been left for theory to anticipate the discovery of corrugated dikes. In the light of these laws of intrusion and the corresponding laws of fissures,' there seems to be a remarkable uniformity of stress-distribution in rocks at moderate depths. This renders possible the mathematical calculation which should help us to approximate exact science in this and kindred branches of applied geology.

Jan 1, 1911

By Joseph Pogue

ANY mechanism, either natural or artificial, for regulating the func-tioning of a given unit in the general economy must operate toward the maintenance of equilibrium if it is to survive. The petroleum industry, concerned as it is with the production of a natural resource of specialized character, is surrounded not only by the economic factors common to other industries but by an extra set of unique elements centering about the fugitive character of crude petroleum under conditions of competitive development. The term equilibrium, therefore, so far as the oil business concerned, involves a combination of economic and physical factors: the first set having to do with supply, demand, costs, profit margins, purchasing power, and the like; and the second, with underground pres-sures in oil pools, efficient rates of extraction, and all other aspects of engineering that may be summarized by the familiar term "conserva-tion." The two categories, in fact, are not as clearly divided as the foregoing statement would imply, for in practice it will be found that the economic and physical aspects have a pervasive interaction and interrelationship. If the development of the petroleum industry in the United States is examined from its inception in 1859 down to the present, it will be found that, beginning about 11 years ago, a new mechanism for regulating the production of crude petroleum made its appearance. Prior to this recent period, the production of this raw material was determined by competitive forces operating without outside restraints. At present the output of crude oil is subjected to supervision by regulatory bodies in most of the oil-producing states, which impose upon the operators certain conditions having to do with the manner and rates of production. Thus, in the space of a decade, the mechanism for producing crude oil has changed from an automatic to a designed procedure called proration. And in its short history this method has been marked by a rapid evolution in its nature and incidence, with progressive changes still under way.

Jan 1, 1938

By Donald L. King

This paper has been prepared with the objective of providing basic information on thickening equipment as applied to mineral processing plant design. Thus, by design, the content is elementary, yet sufficiently informative to advise the reader concerning the thickening and clarifying process, equipment configurations, installation and operation. Practical considerations are provided for slurry samples for testing, evaluation of testing, preliminary sizing, duty classification, and thickener selection to enhance operation, see icing and control. Illustrations are provided to both inform and demonstrate present state of the art features and capability.

Jan 1, 1978

By O. G. Bell

While all of the Southwest Texas fields lie within the Gulf Coastal Plain this area may be divided into three subdivisions—the Coastal Plain zone proper, the Reynosa Escarpment zone, and the interior zone. The Coastal zone includes that strip adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and . extending inland for a distance of about 60 miles and includes the Palo Blanco, Palangana, Piedras Pintas, Kingsville, Agua Dulce, Saxet, White Point and Refugio fields. The Reynosa Escarpment zone includes a Pliocene overlap over older Tertiary sediments lying west of the Coastal zone. The western margin of the Reynosa formation forms a more or less well-defined westward facing escarpment with which the so-called Reynosa Escarpment fields are indirectly related. These fields include those in eastern Zapata, eastern Webb, western Jim Hogg, western Duval, McMullen, Live Oak, Bee, Goliad and Victoria counties. The interior zone includes these fields west of the Reynosa Escarpment which are not in any way related to it and are on separate types of structure. Production data by fields and wells are shown in Table 1. Roma.—During 1928 the Texas Co. completed two small gas wells at 198 ft. on the Roma Structure near the town of Roma on the Rio Grande in Starr County. This gas is of no commercial importance but was used for fuel in drilling other deep tests on this structure. Three dry holes ranging from 3600 to 4200 ft. were drilled; then their No. 4 Guerra, the fourth deep test, was completed during December as a small producer of 37" Bé. oil from a sand at 3560 to 3590 ft. No production was marketed during December but arrangements were being made to handle the output from this well during 1930. This is the first commercial producer in Starr County. Driscoll.—In 1929, Robert Driscoll discovered gas on his Santa Rosalia Ranch in Duval County while drilling water wells. Two sands were developed, one at 2400 ft. and another at 2936 ft. and several gas wells were completed in each, ranging in volume from 15,000,000 to 40,000,000 cu. ft. and in reservoir pressure from 500 to 1,000 Ib. Early in January of 1929, Mr. Driscoll's No. 14 Fee was completed as a 50-bbl. oil producer at 2894 ft. Two other oil producers were completed early in 1929. Mr. Driscoll's death early in the year curtailed develop-

Jan 1, 1930

By E. Lancaster-Jones

THE gravity magnitudes obtained by means of observations with the Eötvös balance in the field are necessarily resultant or total effects due to all abnormalities of mass distribution, including even the effects due to the ellipticity and rotational motion of the whole earth. Since the object of the survey is to isolate the effects which arise solely from some particular subterranean feature, and to deduce therefrom the configuration and extent of this feature, the first step is to eliminate from the observed effects all those due to "disturbing" (i. e., unwanted) features, whether above or below the surface of the ground. The disturbing features have different characteristics, according to their situation relative to the center of the balance and to the horizontal plane through the foot of the balance, or station point; this diversity was recognized by Eötvös, who divided the total effects into so-called Normal, Terrain, Topographical, Cartographical and Subterranean effects. This classification has been adhered to by most subsequent investigators, but the writer prefers to employ the term "three-dimensional," which really indicates the essential character of the class of effect known as "Subterranean," at any rate from the standpoint of the computer of effects. Before disturbing effects can be eliminated, the features must be measured up or surveyed, whether by topographical, mining, or boring methods, and then the effects of each feature calculated and subtracted from the total observed effects. After this the problem of interpreting the residual effects will itself necessitate the computation of the assumed feature, or even a series of trial features.

Jan 1, 1928