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By S. M. Marshall, B. M. Bird

For a number of years European investigators have used laboratory methods of predicting the probable strength of coke made from coal, and recently several investigators in the United States have reported the use of various tests for this purpose. There is at present no method accepted as standard, however, nor is there even agreement as to the general type of test that should be used. Furthermore, because the details of most of the tests have not been worked out carefully, one investigator can not hope to duplicate the work of another. The extension of coke manufacture to new localities in the United States, and the increasing need for cokes of exceptional qualities made from the most economical mixtures, made it desirable to have some simple laboratory test which will determine whether given coals, alone or blended with other coals, are more satisfactory from the standpoint of coke strenpth- than others of different cost. The work described herein has resulted in the development of a simple laboratory test which, it is believed, can be generally adopted in coal laborat,ories, and which will give concordant results even though performed by different investigators in different laboratories. The general method of predicting whether a coal or a mixture of coals will produce a strong coke, resistant to crushing and shattering, has been to correlate the known strengths of the cokes produced in commercial ovens with some measurable constituent or with some property of the coals, and then to use the relationship so found for forming an estimate of the coking strengths of coals unknown. Several such correlations have utilized the percentages of the various ultimate constituents of coal, such as the oxygen content and the hydrogen-oxygen ratio;(39)§ other correlations have involved the proportion of a, B and r com-pounds, (17,21,30c) or of "oil and solid bitumens."(16,30) Also a relationship has been traced between the coking properties of coal and the rate of change of the resistance offered to the flow of an inert gas by fine particles of the coal while being slowly heated. (11,176) But the most general corre-

Jan 1, 1930

By Faustino Roel

AMONG the problems confronting the mining engineer in Mexico in recent years, labor conflicts have come to occupy s prominent place. Each day they have become more serious and frequently have caused- the ruin of companies. It is therefore necessary for the engineer to understand the Federal Labor Law, the rights and obligations of companies and of their workmen, and the reasons for conflicts; to keep in mind the expense which may be caused companies; and to endeavor to avoid difficulties as far as possible. Our labor legislation is primarily to protect the workman and the constant tendency of the tribunals, including the Supreme Court of Justice, is to support the work- man in his demands against employer$, even at times granting him more than he asks, with no limit other than the economic capacity of the company to com-

Jan 1, 1937

By Oliver Bowles

DELICATE PLANTS are now put to bed for the winter under glass-wool or rock-wool blankets. Thus arise new and unexpected uses for non-metallic materials and rocks and, at the same time, certain unique uses are fading out; for instance, the Italians have taken steps to bar the use of salt for money in Ethiopia. Novel sources of supply find a place in the record of recent achievements as exemplified in the migration of the frontiers of industrial mineral exploitation beyond the land area of the earth to include the ocean. Salt, of course, has been recovered from the sea for years but the treatment of enormous quantities of sea water for bromine has lately added to the importance of the ocean as a reservoir of mineral wealth. Increased use of non-metallic minerals in the commercial and economic life of the country is reflected in the wide scope and activity of the Industrial Minerals Division of the Institute. The outstanding recent achievement of the Division is the publication of a 955-page volume on industrial minerals and rocks, comprising 48 commodity chapters each written by an authority on the subject.

Jan 1, 1938

By Chas. B. Dudley

A Discussion of the papers of Mr. James Gayley, on "The Application of the Dry-Air Blast to the Manufacture of Iron," and of Mr. J. E. Johnson, Jr., on "The Physical Action of the Blast-Furnace," by Messrs. Charles B. Dudley, R. W. Raymond, J. E. Johnson, Jr., William F. Mattes, James Gayley, David Baker, John Birkinbine and F. E. Bachman. (Washington Meeting, May, 1905.) CHAS. B. DUDLEY, Altoona, Pa.:-Pam not a blast-furnace man, and this always puts me it a disadvantage because I cannot go into the details of the making of iron and steel. I have not the experience, and have to take the statements of other people, so what I say regarding the subject of this paper is not in the sense of an expert. When I first heard of Mr. Gayley's experiments, I said to myself, " I fear they will result in failure, since, apparently, Mr. Gayley has forgotten one chemical fact, namely, that carbon does not combine with oxygen in the absence of water-vapor." This fact which was so astonishing when it was first brought out some years ago, and which those who are interested may find in the Journal of the Chemical Society of London, for 18S5, page 349, and 1894, page 611, led me to think that the drying of the air would be a mistake. The general subject of the influence of water-vapor on chemical action is a large one; but the special point in which we are for the moment interested, namely, the influence of water-vapor on the combustion of carbon, was especially treated by Mr. H. B. Baker, in the papers referred to. Apparently, however, as the result of Mr. Gayley's experiments, we are to learn that the amount of moisture still left in the desiccated air is sufficient to secure perfectly satis¬factory combustion. In thinking over Mr. Gayley's paper, it occurred to me that there were two alternatives, either of which might be chosen, namely, we might dry the air as Mr. Gayley does, or possibly we might, in a very much simpler way, simply saturate the air at a constant temperature, and thus get uniform working and

Sep 1, 1905

By Arthur Notman

THE mineral industries in this country have now had about a year of national planning. Al. though the period is short, the volume of activity and legislation designed to make that planning effective has been nothing short of enormous. Those who have been privileged to see and study a few of the codes to regulate our mineral industry, such as those for oil, coal, steel, and copper, are driven to the conclusion that nothing was really known about the proper way to conduct those industries in this country prior to June, 1933; or if anything was known, nobody in actual practice made use of that knowledge. And yet those industries, in days gone by, helped to make this country the most prosperous in the world, and to maintain a standard of living even today higher than that of any other country. Without wishing to assume any first-hand knowledge of the Russian standard of living, I must confess that the evidence seems to indicate that even with dictatorial authority, national planning encounters unexpected difficulties. Perhaps what really wants

Jan 1, 1935

By G. B. Gould

FROM the very inception of the price-control experiment in the bituminous-coal industry, the problem of price differentials was of major importance. In fact, assuming that there will be no legal or Govern- mental obstacles to price control, the successful maintenance of the present or any other method designed to control bituminous-coal prices will depend upon the discovery of some satisfactory way to determine these differentials in price, among: individual mines and groups of mines. Being of organic origin, bituminous coal is a commodity that presents an almost infinite variety of qualities. It is inevitable, therefore, that a work- able price-control system must attempt

Jan 1, 1935

By Harold G. Moulton

IT is highly significant that engineers should seriously consider the interrelations of technology, economics, and government. It is indicative of the emergence of maladjustments and problems that perplex our thinking and frustrate our activities. Instead of a world in which scientific discoveries and their applications through engineering to the processes of wealth production are regarded as the royal road to progress, we now find science and engineering being made responsible, in no small degree, for our economic and social troubles; and the powers of government are even being invoked to stem the tidal wave of technology. Indeed, there is a deep-seated fear, manifested in the writings of some of our greatest scientists as well as in popular discussions, that science may destroy our civilization.

Jan 1, 1938

By F. Z. Schellenberg

(Pittsburg Meeting, March, 1910.) SYSTEMATIC exploitation in the Pittsburg coal-seam on a large scale is simple where the boundaries of the property do not interfere by forcing drainage-, ventilation-, and transport-lines of entries to be run to particular confined fronts. A prime condition governing development is the natural direction of the seam's perpendicular cleavage-planes, giving long lines of smooth faces near together and parallel, bearing about 65° to the left of the meridian and therefore crossing the basins. The gradients of dip into the basins change from 10 per cent at the east rim to practical flatness northwestward across the great coal-fields, a hundred miles wide; the clip being halved in rate at each successive crossing-over of an anticlinal crest. Elevations above sea-level on this transverse section, in scope of present development, differ by 1,000 ft. between low trough and high outcrop. Local irregularities of dip are found, but the main feature to be recognized is the pitch of the basins-the general rise northeastward at 20 ft. per mile, from 100 ft, below sea-level at the low point near the. SW. corner of Pennsylvania to 1,500 ft. and more above tide, and the appearance then, at the surface, of the lower coal-seams carried in the next deeper-lying thousand feet of rock-measures; below which series come the oil- and gas-sands of Oliphant's charted column of strata, reaching down altogether 3,000 ft. below the Pittsburg coal-seam. Because of -the general regularity of occurrence of the coal-seam, the mine-map depicting the courses of economic operation to be undertaken and the steps in controlled exhaustion, need be but a projection of two dimensions on the horizontal plane of space, and this for the most part composed of natural, almost unbroken lines, on the face and on the end of the coal, co-ordinating rectangularly.

Jul 1, 1910

By W. F. Flanagan, D. H. Polonis, S. D. Dahlgren

Rotation diffraction patterns of Cu-4.84 wt pct Si polymystalline samples were taken during the course of isothel-ma1 affing of the suPersaturated a phase, a diffraction spots were obserzled to streak during the initial stages of aging, and this streaking was similar to the streaking of a spots observed earlier by Barvett with deformed super saturated samples of the same composition. Although it was suggested that stacking faults were the sole cause of styeaking in the deformed samples, the present study has shown that plates with one small crystallite dimension can also contribute to the streaking when there is lattice coherency across close-packed planes. THE decomposition of the supersaturated a phase in Cu-Si alloys has been reported to occur by means of both thermal and stress activation.1-4 According to the Cu-Si phase diagram,3 Fig. 1, the supersaturated a phase (fcc) is expected to transform during aging by the precipitation of the y phase. The results of earlier studies2,4 have indicated that metastable k phase (hcp with nearly ideal close packing) forms initially at temperatures below the eutectoid temperature, after which the k transforms to the a and y phases. Hof-mann et al.4 have proposed a metastable version of the phase diagram, showing the approximate boundaries for k formation below the eutectoid temperature. In view of the close-packed nature of both the a and k phases, it is essential to consider the role assumed by stacking faults in the transformation. Streaking effects have been reported by Barrett 1 in the rotating crystal X-ray patterns of strained Cu-Si alloys and were attributed to stacking faults rather than particle size effects. This deduction was based on the observation that streaks in the diffraction patterns did not occur tangent to the 220fee Debye ring. It is known that the atom movements involved in faulting leave some X-ray reflections unaffected while others are broadened,' and, in particular, it has been shown that faulting will not cause streaking of 220fee reflections tangent to the 220fee Debye ring as would be expected if all the reflections were broadened.' The formation

Jan 1, 1967

By Edward Steidle

TWO years ago the Committee on Latin American Education Relations, Mineral Industries Education Division, started a study of mineral industries education in the Latin Americas. Information was obtainable only with great difficulty. Some information was available piecemeal but no complete resume had ever been assembled. Initial assistance was gained from the United States Office of Education and the Pan American Union. This, and first-hand knowledge of the writer, provided a list of colleges and universities which were believed to offer work lead. ing to a degree in one or more branches of the mineral industries. Detailed information could be obtained only by direct contact with each university through air mail service. Questionnaire letters were sent to officials of 34 colleges and universities. Twenty-one gracious replies were received. Fourteen of the colleges and universities concerned offer curricula in mining, five in metallurgy, three in petroleum, seven in geology, one in geographical engineering, one in topographical engineering, and one in geophysics. Two institutions offer advanced training in petroleum engineering. No institution offers any courses under the caption of ceramics or fuel technology.

Jan 1, 1945

By Oliver Bowles

A NORTH CAROLINA miner dreamed that he found high-grade mica by excavating a certain corner of his mine. The next day he sank a hole on the exact spot and found mica of excellent quality. The dream came true. May not this be as good a method as any yet known for forecasting the valuable mineral content of pegmatites? The Federal Geological Survey has found in its recent detailed studies in New England that good sheet mica occurs most abundantly in zoned pegmatites, particularly in zones lying along the wall or contact of the pegmatite mass. Although this conclusion may be a valuable guide, pegmatite mining operations must still be classed as most uncertain and hazardous enterprises. Finding of the second largest diamond ever discovered in the United States-a stone of good gem quality weighing more than 34 carats-during the course of a horseshoe pitching contest at Peterstown, W. Va., is another example of unorthodox mining methods. These should not be considered, however, as characteristic mining methods developed in 1944.

Jan 1, 1945

By O. W. Shimer, D. C. Helms, C. E. Brown

The early history and progress of anthracite stripping, from the first known operation at Summit Hill in 1821 through 1917, was covered in 1917 in a paper by J. B. Warriner,1 then chief engineer, now president of the Lehigh Navigation Coal Co., and stripping methods between 1917 and 1931 were the subject of a paper in 1931 by H. H. Otto,2 of the Hudson Coal Company. . The present paper is confined to methods used today on pitching beds in the western middle and southern anthracite fields. The anthracite industry, not unlike other large industries, had been affected for more than a decade by the adverse economic conditions of the country. High development and operating costs and the competition of other fuels caused some collieries to be closed temporarily, while others were permanently abandoned. In order to obtain a larger tonnage at a lower development cost, a larger stripping program was put into effect by many companies. In 1932, stripping operations accounted for 3½ million tons, or 7 per cent of the total anthracite production of the year, and in the next 10 years this increased until more than double that amount, or over 14 per cent of the total production, was from stripping operations. These figures represent the total production of the entire anthracite region; unfortunately, the figures have not been separated from the different fields. There are some operations in the southern and middle western fields where the tonnage obtained from stripping amounts to more than 30 per cent of the total colliery production. Stripping operations on pitching beds present difficult problems. Owing to the various geological formations, a different situation is encountered in nearly every stripping pit; and because of the proximity of an overlying bed, it is very often necessary to load the entire overburden into trucks and haul it out of the pit to the dump area, although back filling and casting is done whenever possible. Beds in the areas described in this paper pitch from 20" to 90 and some are on the invert in many sharp folds and faults. Planning The more successful strippings have had adequate engineering analysis. Some work is being done without much preliminary planning, but many strippings would have failed completely if close supervision by the engineering department had not been . maintained. Locations of stripping areas are determined as follows: I. By constructing cross sections over the areas and drilling sufficient diamond-drill or well drill holes to study the strata and to determine the location, thickness

Jan 1, 1944

By R. E. Salvoti

IN underground coal mining, the increasing trend towards mechanical methods is ever apparent. Figures for 1939 showed that 28 per cent of the total bituminous coal production was mined mechanically 1940 statistic will reveal an even higher figure. Factors causing this trend are varied, but the important are the following;

Jan 1, 1941

By E. H. Crabtree

IN an ideal mill, with perfect milling operations, the mineral extraction would be 100 per cent, the, concentrate would be 100 per cent mineral, the tailing would assay zer.0 mineral and the milling cost would be zero dollars. Such an operation can, of course, never be attained. We can only strive to approach it as nearly as possible and in doing so most recognize .the fact that the three primary factors in milling: assay of concentrate, assay of tailing, and cost of operation bear a definite economic relationship to each other. This relation will change from time to time and will be different for different mills, depending on milling equipment, character and quality of feed, market conditions, and other factors. It is granted that for a given operation there is an economic point, but the location of this point is difficult. It is for the purpose of making some of these economic points a little more tangible that this paper has been prepared.

Jan 1, 1930

By C. A. Heiland

IN the third year of war, geophysical oil exploration broke all records to keep pace with the demand for increased reserves. Geophysical prospecting for strategic and other minerals also grew in scope. The trend of geophysical oil exploration throughout the war is indicated in Fig. 1. This figure resembles the one presented in the last annual review issue of M&M (February 1944, p. 62), corrected for data on-operations in the last months of 1943 and extended into 1944. The average number of geophysical oil prospecting crews in the field in 1944 was 451, whereas the total in 1943 was 340. An upward trend in the use of all geophysical methods is clearly evident throughout the year. Seismic operations were 67 per cent, gravimeter surveys 28 per cent, and other methods 5 per cent of the total. Seismic reflection and refraction crews increased 181/2 per cent over the 1943 average, gravimeter operations increased 73 per cent, and other methods gained 92 per cent. The increase in seismic and gravimeter operations, particularly the latter, is probably due to an increased production of equipment and the organization of new service companies. Miscellaneous methods gained largely through a revival of magnetometer work, and an increase in the use of torsion balances and electrical equipment. In comparison with the prewar average of 1941, it is noteworthy that seismic operations increased 58 per cent, gravimeter operations 88 per cent, and miscellaneous other methods gained as much as 283 per cent. Unfortunately the expansion in the number of geophysical crews does not indicate a proportionate increase in efficiency or in areal coverage, as will be brought out later.

Jan 1, 1945

By Chester A. Fulton

SUPPLYING as it does a necessity for healthy animal and vegetable phosphate production is a most important industry. We human beings also are animal as this war so surely proves. Unlike many other elements no substitnite is available for phosphorus or its compounds. Marvelous as are modern plastics none can lake the place of phosphorus in making hone structures. As meassured in these times the phosphate industry is not a large industry. Output of phosphate rock, the original source of our agricultural and ,chemical phophates amounts to only some twelve million long tons per annum in the entire world. Phosphates are compounds of phosphorus, which is always found in nature combined with other elements. It never occurs in nature as such. The first choice of the element phosphorus is tie itself strongly to oxygen and then to water moisture - thus becomeing phosphlic acid. This phosphoric acid in turn hunts around for a base such as lime for instance and together they make phosphate of lime.

Jan 1, 1944

By C. H. Herty

AN earlier paper on absorption of sulfur by the slag in the basic open-hearth furnace included a brief discussion of the absorption of sulfur during the melting period. The data available at that time showed that the amount of sulfur absorbed by the melting scrap was proportional to the sulfur content of the furnace gases, and the following statement was made: "The conclusion may be drawn from these results that if a gas entirely free from sulfur were used during the melting, any iron in direct contact with the gases would be completely, or nearly completely, desulfurized before it reached the bath proper." The experimental work discussed herein deals with absorption of sulfur by the melting scrap when fuels with both high and low-sulfur content were used. Before taking up the experimental work let us consider the process as a whole as to the "flow" of sulfur. The input of sulfur occurs in: 1, the hot metal charged; 2, the scrap; 3, the stone or lime charged; 4, the ores charged; and 5, the gas. Sulfur goes out of the furnace in the steel, the slag and the gas. The distribution of sulfur in the furnace depends on the sulfur concentration in each of these materials and on the equilibrium conditions between them.

Jan 1, 1926

By Robert F. Mehl

PROGRESS in the general field of nonferrous physical metallurgy during the past .year has been uneventful but healthy. A continued increase is apparent in the number of useful alloys and in the mechanical treatment and heat- treatment of finished metals and alloys nothing can hinder the multiplication of alloys or the diversification of their treatment as knowledge of the behavior of .alloys increases; as ternary and quaternary alloys are better understood, hundreds of new metal combinations with unusual properties may well be expected. Evidence of rapid progress is already at hand.

Jan 1, 1936

By Edward P. Barrett

DURING the past few years numerous references have been made in the technical press and Bureau of Mines Bulletin 270 to sponge iron' and so-called "direct metal" processes. The idea has been prevalent that sponge iron and "direct metals" are cheap commodities. In many instances it has been proposed that these processes be used to treat low-grade ores, utilizing low-grade coals as reducing agents. It is questionable whether or not high-grade sponge iron can be made from low-grade materials. Particles contain¬ing iron oxide and gangue become, upon almost complete deoxidation, particles containing metallic' iron and gangue. The possibility of mechanically separating the metallic iron from the gangue in these particles depends . on the physical characteristics of the particular ore under treatment. Some ores, in which the minerals constituting the gangue break free from the iron oxide upon crushing, may be concentrated magnetically after the iron oxides have been reduced to metal. The finely disseminated ores are least amenable to concentration. In general, high-grade sponge iron can only be made from high-grade raw materials. Sponge iron containing small amounts of sulfur can only be made from raw materials containing small amounts of sulfur or by

Jan 1, 1930

By G. W. Phelps

The field of industrial minerals is concerned with both sieve size and distribution of sub-sieve particles. A great deal of work has been reported on the techniques designed to provide information of this work. The term sub-sieve is here considered to include particular material that will pass a 325-mesh testing sieve. Plant men require rapid, precise and simple testing techniques that are, if possible, inexpensive with respect to equipment and manpower. A number of particle-size procedures have been developed, based on the Stokes equation for streamline movement of a particle of diam D, moving at velocity V through a liquid of viscosity n. 1 Particles are considered to be rigid, smooth spheres, completely dispersed at low concentration and moving at low velocity through the suspending medium with no slippage between particle and liquid. In particle size determinations the particle moves either from natural gravitational forces or those provided by centrifugal means. The diagram of Fig. 1 shows a spherical particle of density S and diam D moving downward at velocity L/T (or V) through a liquid of density So and viscosity n. The forces of gravity G (natural) or Gc (centrifugal) cause the particle to move through the liquid, thereby creating a viscous drag F or Fc. Within the streamline flow

Jan 1, 1967