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By MARSHALL D. DRAPER

THERE are said to be about 150 operating companies in Kotchiu, most of these being small, corresponding in degree to lessees in western mines in the United States. Of the total number there are probably forty large companies having their own smelting plants equipped with one or two furnaces, slag crushing plant and other accessory equipment. A few plants, not more than ten, do custom smelting. There are in all about fifty smelting plants in Kotchiu. With little variation, the equipment and methods are the same. The plant usually consists of two furnaces, one being in operation while the other is being relined 01- re- paired. An adjoining house contains one or more of the large buffalo-drawn Chilean mills for crushing slag. A few houses for the working coolies, with more pretentious ones for the owners, complete the establishment, the whole being surrounded by a compound wall 8 ft. high.

Jan 1, 1931

By F. B. Plummer

PROGRESS during 1940 in oil-production technology has been confined largely to a steady advancement in practices inaugurated in previous years, rather than the introduction of any new startling process or technique. The usual changes, improvements and additions in production equipment have been introduced. An increased attention to, and interest in, research has been noteworthy, resulting in improved efficiency in operation of oil wells. control, utilization of reservoir energies and reduction of production costs.

Jan 1, 1941

By AIME AIME

THE official opening at the 134th general meeting of the Institute was held on Oct. 6, but it was prefaced by two round table conferences on Oct. 5. The open-hearth group held the fourth of their semi-annual conferences at the William Penn Hotel, devoting the morning session to discussing a paper by R. L. Cain on the "Manufacture of Forging Steel by the Open-hearth Process," and the afternoon to discussing P. H. Shaeffer's paper on the open-hearth charge. At the Bureau of Mines, a round table conference on the combustibility of coke was held on Tuesday morning, and the afternoon was devoted to a similar conference on the testing of coke. The formal opening session of the meeting assembled in the Music Hall of Carnegie Institute at 10.30 a. m. Graham Bright, chairman of the Pittsburgh Section; called the meeting to order and presided. President Taylor welcomed the visiting members and guests to his home city and reviewed briefly the advancement of mining in the past half century during which, for ex- ample, the coal output had increased from 53,280,000 tons to 523,357,000 tons per year. He emphasized the important part Pennsylvania played in mining and brought out the principal changes that had taken place in methods. In part, his remarks were as follows: The centennial year, 1876, found the coal business of. this country, as a whole, producing 53,280,000 tons, of which amount the bituminous mines of this State yielded 24 per cent. In 1925, this country produced 523,357,000 tons of coal, of which Pennsylvania produced 24 per cent.

Jan 1, 1926

By Oliver Bowles

A HEAVY gel of bentonite clay has been proposed as an effective lubricant to speed down the ways to sea, river, or lake, the mighty cargo ships now hitting the water at the rate of about three a day. Another unusual application of a nonmetallic mineral is in food conservation, for the claim has been made that the next new item on the menu for poultry and rabbits will be vitamin tablets prepared from mont-morillonite clay. These uses have minor importance but illustrate not only the diversity in utilization, but the notable trend in 1942 toward mobilizing nonmetallic minerals for the war program. Although occupying less headline space than iron, steel, copper, aluminum, magnesium, and other metals, the nonmetallics are filling important emergency needs. Mica and quartz crystal are essential to communication; asbestos is urgently needed in fireproof heat and electrical insulation; and strontium minerals are utilized in the manufacture of signal flares and tracer bullets.

Jan 1, 1943

Jan 1, 1886

By AIME AIME

ARRANGEMENTS for the Annual Meeting of the Institute were well advanced at the end of December as the following program will show. Heretofore this has been printed separately, but its inclusion in the Annual Review issue of MINING AND METALLURGY will, it is hoped, make it more easily available for reference until the final program is issued, which will be distributed at the meeting. Added details will appear in the February issue. Last year's meeting drew a record crowd of over 2300 which should be exceeded this year. Early reservations at the headquarters hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria, or any other convenient hotel are desirable, as are prompt reservations for the Annual Dinner. No one need worry about too much speechmaking this year, for the honors will be awarded and accepted in a few words instead of a few paragraphs, in seconds rather than minutes.

Jan 1, 1939

By Stanley J. LeFond

Brazil is one of the most outstanding examples of economic development of our time. Its amazing growth record is substantiated by a GNP which has increased at an average rate of 92% for the period 1968-1970 and estimates for 1971 range from 11.7-12.5%. Hence, this growth, coupled with a more relaxed attitude of the Brazilian government towards foreign participation in business opportunities and the remittance of profits out of the country, has caused many exploration companies to reevaluate the potential of Brazil. Despite recent press notices and publicity, Brazil is still not a mining country in the tradition of Canada or Australia. It is still basically an agriculture and manufacturing country.

Jan 11, 1973

Jan 1, 1880

By Rollin A. Pallanch

THE Midvale mill of the United States Smelting Refining and Mining Company is situated on a flat site whose elevation is 50 ft above that of the Jordan River. Tailings are impounded in the area between the river and the flat upon which the mill and railroad switchyard are located. The water supply is pumped from the Galena canal which leads from the river at a point some ten miles to the south. The mill has a present capacity of approximately 1700 tons daily. It started out originally in 1926 as a 750 ton three-unit plant. The tonnage was gradually increased to 1200 tons by 1934, and in late 1935 a fourth unit was added. The accompanying flowsheet shows the principal equipment and how it is utilized. The ore is principally sulphide with varying degrees of oxidation, with individual lots ranging widely in both precious and base metal content. In each of the four individual units of the mill there will often be mixtures of as

Jan 1, 1948

By C. C. Wright, R. J. Day

ALTHOUGH data on the exact tonnage of recoverable coal silt are not known, the quantity produced in 1943 was estimated to be over five million tons for the anthracite region of Pennsylvania alone. Since that time the recovery of the No. 5 buck- wheat size previously included in silt estimates has increased greatly thus reducing the total silt tonnage. As a compensating factor, however, the methods of recovering silt previously escaping into the rivers and streams have been markedly improved so that the net figure may not have changed materially. Comparable estimates for bituminous coal are lacking, but undoubtedly the silt represents a significant tonnage. With the trend toward increased wet cleaning of the smaller sizes of bituminous coal, it is to be expected that even greater quantities of silt will be available in the future. The raw silt from anthracite collieries usually contains a high mineral matter content, but technological developments in fine coal cleaning have been making rapid advances and it appears probable that more extensive use of these methods will be employed in the near future. Bituminous coal silt in many instances contains a similar high mineral matter content. As with anthracite silt, however, the cleaning of this material, where necessary, appears both technologically and economically feasible. With a view to upgrading the size and value of silt, considerable laboratory and pilot plant work has been conducted by a number of organizations on what is commonly known as pelletization. Actually the process is one of extrusion in which the moist silt is extruded from a die in the form of rods, which usually break into relatively short lengths-a few inches long-as they fall from the die. Fig I is a photograph of some extruded 3/8-in. diam pellets and of the anthracite silt from which they were produced. This technique of producing larger sized material from fines is by no means new, having been used extensively by the industrial carbon and clay industries for years.' The application of the process to coal silt appears, however, to be relatively new. The first major program of investigation dates back only to July 1945, when a group of engineers representing the Anthracite Institute, The Pennsylvania State College and the J. F. Pritchard and Co. conducted preliminary tests on the extrusion of anthracite silt at the Floridin Co. plant at Warren, Pa. Since that time these three organizations-individually, together, and in co- operation with other interested groups- have actively pursued work on various phases of the problem. Much of the early history and details of the laboratory and pilot plant work by the Anthracite Institute, has been reported by Mulcey and Eckerd.2 It is the purpose of this paper to report additional information on the process, especially with respect to the factors influencing the quality and use properties of the product, and the current develop

Jan 1, 1948

By F. H. Wilson, E. W. Palmer

Brass mills are familiar with a recurring problem which reveals itself during deformation of annealed metal as an opening up of cracks which are suggestive of a grain boundary pattern. A typical example is seen in Fig 1, which shows part of the convex surface of a cartridge brass disc which was slightly dished by the punching operation. Another illustration of the same type of defect was found in the surface of a finished cartridge case which split open on firing. These cracks, shown in Fig 2, were away from the split but indicate the presence of the type of weakness which permitted the splitting. Usually the weakness consists of separate cracks, the lengths of which are of the same order of magnitude as the grain size prior to the final anneal. Their typical appearance in a polished section is shown in Fig 3. This structure was found below the surface of a fractured tensile-specimen that had been cut from a large cartridge blank showing the defects on its convex surface. While the pattern formed by these cracks suggests a grain boundary origin, the cracks bear no relation to the currently existing grain structure. Thus Fig 3 shows that the grains have grown up to cracks already present. Since it is doubtful that the cracks were present in the metal before the anneal, they must have formed during the anneal but prior to recrystallization. The term "fire-cracking" has been generally applied to cracking that occurs during an anneal under the influence of internal stress, but refers more specifically to obvious macroscopic cracking attributable to the presence of a low melting phase, usually lead. Since the type of cracking described above may occur when the lead content is very low, we have considered it a somewhat different phenomenon, and have called it "inter-granular parting." While most examples involve cartridge brass, intergranular parting has also been observed in the fabrication of large seamless tubes from discs of both 85/15 red brass and 70/30 cupro-nickel. Similar cracking in nickel silver was investigated by Jones and Whitehead,1 who showed that it could occur during healing or cooling. That which occurred on heating they called "fire cracking," and they suggested that, a transformation at about 320°C might account for its occurrence. It was felt in this laboratory that the observed parting was probably one aspect of the general observation, first made by Rosenhain and Archbutt,2 that a tendency toward intergranular fracture under tensile stress increases with increasing temperature and decreasing rate of strain. In this case the stress involved would be internal. The rate of strain would be exceedingly slow, a localized internal creep. Reference to the literature uncovered no efforts to extend the observations of Rosenhain to conditions involving only internal stress. Accordingly, an exploratory research, sufficient in detail to satisfy us as to the probable truth of this explanation of the observed intergranular parting, was undertaken. The internal stresses present during the early stages of an anneal (prior to recrystallization) would be from two sources: residual stresses developed during deformation, and thermal stresses caused by uneven heating and expansion. Thermal stresses would vary widely according to shape, size and manner of heating, and can be considered as supplementary to residual stresses. It seemed necessary to determine the stress and temperature conditions under which parting would occur in a relatively short time, and then to establish whether or not in- ternal stresses may persist to an extent adequate to cause parting at such temperatures. (Jones and Whitehead1 and Moore and Beckinsale3 made tests which indicated that stress relief required an appreciable time.) During the course of the research the desirability of studying the effect of grain size became apparent, and this factor is one of the major variables of our investigation. Intergranular Parting under Tension at Elevated Temperatures In early experiments, hard 70/30 brass tensile specimens, with unknown residual stresses, held for 10 min. at applied stresses from 30,000 to 40,000 psi at temperatures from 300 to 350°C, showed no macroscopically visible cracks when unloaded and cooled, but cracks very similar in appearance to those observed in commercial practice were revealed in these specimens by pulling them to fracture. Annealed specimens, on the other hand, showed no cracks in such experiments, apparently because they deformed plastically at stresses below those necessary to cause parting in a reasonable time. Hence, the specimens used for this study were first strengthened by cold tensile elongation, giving them an unavoidable residual stress pattern (determined largely by grain size and orientation) which would, however, correspond in direction, at least, to the stress pattern obtained under stress at temperature. A variation in these residual stresses might be expected with variations in grain size, but following any given anneal the reproducibility of stress pattern should be as good as that of the grain size measurement. With no information as to the effect of the amount of prior deformation, tests were conducted on specimens given the same cold elongation, using a stress applied at temperature which was a constant proportion of the stress required to produce this elongation. In

Jan 1, 1950

By W. H. Fitch

HAVING been asked to make some remarks after the reading of Mr. Dyrssen's paper, I regret that a test started some months ago has not yet been completed, but some of the things which I can tell you at this time seem interesting and shed a little different light on the idea of a recuperator. The device referred to is becoming more than. a recuperator, largely taking the place of a regenerator. I assume there is familiarity with the sketches that I presented in October, 1926, before the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, describing our re-cuperator combination with checker chambers, and I have additional ones to show at this time. The follow-ing remarks will deal with modifications that have been made. At that time I suggested the gases leaving the regenerators at, say, 1400°, be reduced to 500° F. The opinion of the operating men consulted since that time is that, under the best operating conditions, the tem-perature may be 750° to 800° F. after the recuperator and on entering the stack. While the lowest final temperature of the gases en-tering the stack is important from the economic stand-point of fuel burning, and operating in general, it is not the whole story. The method of getting the heat out of the checkers is important. It is believed by many with whom we have talked that a better way is by a combination of checkers and a carborundum re- cuperator of the type described as it will stand all tem-peratures met in practice and might be called a super-refractory.

Jan 1, 1928

By Ralph Hultgren

FEW phase diagrams of alloys composed of two transition metals have been adequately studied, probably because of the high melting points involved. Transition metals are the elements that have inner shells incompletely filled with electrons. They comprise groups IIIa to Villa of the periodic table, including more than half of all metals. We have chosen to study two systems whose comparatively low melting points allowed the alloys to be melted in a molybdenum resistance furnace. The nickel-palladium system proved to consist of a simple series of solid solutions, but iron-palladium manifested several remarkable features. The main characteristics of the latter diagram were decisively established, but lack of time prevented precise determination of phase boundaries. The gamma to alpha transformation in this system is unusual and warrants further study. Grigorjew1 determined the liquidus and solidus of the iron-palladium system by thermal methods. He found a minimum melting point, but no eutectic. He also found that palladium lowered the gamma to alpha and raised the gamma to delta transformation temperatures of iron, with a complete series of solid solutions existing between gamma iron and palladium. His measurements also indicated a compound or super-lattice near the composition FePd3. Jellinghaus2 found that annealing at 500° C. greatly increased the magnetic coercive force of an alloy of composition FePd. X-ray dif-fraction photographs showed that a tetragonal ordered phase had formed during the anneal.

Jan 1, 1939

By Henderson, Robert

A GOOD idea of the magnitude of the underground operations at Climax can be gained from the following figures. A little more than 43,000,000 tons has been drawn from the mine and of this amount, 40,500,000 tons has been drawn in the past ten years and 12,000,000 tons was drawn in two of the war years. The maximum daily average output over a period of one month was slightly more than 20,000 tons but during this period, production on certain days was 24,000 tons, and 9000 tons was produced in a single eight-hour shift. This production came chiefly from 260 draw points although all of them were never in operation at one time. The haulage system for these draw points is made up of 7.5 miles of 36-in.-gauge track, and 131,000 ft. of subsidiary drifts and 44,000 ft. of raises have been driven to develop the necessary broken ore reserves for this high production. Power consumption is often considered an index of operating efficiency. In 1943, the year of maximum production, the mine power consumption was 19,223,000 kw.-hr. or 3 kw.-hr. per ton; in 1945 it was 3.5 kw.-hr. per ton. To handle this amount of power, there are four transformer stations and one switch station in the mine. Mr. Garrabrant, the chief electrician, describes the electrical installation in this issue.

Jan 1, 1946

By I. E. Puddington

The property of surface tension in liquids is said to have been known to Leonardo de Vinci in about 1500. Approximately'300 years later Thomas Young and others provided the ground rules relating surface tension to the wetting of solids and to the pressure drop across curved surfaces. In retrospect it seems remarkable that more than 100 additonal years were required for substantial technological use to be made of the-information. Thus super critical and freeze drying to avoid shrinkage of finely divided solids have only seen industrial use since the 1930's and doubtless additional possible applications will be equally slow in finding concurrence of conditions to make them attractive economically. The use of a second liquid phase that preferentially wets ,a suspended solid as a flocculant for that solid was pointed out in 1943 (1). Combining this phenomenon with mechanical energy to alter the morphology of the flocs or with surface chemistry to utilize it in the selective flocculation in mixed solids required more than an additional decade. A major stimulant in advancing surface energy based technology 'of suspensions was the report by D. I. Stock in 1952 (2) that mechanical agitation of a dry suspension of barium sulphate in benzene produced dense microspheres of the solid with highly desirable sedimentation characteristics. Investigation of this observation revealed that it resulted from small quantities of water in the system and mechanistically the phenomenon was identical with that reported in 1943.withthe addition of mechanical packing (3). Here then was a base from which to separate more efficiently suspended solids, to make small spheres from powders, to separate selected components from mixtures of finely divided solids or to break emulsions. Each of these possible branches of technology has been slow in developing on other than an experimental scale although considerable

Jan 1, 1979

By J. J. Oberly

WHILE examining lineage boundaries in germanium single crystals as described by Vogel et al.,&apos; patterns of conical etch pits were noted which reveal interesting properties of dislocations. The crystals were grown by pulling in the <100> direction, and (100) surfaces perpendicular to the growth direction were etched 4 min in a mixture of 6 cu cm HF, 10 cu cm HNO3, 6 cu cm acetic acid, 3 drops Br,. Lineage boundaries extended in any direction, but favored the <110> direction. The patterns which were noted first were composed of two or three etch pits arranged symmetrically about the lineage boundary, so that the doublets were spaced equally on either side of the boundary line and the triplets had their center pit on the boundary line. The triplets occurred less often than did the doublets; occasionally combinations were found. Two such combination patterns are shown in Figs. 1 and 2. The orientation of the patterns was determined approximately by subsequently etching the same surfaces in a mixture of 5 cu cm HF, 5 cu cm super-0x01, and 20 cu cm distilled water which produced nearby random square etch pits having edges in the <110> direction. In all cases, the axis of symmetry was <110>, being parallel to the etch-pit edges. Several successive lapping and etching operations showed that the patterns tended to continue through the crystal in the <100> direction, but eventually changed or vanished. It can be seen in both photographs that the pits in the patterns are much further apart than the pits in the adjacent section of the lineage boundary. In Fig. 1, the 10 pits of the pat-

Jan 1, 1955

Sulfuric Acid and Phosphate Industries at Anaconda Reduction Works. BY E L LARISON (Contribution 70-Preprint 4400 words) In 1915 a 135-ton chamber sulfuric acid plant was built at the Anaconda Reduction Works to supply acid for leaching sand tailing Sulfur dioxide was obtained by roasting copper table concentrate Soon after, the flotation process, using acid as a reagent, together with development of a leaching and electrolytic process for zinc recovery, necessitated building a second acid unit of 50 tons&apos; per day capacity, completed in 1917 Within a few months the zinc process was so improved as to consume no added acid Mean¬while research work was in progress on production of phosphate fertilizers using sulfuric acid and Idaho phosphate rock In 1920 a pilot plant was put into operation which treated 50 tons per day of phosphate rock to produce treble superphosphate containing 45 per cent available P205 In 1922 the original plant and process for leaching of sand tailing were abandoned in favor of a combination leaching and flota¬tion process In 1923 the sand leaching plant was remodeled into a treble super¬phosphate plant designed to treat 160 tons per day of phosphate rock. In 1924 the copper flotation process was put on alkaline circuit and acid, has not since been used as a reagent Practically all the acid produced is now used for making phos¬phate products In 1931 the use of copper concentrate as a source of sulfur dioxide was abandoned and an iron concentrate, floated from the copper concentrator tail¬ing, substituted

Jan 1, 1935

By Allen Johnson

WITH a realization of the rapidly increasing importance of automatic stokers as a medium for domestic heating, the Anthracite Institute Labo-ratory has conducted extensive investigations, over a period of several years, to determine the various outstanding characteristics of stoker design and performance. The purpose of this paper is to summarize these findings as a guide to current practices. STOKERS INVESTIGATED One or more models of the underfeed stokers listed below were included in the various phases of this investigation: Beckley Gilkoal Burnwell Iron Fireman Combustioneer Motor Stokor Electric Furnace Man Norristown Super-Stoker Erie Heat Generator Whitney Fire Ball (Tests Incomplete.) Fuel Saver Principles of Construction.-The operating principle of the leading makes of underfeed stokers is similar (Fig. 1). A plungers, or slowly revolving worm2, conveys the buckwheat or rice sizes of anthracite to the center of a specially constructed tuyere pot where air is admitted to the coal. through suitable ports of varying design. As the fuel burns, it is slowly forced to the outside circumference of the tuyere by the pressure of the incoming coal; eventually the ash falls over the edge of the pot, either entirely by gravity or aided by mechanical sweepers. In at least one model, the entire firepot revolves. While various special details have been included in the design of a number of stokers, they do not affect the ,general principles as described above, and therefore have not been included in this discussion.

Jan 1, 1935

By Robert M. Jimeson

At the recent SME Fall Meeting in Salt Lake City, Robert M. Jimeson, Physical Science Administrator of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, cited the research programs underway in the Bureau&apos;s Division of Coal Research, and outlined their current status. These research programs have been selected by the Division because of their relative value and high probability of success in contributing to the conservation of the Nation&apos;s coal and to the expanded use of coal in current or new markets. Since about 50% of coal consumption in the United States is in the production of electric power, 20% in production of metallurgical coke, and over 20 % by industry in producing process steam and power, the Bureau has placed much emphasis on research that will maintain coal&apos;s leadership in these established areas. This emphasis is reflected in the projects discussed on these pages. Bear in mind that this survey is not all-inclusive. Other projects underway include studies on furnace performance factors, improved burner design, and other critical boiler work which can be used immediately by industry to improve efficiency of current practices in power generation; other investigations are aimed at reducing fireside deposits and corrosion of boiler and super- heater tubes, fly ash utilization, and control of SO, from flue gases (a major step in preventing air pollution). These plus many other projects during the past years have served to focus attention on the fact that the U. S. Bureau of Mines is presently making the largest single contribution to this Nation&apos;s coal research effort.

Jan 11, 1963

By E. J. Westerman

Prealloyed powders of nickel-base superalloys were sintered to almost theoretical density in short sinterilzg times. It was ascertained that the rapid densification was caused by a small amount of liquid phase at the grain boundaries, which apparently ovriginated by incipient melting at temperatures considerably below those at which macroscopic melting of the compacts occurred. An increase in the quantity of liquid phase present during sintering-, caused by an increase in the sintering temperature, increased the densification rate, but resulted in a decrease in the room temperature tensile propevties. NICKEL-base superalloys, which presently comprise an important group of high temperature alloys, are difficult to fabricate by the forging, casting, and machining operations presently used. As it was felt that fabrication by powder metallurgical techniques might offer advantages in the production of super-alloy parts, a basic investigation of the most important process in the sequence of powder metallurgical operations, the sintering process, was undertaken on Rene 41, Udirnet 500, and Nimonic 90 and 100 powders. These alloys age harden by the precipitation of the ? Ni, rA1,Ti) phase. Nickel-base superalloys of the Nimonic type have been fabricated by powder metallurgical methods, and their mechanical properties reported in detail.&apos; Other alloys for high temperature service which have been fabricated by powder metallurgical methods include a Co-base alloy of the Vitallium type;2,3 alloys with a Co-Ni-Fe-Cr base;4 stainless steels;5&apos;6 Cr-W-Co alloys;" and a Co-base alloy, X-40.8 METAL POWDERS The superalloy powders investigated were: a) a prealloyed at.omized Rene 41 powder; b) a prealloyed atomized Udirnet 500 powder; c) a prealloyed atom-

Jan 1, 1962