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C. Edward Stafford, Chester, Pa.:—Doring all my business life, I have been engaged in the manufacture of Bessemer and open-hearth steels, but, during my long connection with the Shoenberger Steel Co. of Pittsburg, I had some experience in the manufacture of high-grade puddled iron for horseshoes, and in making, by Dr. Otto Wuth's process, extremely pure, low-phosphorus puddled blooms (analyzing from 0.005 to 0.01 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur), which were melted with low-phosphorus pig-iron in acid open-hearth furnaces, to make extra locomotive fire-box steel. I have also seen the Danks puddlers in operation at different times and places, notably where they were most successful, at the Otis Steel Works, Cleveland, Ohio; then under the management of our friend, Mr. S. T. Wellman. These Danks blooms were made solely for open-hearth melting-stock, to which they were well adapted. (The unavoidable presence of bits of ore-fix imbedded in the mass of the metal always prevents the profitable manufacture of merchant iron from Danks' blooms.) With the experience just described, I was to some degree in position to value fairly the means, methods and results of Mr. Roe's mechanical puddling from the metallurgical or technical and economic points of view, when given an opportunity by Mr. Roe to see his puddling-furnace or machine in operation in Pottstown, Pa. Briefly, the furnace, with water-cooled bottom, is rectangular in plan, about 20 by 8 ft. in the clear, suspended by trunnions at the middle of the long sides, at a height of 17 or 18 ft. above the general level. The oscillation (65" each way from the vertical) is accomplished by geared segments (attached to the downward-projecting side or trunnion-plates) with which engage pinions driven by a reversing engine. The whole section

Jan 1, 1906

"World Mining and Metals Technology" is the title of this year's SME-AIME Fall Meeting and Exhibit in Denver, Sept. 1-3, where a record number of exhibits are scheduled for display. The international theme is particularly appropriate, for in addition to the annual SME session, the Third MMIJ-AIME Joint Meeting will be held.

Jan 8, 1976

By Henry Wurtz

Jan 1, 1880

By William Romanoff

IN AN ARTICLE on "Recovering Smelter Dust and Oxide," published in the Engineering and Mining Journal (Vol. 131, No. 2), the authors briefly described some dust-recovery equipment and its operation at a secondary-metals brass-smelting and refining plant. A description of our experience in overcoming certain operating difficulties may prove of interest or value to those who are confronted with some of the same problems or who should equip their furnaces with dust-collecting equipment. The dust loss from reverberatory smelting and refining of brass con¬sists largely of zinc, with smaller percentages of lead, tin, and copper in the order named. At the Kramer plant, the fume discharge from the two stacks amounted to 3 to 4 tons of solids per day, making a dense smoke. With dust equipment in operation, the discharge from the stacks is invisible and approximately 2500 lb. of zinc and other metals is recovered daily thereby from each furnace operating.

Jan 1, 1933

By L. Leibowitz, M. G. Chasanov, L. W. Mishler

A drop calorimeter system is described for use in measuring enthalpies to 3600°K. Data are presented for tungsten between 2800" and 3600°K. The enthalpy of tungsten in cal per mole between 2000° and 3600°K can be represented by the equation HºT- Hº298 = - 1.7622 X 103 + 5.7772T + 8.9861 where T is in degrees Kelvin. A tabulation of com -puted values is presented for heat capacity, entropy, and free energy function. A drop calorimeter has been constructed to carry out enthalpy measurements at temperatures to 3600°K. Samples are heated by induction1 and dropped into a commercial adiabatic calorimeter, modified for this purpose. The experimental temperature is limited by the melting point of container materials and compatibility of the container and its contents. Several high-temperature drop calorimeters have been described in the literature1-5 but none has been used at temperatures as high as those in the present work; our measurements of the enthalpy of tungsten range from 2800" to 3600°K. DESCRIPTION OF EQUIPMENT An overall schematic view of the equipment is shown in Fig. 1. Power for the induction coil is supplied by a 25-kw 250 kHz Ther-Monic generator coupled to an iron core RF transformer. The Sample capsule is suspended in the work coil by 10-mil diam tungsten wires which are wrapped around a horizontal 5-mil diam tungsten wire. The horizontal suspension wire is clamped between two massive copper electrodes which are fixed in an x-y motion device that allows adjustment of the position of the heated capsule from outside the vacuum chamber. The copper electrodes are connected by flexible copper straps to a 1250-joule (5 kv, 100 pfarad) condenser bank. When it is desired to release the capsule, the condensers are discharged through the horizontal suspension wire causing it to vaporize rapidly. Very reliable and precise release of the capsule is achieved in this manner. Experiments have shown that no heat correction is required for this discharge energy. As part of the temperature measuring system, two prism holders have been incorporated in the apparatus. The upper prism holder is in the main vacuum chamber itself, whereas the lower one is in a side arm attached to the drop tube below the gate valve. The upper prism is mounted on a rotary vacuum feed-through, and may be moved under a protective shield when not in use. This prevents deposition of vapors on the prism surfaces when temperature measurements are not being made. Similarly, the lower prism is mounted on a push-pull vacuum feed-through, and when not in use may be pulled into its side tube. The prism mountings are fitted with guides and stops so that they may be moved precisely into the desired position. The aim throughout is to minimize the time the prisms are exposed to vapors from the hot samples. At the high temperatures reported in this paper, only the lower prism was used. The upper prism holder in these cases was fitted with an additional radiation shield. By using a prism and viewport, the lower surface of the samples can be observed by an optical pyrometer. The measurements discussed in this paper were obtained with a Leeds and Northrup 8622-C-S series manual pyrometer which is estimated to be accurate to 0.5 pct. Pyrometer calibrations and prism and window corrections were carried out in the conventional manner6 using tungsten strip lamps calibrated by the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, England. Prism corrections were rechecked after each use. All work to date has been done in vacuum, and no measurable change has been observed in the prism correction below -2300°K for the upper prism and below -2800°K for the lower one. The total time of exposure of the prisms is about 50 sec per run. At high temperature, the final temperature reading is corrected by using the final A value for the prism; see Ref. 6 for details of this procedure. The calorimeter is a modified Parr Instrument Co. (Moline, lll.), Series 1230 adiabatic calorimeter with automatic jacket control. Other authors5 have used a similar calorimeter with good results. The calorimeter jacket cover and calorimeter cover are attached to the drop tube which contains a radiation shield. This shield is a gold-plated copper disc which can be operated manually from outside the calorimeter. The receiver is attached below the radiation shield and is lined with tungsten. In a typical experiment, the calorimeter and its jacket water temperatures were adjusted to 0.000°K temperature difference. The sample was allowed to equilibrate in the furnace at the desired temperature for about 20 min. The initial calorimeter temperature was then recorded, the sample dropped, and appropriate shutters closed. After about 3 min, the drop tube and receiver were filled with helium to 60 torr. The final calorimeter temperature was recorded after it had remained constant over a 5-min period. The equilibration time in the calorimeter was about 25 min. Thermistor probes are used to operate a hot and cold water supply system to maintain the jacket temperature equal to the calorimeter temperature. For actual measurements of the calorimeter temperatures, a quartz thermometer was used (Hewlett Packard Dymec Thermometer, Model #2801A). This thermome-

Jan 1, 1970

By A. L. Engel

STRICTLY speaking, ore-dressing does not commence until after the ore is in the mill bins, but where complex ores are treated and their minerals separated to make the best commercial concentrate with the lowest economical tailing, ore-dressing problems begin and often center in the mine itself. This does not refer to the grade of the ore, but rather to the frequent condition in which metallurgical results radically different from customary are obtained because of changes in the character of the ore treated. Different varieties of ore can usually be identified as coming from well-defined depths or zones in the mine, or from known sections of the orebody. Varying degrees of alteration of the ore, inclusions of harmful gangue material, or variations in the quantities of component metallic minerals are often causes of temporarily bad metallurgical results in otherwise successfully operated plants, especially those employing differential flotation to. recover several valuable minerals contained in the ore.

Jan 1, 1931

By Don Masson

MUCH has been written and many prophecies made on the subject of plastics as a replacement for metal, and the extent to which these materials will compete with each other for peace- time markets. (Metal is used in a broad sense to include all types.) But although certain synthetic resin materials have made considerable headway in war production, this change to plastics can hardly be regarded as a serious threat to the mining and metallurgical industries. Even today, the total yearly tonnage of plastic materials is approximately only 1 per cent of that of steel, and only a small fraction of this might be considered as actually replacing steel. However, these figures must not be taken as indicating that the importance of plastics in fields hitherto considered exclusively the territory of metals is negligible-far from it. Considering the comparatively minute tonnage of plastics now being produced in comparison to the output of metals, the number of applications where plastics have augmented or aided the sale of metals is considerable.

Jan 1, 1944

By E. C. Carris

THE particular field of application of machines utilizing air cur¬rents as the primary separating medium is in the cleaning of the fine sizes of bituminous coal. Approximately 12,000,000 tons of bituminous coal were cleaned by air machines during 1940. They have not found any application for cleaning anthracite. Since the development and introduction of the first successful com¬mercial pneumatic oscillating machine for cleaning bituminous coal in 1916, by the Sutton, Steele and Steele Co., Dallas, Texas, and the Ameri¬can Coal Cleaning Corporation, formerly of Welch, W. Va., four other successful pneumatic coal-cleaning machines have been developed and introduced to the American coal-mining industry: 1. Peale Davis: "Pneumo-Gravity" machine, 1924. 2. Arms "Concentrator," oscillating table, 1924. 3. Heyl and Patterson oscillating table, 199.7. 4. "Stump Air-Flow," pulsating air jig, 19391. Out of these five developments only the Sutton, Steele and Steele, or American Oscillating, and the Stump Air-Flow Jig remain on the market. They are the predominating pneumatic coal-cleaning machines in use in the United States. HISTORY OF AMERICAN TYPE SEPARATOR The first successful American machine, the CJ table (Fig. 1) was developed by the Sutton, Steele and Steele Co. The SJ table was the first standard model designed specifically for the cleaning of coal. It was installed in the original Crane Creek plant, owned and operated by the American Coal Co. at McComas, West Virginia. This plant was designed by The Roberts and Schaefer Co., Chicago, Ill., working in cooperation with the American Coal Cleaning Corpora¬tion, which had taken over the patent rights and sale of the pneumatic separators. Eight machines were installed in this plant. They were known as the type SJ. They were 60 by 84 in., the short dimension being the width of

Jan 1, 1943

By ALEXANDER S. CORSUN

THE main orebody in the Hecla mine, Burke, Ida- ho, occurs along a nearly vertical shear zone in the Burke quartzite, with a substantial gouge and lamprophyre dike occurring in an irregular manner throughout the lode. The veins range from 3 to 40 ft. wide and dip from 70 deg. to 90 deg. There is 110 definite line of demarcation between the lode and the wall rock. Stringers of ore are often found in the wall rock for irregular distances. Horizontal but irregular quartz stringers are also found running into the walls and positions of the wall have a tendency to break to the quartz stringers and the accompanying gouge, which causes indefinite, uneven and extremely heavy side and top pressures.

Jan 1, 1930

By H. C. Rickaby

BY August 1944 Canada expects to be shipping 56 percent hematite ore from its new Steep Rock iron mine, via Port Arthur on Lake Superior, to the steelmaking centers in Canada and the United States. This is indeed welcome news to steel men, especially if they operate open hearth furnaces, as the Steep Rock ore is a high-grade lump and will be valuable as charge and feed ore. But better news is the fact that this first big producer of high-grade hematite ore in Canada, since the exhaustion of the Helen mine in the Michipicoten area north of Lake Superior in 1918, has a proved ore body of 16,757,000 long tons and a probable ore body of 14,000,000 long tons, thus giving an over-all total of 30,757,000 long tons and assuring production for a number of years to come.

Jan 1, 1943

E. Hill, South Norwalk, Conn. (communication to the Secretary*) :—The phenomenon described by Dr. Ledoux, involving an apparently abnormal high temperature in the air-cylinders of compressors, has not been, so far as I know, discussed in technical literature. The common formula for the adiabatic compression of dry air does not account for heat suficient to flash ordinarily decent cylinder-oils, nor do the text-books include in their theoretical statements any quantitative consideration of the effect of leaks in the ideal machines which they contemplate. This lack I have endeavored to supply by preparing, in the form of a circular, for the use of the customers and correspondents of the Norwalk Iron-Works, a brief mathematical

Jan 1, 1904

By A. C. Fieldner

COKE and by-products have prime importance in the war program. The past year was marked by the construction of new and the rehabilitation of old by-product and beehive ovens and by the increase of production from existing plants to practically 100 per cent capacity. W. T. Brown's paper, "Plan to Improve Blast-Furnace Coke," presented at the Fuels Conference in St. Louis, Sept. 30, showed how the blending of low- and high-volatile coal improved the physical properties of coke and that improvement of the quality and uniformity of coke favored an increase of blast-furnace capacity- a vital need in the war program. Others in the industry have likewise increased production of coke or recovery of by- products by various innovations or changes in operation. Recognition of the value of pooling these developments for the benefit of the entire industry led to organization of a survey of coke- oven plants and blast furnaces by the Bureau of Mines in co-operation with the Solid Fuels Co-ordinator with a view to improving metallurgical coke production and recovery of by-products. This survey is being conducted with the help of an advisory committee consisting of representatives of the Bureau of Mines, the Solid Fuels Co-ordinator, the War Production Board, and the blast-furnace, coke-oven, and coal-mining industries.

Jan 1, 1943

By W. C. MENDENHALL

THE problem of maintaining the mining industry is two-fold; finding new supplies in the face of increasing difficulties, and making such advances in the arts of extraction and preparation as to use supplies of lower grade. Progress in mining and reduction methods and in transportation makes ore today of that which was waste yesterday. These are the fields of the metallurgists and the transportation engineers. The geologists and mining engineers must work together on the problem of ore finding. As the old prospector fades from the scene, men with equal hardihood and patience and equal power to meet the physical obstacles which confront the seeker after ore, must take his place, armed with all that has been learned from human experience about the causes, the controlling conditions, the indications, and hiding places of the metals. Such a seeker is dealing with some of the most complex and obscure of natural phenomena. In nature's laboratory, tremendous forces are at work. Tempera-

Jan 1, 1926

By K. D. Jacob

IN the decreasing order of the tonnages involved, the uses of phosphates can be grouped conveniently into three general classes, namely, fertilizer; chemicals for military, industrial, and technical purposes; and mineral feed for livestock. The quantity of phosphate used as fertilizer, principally in the form of superphosphate, has always exceeded by far that used for all other purposes, though in recent years a marked increase has occurred in its consumption for the other two general classes of uses. Prior to the present century large quantities of superphosphate, as well as a considerable portion of the production of phosphorus chemicals, score made from bone materials which were plentiful and cheap in some areas and which could be more easily processed than phosphate rock for the manufacture of chemicals. Today, however phosphate rock has almost completely displaced bone as a raw material for the manufacture of chemically processed phosphates in nearly all countries of the world.

Jan 1, 1944

By ALFREDO INTZAUGARAT, MIGUEL BERRO

During the years 1943 through 1945, there was a decrease in the total oil production in Argentina. In the fields of Comodoro Rivadavia (Chubut Territory) and Mendoza and Salta Provinces, the production obtained was as shown in Table I. The only place where there was a small increase was Plaza Huincul, in the Neuquen Territory and Lunlunta, in the Mendoza Province.

Jan 1, 1946

By George S. Rice

INTERESTING developments going on in European coal mines look to: (1) increasing mechanization; 12) concentration of mining; (3) improvement in safety appliances; and (4) studies in bettering roof supports and. incident to this, studies of the way a roof behaves under different conditions of support and methods of mining and back-filling. Mechanization and concentration off mining is being adapted to a considerable extent in Great Britain coincident with the development of conveyors. Belt conveyors, shaker-pan conveyors, and a combination of the two are used. For pitching seams not steep enough for the coal to run in station-chutes, the. shaker-pan conveyor is more popular. For large outputs from a contiguous face, the double-unit system of face layout-that is, the conveyors meeting at a common point-is favored.

Jan 1, 1934

By Frank Milliken

IN September 1937, the Ohio Copper Co. inaugurated the treatment of its copper-bearing mill tailings at Lark, Utah. These tailings had been accumulated during the regular operation of the Ohio Copper mine and mill over the period 1007 to 1019. Gravity concentration had been employed except for a comparatively short period in 1919, when flotation was used. The ore milled during that period assayed about I per cent Cu. The chief copper mineral, chalcocite, was dissemi-nated in a shattered quartzite, mainly along fracture or cleavage planes. The quartzite gangue was extremely hard and grinding to liberation resulted in excessive sliming of the "sooty" chalcocite, with consequent high tailings losses. Recovery on the seven million tons treated was prob-ably less than 6o per cent of the total copper content. As early as 1918, attempts had been made to sample the dump. In 1928, a com-plete sampling program was undertaken. The sampling consisted of seventy-four 5-in. post auger holes drilled to the full depth of the dump at regular intervals of 250 ft. Each 10-ft. portion thereof com-prised a sample for analysis. Each sample was screened, rolled, divided into three parts, dried and assayed. The reject was retained for testing purposes. From the depth of the auger holes a contour map of the dump was plotted, Fig. 1, which gives percentages of tonnage and copper content.

Jan 1, 1940

By J. W. JESSUH

TO certain people the name of Northern Rhodesia brings only a vague recollection of a distant country somewhere in Africa; to others, it means a big game territory and the opportunity for excellent shooting; to some, a land of sunshine and peace; but to mining men the name signifies the land where the latest discoveries of copper ore are astonishing the mining world and bid fair, in a few years, to make Northern Rhodesia one of the largest copper- producing countries. There is a fascination about this part of the globe that is somewhat similar to southern California, and at the same time there is that feeling of mystery peculiar to a tropical climate. Perhaps it is the isolation, the fear of wild animals, or the influence of an undefinable something which cannot be expressed.

Jan 1, 1931

By Herbert Hoover

THE Federation of Engineering Societies has been created for the sole purpose of public service. This initial meeting surely warrants some discussion of a few of the problems to which this organization, for expression of the --. engineering mind, can quite well give consideration. Some of the greatest of the problems before the country and, in fact, before the world, are those growing out of our industrial development. The enormous industrial expansion of the last fifty' years has lifted the standard of living and comfort beyond any dream of our forefathers. Our economic system under which it has been accomplished has given stimulation to invention, to enterprise, to individual improvement of the highest order, yet it presents a series of human and social difficulties for the solution of which we are groping. The congestion of population is producing subnormal conditions of life. The vast repetitive operations are dulling the human mind. The intermittency bf employment due to the bad coordination of industry, the great waves of unemployment in the ebb and flow of economic tides, produce infinite wastes and great suffering. Our business enterprises have become so large and complex that the old personal relationship between employer and worker has to a great extent disappeared. The aggregation of great wealth, with its power of economic domination, presents social, economic ills which we are constantly struggling to remedy.

Jan 1, 1920

By Henry Wurtz

HERACLITUS, a sage of antiquity, called the dark philosopher, who refused a throne, preferring a hermit's cell, propounded, twenty-four centuries since, the maxim : [ ] War (or strife) engenders all things. This, though probably intended by Heraclitus to apply especially to the internal forces of nature, is often said, with equal reason, of the affairs of men. Controversial strife, whether fortunately or unfortunately, is a crucible through which all new discoveries in science, and all technical applications of science must pass-a test which they must all endure before they can become so vitalized as to germinate, so to speak, take root in the human mind, grow tip, and overspread the earth. The greater the number and the power of the elements arrayed against such a growth, and of the influences hostile thereto, the greater should be the inherent vitality of the germ, the more strenuous, skilful, and persistent its cultivators and upholders. During the decade last past we have had, in spite of the severe stringency of the times, an active growth of this kind in progress, whose prospective importance it would now be difficult to overrate. This is the movement which has for its motive the idea that, generally speaking, fuel should be gaseous in form, and which has for its goal the introduction into general public use of gaseous products, made by cheap and rapid processes and on a gigantic scale, distributed throughout our cities and towns in distribution-systems which shall be proportionately gigantic, and sold at prices which will bring such fuel within the means of the poorest householders. Personally, for ten years past, the writer has never failed, on occasions public or private, to urge his belief that the realization of this idea, deemed by him a certainty of the future, will bring about

Jan 1, 1880