Search Documents

By John G. Hall

The pumping operations at the Chief mine have been unique in the respect that for many years the entire flow of water into the mine has been disposed of by pumping into natural underground "caverns" or "sinks." Volumes up to 4000 gpm have been pumped into these caverns with no apparent tendency for the caverns to fill with water, and it has never been proven that any of the water returns to the mine workings. Major pumping operations have been carried on during two periods, the first from 1918 to 1927, and the second from 1942 to the present time. Early Pumping Operations CHIEF MINE The Chief Consolidated Mining Co. was organized in 1909, and for the following nine years ore was developed and mined from the 600 level down to the 1800 level, all above the permanent water table, the 1820 level. The ore occurs as extremely-irregular pipes of replacement ore in limestone, and to date a total of approximately 2 1/2 million tons of ore has been produced. The ore was highly oxidized down to the permanent water level, and some highly-oxidized ore runs occur beneath the permanent water table. In 1916, with extensive mining being done on the 1800 level, 20 ft above the water table, there were indications that a zone of secondary enrichment might exist below the water, and in order to follow the ore runs to greater depth, it was realized that arrangements would have to be Made to pump water to the surface. The original pumping installation was designed to pump 350 gpm in five stages against a 1900-ft head to the surface. By January 1919, the water had been lowered to the 1900 level and an excellent grade of silver-lead ore was being produced from the zone of secondary enrichment. At this point. the flow of water equalled the capacity of the pumps, and pumps of an additional 1000 gpln were installed to supplement the original system. By January 1920, the water had been lowered approximately 100 ft, and the total flow of water was 1000 gpm. The water was being pumped from many different places in the mine where ore was being followed downward, with 27 different pumps operating below the 1800 level, mainly Cameron air-driven sinker pumps. These first sinking pumps were cumbersome and inefficient, and each of the larger pumps weighed approximately three tons and required tremeridous volumes of compressed air. During this period, an exploration drift being extended north and west from the Chief shaft on the 1600 level encountered a large natural cavern some 2000 ft from the shaft. This cavern in places measured 60 ft in diameter. Sometime later the disposing of water into this cavern was suggested, and as an experiment to determine the results of such an operation, an attempt was Made to fill the cavern by pumping in a small volume of water, but the water disappeared as fast as it was discharged into the cavern. It was decided then to try the cavern as a drainage outlet for the entire volume of water being pumped to the surface, and the water apparently did not return to the mine workings. Subsequently water up to 3000 gpm was pumped into this cavern. An attempt was made to determine whether any water was being returned from the cavern to the lower workings, and 100 lb of sodium fluorescein salt was added to the water discharged into the cavern, but no trace of it was found in the drainage water in the mine. Results of another such test will be described later.

Jan 1, 1950

Albin, B. R. Billings, Mont. 28 Amster, Nathan L 25 Broad St., New York, N. Y. '28 Bache, Jules S. 42 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 28 Barrett, C. P. 5338 Harper Ave., Chicago, 111. '28 Baum, Frank G., Cons. Hydro-Electric Engr Cassel, Shasta Co., Cal. '28 Bayless, William S. Russ Bldg., San Francisco, Cal. '28 Bean, Louis H.60 E. 42nd St., New York, N. Y. '28 Beatty, Roes J. 1105 First National Bank Bldg., Chicago, Ill. '28 Benwell, Oswald F. Hold Mags. '28 Beymer, Albert S., V.P., Keystone National Bank Pittsburgh, Pa. '28 Blumenthal, Hugo 44 Pine St., New York, N. Y. '28 Boettcher, Charles Ideal Cement Bldg., Denver, Colo. '28 Bowlus, Thomas H. Iola, Kan. '28 Brown, Colvin B. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D. C. '28 Bart, Maxwell Struthers Southern Pines, N. C. '28

Jan 1, 1932

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LOCAL SECTION Executive Committee SEELEY W. MUDD, Chairman C. COLCOCK JUNES, Vice-Chairman FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Secretary-Treasurer, 631. Higgins Bldg., Los Angeles, Cal. Ralph ARNOLD A. B. CARPENTER The Second Annual Meeting of the Southern California Local Section of the American Institute of Mining Engineers was held at 300 Germain Bldg. on June 18, 1915, at 8 P.M. Present were: Messrs. C. Colcock Jones, Carpenter; Merrill, Baumgarten, Staunton, Hodges, Holland, and Durell. In the absence of the Chairman; Mr. Jones presided. The tellers appointed to canvass the vote for Section officers reported 45 ballots cast. The following gentlemen were announced as duly elected to the several. . offices: Chairman, SEELEY W. MUDD, Vice-Chairman, C. COLCOCK JONES, Secretary-Treasurer, F. J. H. MERRILL, Members of Executive Committee, RALPH ARNOLD A. B. CARPENTER

Jan 8, 1915

By C. W. Sherman, J. Chipman, H. I. Elvander

J. F. Elliott—This is an excellent piece of work and makes a chemical metallurgist more enthusiastic than ever about what can be done with multicomponent systems, if we have satisfactory data. I have a remark to make on the interpretation of fig. 5. First, I will comment on the problem of activities in solutions. The iron-sulphur system has in its phase diagram an intermediate solid phase FeS. The occurrence of an intermediate phase is normally associated with negative departures from Raoult's law over a portion of the activity curves in the liquid. (Perhaps it would be better to reserve the phrase "departure from ideality" to departures from Raoult's law line rather than to departures from Henry's law line). Fig. 5 indicates that the deviation of the sulphur activity curve from the Henry's law line is negative;

Jan 1, 1951

(Members are, urged to send in for this column any notes of interest concerning themselves or their fellow-members.) Members and guests who registered at Institute headquarters during the period April 10 to May 10; I. N. Knapp, Ardmore, Pa. E. P. Mathewson, Anaconda, Mont. Herbert B. Cox, New York, N. Y. H. B. Barling, New York, N. Y. A. McLintock, Brooklyn, N. Y. M. M. Thompson, Morsemere, N. J. Heinrich Ries, Ithaca, N. Y. Howland Bancroft, Denver, Colo. R. M. Catlin, Franklin Furnace, N. J. John H. Adams, Birmingham, Ala. Percy E. Barbour, Candor, N. C. Henry D. Boddington, London, England. A. D. R. Galloway, Qruro, Bolivia. William J. Cox, Denver, Colo. M. K. Rodgers, Westgate, Cal. W. J. Morrison, Toronto, Canada. W. J. Richards has been elected President of the Reading. Coal & Iron Co., succeeding the late George F. Baer.

Jan 6, 1914

By T. Okubo

Gold is generally recovered from silver anode slime by electrolysis in the final step of the copper anode slime treatment. In the present investigation, rapid and direct hydrometallurgical separation and recovery of gold in the early step of the process is studied. Gold is recovered just after the elimination of copper and selenium from copper anode slime. The studied process consists of: (a) oxidizing roasting for selenium elimination, (b) sulfuric acid leaching of the calcine for copper removal, reduction of gold in the liquor by the use of proper reductant such as hydrogen peroxide (production of gold powder), (el nitric acid treatment of gold powder for further purification and (f) melting and casting of gold. Laboratory and miniplant testwork showed that the extraction ratio of gold by chlorine leaching was 99 % up and four nine gold ingot could be recovered without electrolyses.

Jan 1, 1984

G. F. COMSTOCK (author's reply to discussion *).-The discussion of this paper has been of such volume and interest as to constitute in itself a sufficient excuse for the paper, even though the paper itself may have been as much in error as some of its critics have maintained. Mr. Howard does not appear to realize some very practical facts that the opponents of his theory have advanced. Among these are: the coarsely crystalline fracture of the nucleus of a transverse fissure, so different from the smooth fatigue break around it; the occurrence of fissures in large numbers in certain heats or rollings of rails, while other heats or rollings do not develop them; and the much smaller proportion of transverse fissures found in rails rolled .from reheated blooms as compared with direct-rolled rails. These facts are not explained by Mr.

Jan 6, 1919

By G. W. P. Rengstorff, H. B. Goodwin

A method is described for purifying iron in batches of 150 Ib or more. Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur are removed from flakes of electrolytic iron by treatment in wet and then dry hydrogen. A special consumable-electrode arc furnace is used to remove hydrogen and to melt the flakes into ingots. A LTHOUGH iron and steel have been made and used for hundreds of years, there are still wide gaps in the knowledge of these metals. One reason for this is that the true properties of the base metal, iron, are not well known, simply because really pure iron has never been readily available for research purposes. Commercial iron, and even the "pure" irons which are readily available, are really complex alloys of iron with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, silicon, and other elements. With such materials, it has not been possible to prepare steels and other iron-base alloys in which all elements are present in exactly controlled amounts. It is an almost impossible task to determine the separate effects of each element or the intereffects of several elements unless alloys can be prepared containing only the desired elements. The ability to make controlled alloys of low impurity content is of far more than academic interest. It will assist in the study of such practical problems as the brittle failure of ship hulls or high pressure gas pipelines, determination of the factors which affect the deep-drawing properties of steels, the improvement of magnetic and electrical properties, the phenomenon of aging, and many others. In 1949, the American Iron and Steel Institute asked Battelle Memorial Institute to prepare high purity iron on a larger scale than had been attempted up to that time. The work was directed toward the preparation of iron as low as possible in carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulphur because these are the contaminating elements of major interest in many research investigations on iron-base alloys. The initial goal was to prepare iron with not more than a few thousandths of one percent of each of these impurities. The purpose was to set up a "bank" of high purity iron on which researchers could draw when a supply was needed and which could be replenished from time to time as the stock became depleted. Of several possible purification methods, heating in hydrogen was selected as the most promising for the removal of both carbon and oxygen from solid iron. Metallic impurities are not removed by hydrogen. Electrolytic iron was chosen as a starting material because it is the most readily available form of iron low in metallic impurities. Decarburization and desulphurization were obtained by annealing in wet hydrogen at relatively low temperatures. The optimum temperature, as found by previous investigators,' is about 1400°F. This treatment also removes nitrogen. Deoxidation is favored by dry hydrogen and higher temperature. There is evidence from previous work that an anneal at 2200°F in dry hydrogen will deoxidize the iron, reduce the nitrogen content, and reduce the sulphur content. These facts suggested the use of a two-stage process: treatment in wet hydrogen followed by treatment in dry hydrogen. To carry out the purification process in a reasonable time, it was necessary that the iron be in thin pieces. Flakes of electrolytic iron were used. Because most research requires that the iron be in massive form, it was nccessary to melt the purified iron to consolidate it into large pieces. For this work, it was decided to prepare ingots weighing at least 15 lb by using a cold hearth arc-melting process in which the iron was melted in an inert atmosphere of argon or helium. This method of melting was selected because the water-cooled copper crucible is not wet by the iron and does not contaminate it as a refractory crucible would. Because the crucible is also the ingot mold, contamination from mold materials was also eliminated. Contamination from electrodes was avoided by making them from purified electrolytic iron. The melting procedure finally developed was an adaptation of the Kellogg electric ingot process.' Two batches of purified iron weighing about 100 Ib each in ingot form were prepared with analyses as shown in Table I. The remainder of this paper describes the procedures in more detail. In general, the process con-

Jan 1, 1956

By D. L. McDanels, J. W. Weeton, R. W. Jech

An investigation was conducted to determine the stress-strain behavior and tensile properties of metallic composites and to relate them to the properties of the base materials. Tungsten fibers in a copper matrix were chosen as the model sys-tem to investigate these properties. Room-temp-atzcre tensile and dynamic -modulus tests were used To meet the demand for improved structural materials, considerable effort is being directed toward the creation of composite materials. One such material under investigation is the fiber-reinforced composite, in which a ductile, relatively weak matrix is reinforced with high-strength fibers. Some work has been done on the reinforcement of metallic matrices with metallic fibers1"5 as well as with ceramic-whisker reinforcement. Summaries of much of this work have been published by Mach-lin7 and Baske~.' Work done at the Lewis Research Center of NASA-" has involved the making and testing of composites composed of a fiber, tungsten, and a matrix, copper, which were insoluble in each other. An equation was presented that showed the relation between the ultimate tensile strength of the composites and the strengths and relative volume percents of the components. This relation was verified experimentally for composites containing fibers extending the full length of the specimen as well as for composites reinforced with short-length or discontinuous fibers. Since the publication of the preliminary results,9'10 additional data have been obtained. This paper presents these data as well as analyses of the stress-strain behavior and the mechanics of deformation of uni-axially oriented, fiber-reinforced metallic composites, in which both components are mutually insoluble. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Composites were made with high-purity copper as the matrix and 3-, 5-, and 7-mil-diam tungsten wire as the reinforcing fiber. Some specimens were made in which the reinforcing fiber extended completely through the full length of the composite test section. The fibers were placed in ceramic to determine these properties. The composites were reinforced with either continuous or discontinuos tungsten fibers. The tensile properties and stress-strain behavior of composites reinforced with either type of reinforcement were similar, and in both cases the full strength of the fiber was utilized. tubes to insure axial orientation and infiltrated with copper at 2200°F for 1 hr. Composites were also made with short-length (3/8 in. long) 5-mil-diam tungsten fibers as discontinuous reinforcement and infiltrated under the same conditions. The reinforcing fibers in both cases were longitudinally oriented in the direction parallel to the tensile axis. Room-temperature tensile tests were conducted on the composites, stress-strain curves were obtained, and ultimate tensile strength and elongation were measured. Dynamic modulus of elasticity, based upon the resonant frequency induced in the flexural mode of vibration, was also determined for the composites and the components. A more detailed discussion of the experimental procedure employed in this investigation may be found in Ref. 11. RESULTS Room-temperature tensile tests were conducted on 3-, 5-, and 7-mil-diam tungsten wires which had been annealed for 1 hr at 2200°F and show the tensile strength of the wires to be 331,000, 327,000, and 290,000 psi, respectively. Since all the composites were infiltrated under these conditions, the strengths were considered to represent the strength of the fibers in the composites throughout this study. The average tensile strength of the annealed copper used as the matrix in this investigation was 27,800 psi. Results of room-temperature tensile tests on composites reinforced with 3-, 5-, or 7-mil-diam tungsten fibers are plotted as functions of composition in Fig. 1. These data represent previously reported datag,l0 as well as data more recently obtained. The line shown on each curve represents a prediction of tensile strength as a function of composition; the calculation of this line was explained in Refs. 9 and 10. A similar plot is presented in Fig. l(d) for composites reinforced with short-length, discontinuous 5-mil-diam tungsten fibers. Again, both the previously reported and the recent data are presented, and the line shown is identical to that shown for

Jan 1, 1965

Jan 1, 1928

MONTANA LOCAL SECTION Executive Committee F. M. SMITH, Chairman J. L. BRUCE, Vice-Chairman . D. C. BARD, Secretary, Box 267, Butte, Mont. FREDERICK LAIST W. C. SIDERFIN The semi-annual meeting of the Montana Section was held at the Silver Bow Block, Butte, Mont., on Friday evening, Oct. 8, 1915. An informal, subscription dinner, at $1.50 a plate, was enjoyed inn' the early evening, by 62 members and guests. After dinner a technical session was held, and a paper entitled Preliminary Outline of Paper on Mines in the Boulder Batholith was presented by J. A. Grimes, who is joint author of the paper, with Paul Billingsley. The paper elicited a lively and interesting discussion, in which a score of members took part. After the reading of the paper the rest of the evening was spent socially. D. C. BARD, Secretary.

Jan 12, 1915

PERSONAL (Members are urged to send in for this column any notes of interest concerning themselves or their fellow-members.) Members and guests who registered at Institute headquarters during. the period May 10 to June 10, 1915: Robert M. Keeney, Somersville, Conn. C. A. Moffett, Birmingham, Ala. Emilio Mosonyi, San Salvador, C. A: A. W. G. Wilson, Ottawa, Canada. Junjiro Nagazumi, Fukuoka, Japan. G. H. Glover, Jr., Short Hills, N. J. Francis R. Pyne, Elizabeth, N. J. R. W. Brock, Vancouver, B. C. F. C. Alsdorf, Los Angeles, Cal. J. L. W. Birkinbine, Philadelphia, Pa. W. J. Loring, London, England. Roy H. Allen, Jamesburg, N. J. R. A. Bull, Granite City; 111. Francis Andrew Thomson received the degree of Master of Science from the Colorado School of Mines at the recent commencement exercises. The subject of his thesis was Stamp Milling and Cyaniding.

Jan 7, 1915

New York Meets first Wednesday after first Tuesday of each month. Chairman. PERCY E. BARBOUR, Vice-Chairman. A. D. BEERS, Secretary, 55 Wall St., New York, N. Y. C. A. BOHN,.Treasurer. JOHN V. N. DORR, LEWIS W. FRANCIS. Boston Meets first Monday of each winter month. W.. E. C. EUSTIS. Chairman. R. L. AGASSIZ. Vice-Chairman. E. E. BUGBEE, Secretary-Treasurer, Mass. Inst. of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. ALBERT SAUVEUR, H. L. SMYTH. Columbia Holds four sessions during year. Annual meeting n September or October. W. H. LINNEY, Chairman. OSCAR LACHMUND, Vice-Chairman. LYNDON K. ARMSTRONG, Secretary-Treasurer, P. O. Drawer 2154, Spokane, Wash. STANLY A. EASTON. S. SHEDD. Puget Sound Meets second Saturday of each month SIMON H. ASH, Chairman. I. F. LAUCKS, Vice-Chairman. CHARLES SIMENSTAD, Secretary-Treasurer, 425 Lyon Bldg., Seattle, Wash. GLENVILLE A. COLLINS, JOHN N. POTT

Jan 5, 1917

AT the Non-ferrous Metallurgy session on Wednes-day afternoon, R. M. Roosevelt, vice-president of the Eagle-Picher Lead Co., presided. The paper "Sug-gested Improvements for Smelting Copper in the Rever-beratory Furnace," by G. L. Oldright and F. W. Schroeder, was presented by. Mr. Oldright. It was brought out that lessening of dusting of the charge would increase the life of the arch at present operating temperatures, but will not allow much higher tempera-tures to be used unless dusting can be entirely elim-inated. The best opportunity for improving rever-beratory practice lies in the use of still higher tempera-tures but this requires the development of refractories superior to those now used. There was an interesting discussion of the facts brought out. The paper. on the "Formation and Decomposition of Zinc Ferrite," by

Jan 3, 1928

By PERCY E. BARBOUR

TWO YEARS after its organization, the Institute issued its first volume of TRANSACTIONS, covering activities that began in May, 1871, and continued through February, 1873. The preface of this first volume reads: The present volume contains the rules of the Institute, a list of members and associates, an abstract of the proceedings of the-first two years, and a number of papers selected from those proceedings. There is, therefore, nothing new in it. The papers have all been published, according to the custom of the Institute, in the Engineering and Mining Journal, and many of them have been copied into other periodicals. They are republished here, solely to enable members and associates to preserve them in convenient form. Various considerations have determined the selection of papers for this purpose. Some have been omitted at the request of the authors who, having modified the views expressed in them, naturally deprecated a republication of those views. Others have been omitted, in order not to devote too large a proportion of space to single topics, or single branches of mining or metal¬lurgy, in view of the fact that the membership of the Institute extends throughout the whole country, and represents numerous departments of these industries. Some, on the other hand, have been chosen, although not laying claim to special originality, because they contained information of importance, not easily accessible elsewhere, the presentation of which, in a form convenient for reference, was generally desired.

Jan 1, 1921

By B. F. Tillson

Mining may be defined as a general term for the working of valuable deposits of minerals, either organic or inorganic in origin, for their removal from the crust of the earth. Besides subsurface excavations, mining generically includes opencuts, clay pits and stone quarries, oil wells, sulphur wells, salt wells, placers, coal stripping, and the leaching of ore bodies. The origin of the word "mine" or "mining" is a matter of conjecture. A Celtic origin has been suggested since the Irish word mein, or the mwyn, meant ore, but it seems to have come from an olf French verb mineor, which meant to excavate, to make an underground passage as in the military appraoch to a fortification, sometimes called ?sapping.?

Jan 1, 1949

By G. F. Loughlin

Nearly 55 years have elapsed since the U. S. Geological Survey was organized. During this period the mineral industries have grown from infancy or early childhood to well developed maturity, and some mining industries appear to be declining. Decline in mining is even more conspicuous in certain districts, or even states, than in any mining industry as a whole, and discoveries or developments of important new districts have been very few in recent years. Our reserves of most metals and nonmetals are adequate for many years of normal production, subject to changes in rate of exploitation that may be caused by foreign competition and by changes in technology and market conditions; but the declining production of many districts and the scarcity of important new discoveries to compensate for them is cause for some apprehension. It is likely that future production will depend to a considerable extent on deep exploration and on the thorough examination of places in and adjoining existing districts where significant outcrops are lacking and only apparently insignificant geologic features offer encouraging clues—more so than on the discovery of entirely new districts. Even the possible discovery of new districts, which have escaped the intensive search by the nontechnical prospector, must be dependent on geologic information. There is therefore no need for argument as to the value of geology to the mining industry; and the need of continuing to advance the science. The U. S. Geological Survey's past contributions to mining geology, as expressed in its official reports and other publications, are recognized by Ransome in his historical review of mining geology in the Lindgren volume.' These contributions have helped to form the basis of modern mining geology, which has grown rapidly in the last 25 years. This growth has witnessed the organization and maintenance of geologic staffs by mining companies in several districts, and their detailed work, together with the fact that nearly all of the larger mining districts have

Jan 1, 1935

By N. V. Melnikov, L. N. Marchenko

The latest theoretical and experimental study of physical processes initiated by explosions in solid media have made it possible to obtain a deeper insight into the mechanism of the energy transfer to ambient rock from char es of explosives interspersed with various air gaps. As shown in (17, high explosive action causes excessive fragmentation of medium in the vicinity of the charge, while expansion of the process into the massif is negligible. A theoretical outline of a more rational application of explosion energy was given with a view of obtaining more uniform fragmentation of rock convenient for loading and transportation. The proposed idea proven by experimental study consisted of the possibility of explosion control based on redistribution of explosion energy. Practical realization of the above idea was proposed (1) involving charges with air gaps for rock fragmentation. Since the Rolla Symposium on Mining Research (USA, 1961) (2), borehole charges with air gaps have become common practice. This method of rock blasting is applied in open cast and underground mines working the hardest and viscous, hard, medium hard and soft rocks (ore, quartzites, granites, 1 imes tones, sandstones, coals, etc.) as well as at enterprises for extraction of building materials and raw chemical minerals of any strength. Application of charges with air gaps results in an increase of the degree and uniformity of fragmentation (up to 94 percent of the blasted rock mass consists of fragments not exceeding 400 mm), the average fragment size decreases by 1.5-2 times and the amount of lumps is reduced by 2-10 times (in some cases there are no lumps at all ). Besides, the amount of operation for filling boreholes with tamping material is reduced, the specific consumption of explosives

Jan 1, 1971

By A. C. Heath, E. H. Dix

The importance of aluminum-silicon alloys in thc light alloy field is now generally recognized. Where silicon was once considered detrimental to the properties of aluminum, useful alloys now contain as much as 13 per cent. Furthermore, silicon is present as an impurity in aluminum of even the purest grades. Iron is another important impurity in aluminum and likc silicon is found in small quantities in the purest aluminum available today. The manner of occurrence of iron and silicon in commercially pure aluminum and many of its alloys exerts a very pronounced influence upon their properties. The effect of large quantities of iron in aluminum-silicon alloys is so detrimental that it has been found necessary to limit the allowable maximum percentage to as low a figure as is consistent with quantity production and satisfactory physical properties. The intimate relation existing between iron and silicon in aluminurn and alurninum alloys makes necessary a more complete knowledge of this ternary system. This paper is divided into two principal parts, dealing respectively with aluminum-silicon solubility equilibria and the constitution of aluminum-iron-silicon alloys. Part I.—Aluminum-silicon Alloys The early work on this system was largely confined to determining the general form of thc diagram and in this respect the results are in good agreement. Briefly, alulninunl and silicon form a simple eutectifcrous series without compounds. Until recently the solid solubility of silicon in aluminum had not been accurately determined. Ipraenkell (1908) stated that aluminum will retain 0.5 per cent. silicon in solid solu-t'ion. Rosenhain, Archbutt and Hanson2 gave the maximum solubility as about 1.50 per cent. and added that "this solubility docs not appear

By W. E. Bearce

The recent concern for the recovery of even the finest fractions of coal preparation plant feeds has created needs for new equipment. Thermal dryers currently available have difficulty reducing the filter cake moisture on down to the desired point. This difficulty involves 1) the physical problem of handling this wet, sticky material and making each particle accessible to the hot gases, and 2) removing the extremely fine dried particles from the cooled gases. The dryer described in this paper handles the first of these problems, and eliminates the second by the substitution of steel balls for air as the heat transfer medium. As a general statement, the cost of preparing coal for market is inversely proportional to the size of the lumps or particles. In the not too distant past the finer sizes were discarded as being uneconomical to treat and this practice might be still continuing if it were not for the insistence of the public that this material be kept out of our streams. This being the only cost-free outlet, the disposal of fine refuse became a significant item of expense in every preparation plant. When this happened it was only reasonable to look to the recovery of the values in this material, not only to defray this expense, but to reduce the tonnage which had to be wasted. There seemed to be no device available suited to reducing the moisture in this material to what the market requires. All of the fine coal dryers commonly employed make use of air to bring the heat of combustion into contact with the coal particles. Any device employing air as a heat transfer medium, has the following two strikes against it in attempting to handle 28 mesh by 0 filter cake: 1) It is practically impossible to bring the hot air into intimate contact with the enormous number of fine particles stuck together in the cake. 2) Even if this can be effected, it is impossible to remove the dried coal from the air. A wet scrubber must be employed, the discharge of which must go back to the filter and dryer as a circulating load of the most objectionable sort, being the extreme fines. Various compromises have been used to cope with the problem of drying this relatively small tonnage of high moisture coal. Often some of the dried coal is mixed back with the feed to the dryer in an attempt to make the mixture more handleable and more available to contact with the hot air than the filter cake alone would be. This may help to some extent with the first problem but it does nothing about the second and a dryer operated in this way has to be oversized. Sometimes the filter cake is mixed with a coarser fraction for the same reason. Here again, while this may make a mixture (the particles of which are more readily brought into contact with the hot air), the problem of getting the fine coal out of the air remains and a larger percentage of the total coal to be dried is handled by the most expensive means. Mechanical dewatering has accounted for more and more of total coal drying lately and in many cases would satisfactorily handle the whole load, down to 28 mesh, if there were a means available for doing a good job on the —28 mesh by itself. The dryer which is the subject of this paper was designed expressly for doing this job — drying fine material by itself regardless of how wet it may be to start with, how fine it may be, or how gummy and sticky these properties in combination may make it. The essential features are depicted in Fig. 1. A rotating cylinder is supported on a frame in such a way that one end may be raised or lowered by hy-

Jan 1, 1968