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By G. E. Anderson

The Asientos-Tepezala district is in the north of the State of Aguasca-lientes, about 30 miles north of the city of Aguascalientes, the capital. The district is reached by a standard-gage railway on the west side through the junction, Rincon de Romos, which is on the main line of the National Railways of Mexico from El Paso to Aguscalientes. The terminal is Tepezala. On the east side a narrow gage connects Asientos with the junction, San Gil, on the main line, Asientos to San Luis Potosi. Tepezala on the west side of the Asientos hills is about 2 miles from Asientos on the east side. The area between the two mining centers is separated by a low subdued divide which forms the central part of the hills. The district is in a group of isolated hills surrounded by characteristic bolsón plains. The hills rise above the surrounding plains about 6500 to 10,000 ft.; the highest peak is Alta Mira. The two mining districts lie somewhat upon the flanks of the hills at about the same elevation, 7200 ft. The district is an old one and has been known since early in the 17th Century when the mines were worked by the Franciscan Monks. Their mining operations, which were limited to the oxidized ore above the water level, consisted chiefly in extracting silver from the Santa Francisca vein. To judge from the old workings and the remains of surface plant, the operations were on a large scale. By modern mining operations since about 1900, the various mines of the district have been one of the principal sourees of ore for the smelter located at Aguascalientes. Topography The topographic features of the Asientos hills are largely controlled by the character of the underlying rocks. During the Tertiary period, the entire group of hills was probably covered by extrusive volcanic material in the form of cones and lava flows. The central part of these have since been carried away by erosion, so that remnants have been left along the borders of the hills. These remnants form rather conspicuous peaks,

Jan 1, 1927

NORTH AMERICA ALASKA Anchorage.-Strandberg, H. Tuck, R. Coal Creek.-Moore, E. G. Spencer, W. W. College.-Hance, J. H. Henricksen, R. Henton, H. M. Comet.-Albertson, F. E. Cordova.-O'Neill, W. A. Douglas.-Cahill, W. E. Fairbanks.-Crawford, J. D. Earling, R., B. Fowler. D. A.

Jan 1, 1937

By W. R. Bendy

GRINDING is a large and costly part of Portland cement manufacture. Prior to clinkering in the rotary kiln, raw materials are ground to a fineness of 80 to 90 pct passing 200 mesh. Then, after burning and cooling, the resulting clinker is ground to about 92 pct passing 325 mesh. In the cement industry the most favored method of grinding has always been by impact and attrition of a ball charge in a rotating mill. Other types of mills, in which materials are ground between die rings and rollers, or between die rings and large balls, are sometimes used for single-stage grinding and often for preliminary grinding followed by grinding in ball-type mills. Their efficiency is usually high, but maintenance and repair costs are high also, and the ball-type mill continues to be the most widely used. Together with 4 pct gypsum to retard setting time, the kiln run clinker—consisting of hard, semi-fused lumps that may have been crushed to — 1/2 in.—is ground to a Blaine surface area of 3000 sq cm per gram and about 92 pct passing 325 mesh. Approximately 32 kw-hr per ton, or 6 kw-hr per 376-1b barrel, are consumed in the grinding mills alone, not counting auxiliaries. Open Circuit Clinker Grinding: Many early clinker grinding plants employed two-stage, open circuit grinding. Comparatively short mills of large diameter, loaded with balls 4 in. and smaller, first reduced the clinker to 95 pct passing 14 mesh. Tube mills of smaller diameter and greater length, loaded with balls 11/4 in. and smaller, carried out the fine grinding operation. An early development was to assemble two or more stages of grinding in a single mill having two, three, or four compartments separated by division heads. There were difficulties in balancing the compartments, but compartment mills were popular in the 1920's because the layout was simple and there were no elevators and conveyors. Oversize Particles: Open circuit mills, whether separate ball and tube mills or compartment mills, always encountered the problem of tramp oversize in the product. A small percentage of clinker survived passage through the first grinding stage as particles—perhaps 1/16 in. diam—that were too large for the smaller balls in the following stages to reduce to —200 mesh. When the feed rate was lowered to reduce tramp oversize, there were serious losses in grinding efficiency. Many ingenious designs were perfected to incorporate perforated screen plates or wire mesh screens in the ball mills or in the first compartments of compartment mills. Their purpose was to prevent mate: rial passing out of the first stage until it was small

Jan 1, 1958

By E. A. Holbrook

Research, primarily, is finding out the truth. Research applied to enigeering opens the door to new principies and processes, the application of which benefits mankind in a material way. The engineer believes that investigation instituted with the primary view of making the results directly applicable to the industries is the highest type of research. Coal is essentially the basis of modern industrial civilization; therefore, any considerable research pertaining to coal must link itself to the industry by practical application of the results of the research. In other words, all investigational work connected in any way with coal leads to conclusions that permit a better understanding of the origin, nature of occurrence, composition, better and safer mining, more careful preparation, or greater efficiency in utilization of coal. Modern engineering research has been fostered essentially by universities and in the laboratories of institutions of learning. Coal problems that lend themselves to solution in the laboratories have been first attacked and are perhaps the farthest toward solution. For example, a great amount of research work has been carried out with the various phases of chemistry connected with coal. On the other hand, the equally important problems connected with methods of mining have received but little attention, primarily because their solution involves the continued use of a great and expensive laboratory, which is none other than the mine itself. As many of the problems already solved have had chemistry as their background, so many of the problems unsolved have physics as their background; there are also unsolved problems that deal in coal economics. Even psychology must be called upon in future coal-mining research as a basis for solving those great problems that deal with human relationships. 'In general, considerable advance has been made in coal research dealing with chemistry, not so much progress has been made with problems having physics and engineering as a background, while there is a tremendous range of untouched problems that deal essentially with business and psychology. Research in coal mining is not a new development. In the chronicles of the northern coal trade as published in the Transactions of the North

Jan 1, 1920

This is a most interesting paper and some data in it are corroborated by work I did at Watertown Arsenal some time ago with iron powder. I would like to ask Dr. Wulff to say just a little more about the compressive and tensile stresses on the surface of compacts. JOHN WULFF (author's reply).-Our work has not yet been completed; although enough data have been obtained with cylindrical compacts of iron to permit some conclusions. Briefly, in a compact 3/4 in. high and 1/2 in. in diameter pressed at 48 tons per sq. in., the residual stresses on the surface measured by X-ray diffraction techniques are as follows: The radial stresses on top center and bottom of compacts are practically zero; the longitudinal residual stresses on the side walls are near the top quarter of the compact about seven tenths that of the yield point of mild steel in tension; at the center surface of the compact they are in compression and in magnitude about 0.3 that of mild steel in tension; near the bottom, they are practically zero. F. V. LENEL.?- I was particularly interested in the work that Messrs. Wulff and Seelig reported on the influence of lubrication on the density of parts. In connection with the work of the American Society for Testing Materials on determining the green density of a compact, we ran into considerable difficulty in getting reproducible results of green density determinations. It was much easier to get a reproducible green density when the lubricant was mixed with the powder than when the lubricant was applied to the die walls; particularly when the die was not perfect-i.e., if it was somewhat rough or out of round. In this case, it was almost impossible to get reproducible green densities when the die walls were lubricated, while it was not too difficult to get reproducible

Jan 1, 1946

By J. C. Febles

HISTORY. THE use of iron for the precipitation of copper was known at least as early as the fifteenth century. Both Paracelsus and Basil Valentine refer to it in their writings, as early as 1500 A. D. It was used in Peru, for this purpose prior to 1637, and at Rio Tinto, Spain, as early as the sixteenth century. The statement has been made repeatedly that in the early history of the mining industry at Butte, the practicability of this method of recovering copper from solution was overlooked, and that enormous quantities of copper-bearing water were allowed to go to waste, the copper in which might easily have been recovered at small cost; and that this oversight on the part of the mine operators was due to ignorance of this method of recovering copper. As a matter of fact, very little copper-bearing mineral was encountered in the mines of Butte until a depth of 400 or 500 ft. bad been reached, and in many cases much greater depths were necessary to reach the copper-bearing zone. The water encountered in the upper levels (although in most cases quite highly mineralized) contained little or no copper, and it was only after considerable areas of copper-bearing ore had been uncovered and developed that copper sulphate began to. appear in the mine water in any considerable quantity. In fact, the first water that was observed to contain copper carried it in such small amounts as to be of little or no importance. It was only after years of underground work had opened extensive areas of stopes, drifts, and other underground workings, these being subsequently filled with waste, nearly all of which contained small copper values, which became oxidized by exposure to the air and were acted upon by the slowly percolating mineral water, that the recovery of copper from mine water became commercially important.

Jan 7, 1913

By L. E. Mannion

Sodium carbonate (soda ash) is one of two principal commercial alkalis. Its principal competitor is sodium hydroxide. The use of sodium carbonate is recorded in ancient Egypt, where naturally occurring brines and solid salts provided impure soda for early glassmaking. Until the 19th century, soda ash (as well as potash) was recovered mainly by leaching wood or other plant ashes. In 18th-century Europe, for example, leaching seaweed ash with hot water produced a brown laundry lye. One of the better grades of this material was a Spanish product, barilla, which analyzed 24 to 30% Na2CO3 (Hou, 1942). The modern chemical industry was born in 1691 with the LeBlanc process for making sodium carbonate from salt, sulfuric acid, and lime. English industry used this process extensively in the 17th and 18th centuries. The next major advance was in 1863, when Ernst Solvay devised the ammonia-soda, or Solvay process. The first of many Solvay plants was built in 1874. These supplanted the LeBlanc method and dominated worldwide soda ash production until 1974, when mined sodium carbonate became predominant. Although considerably less important until recently, natural sodium carbonate deposits historically have supported small soda ash operations throughout the world. Shortages during World War II stimulated production of "natural" soda ash from such deposits, particularly at Searles Lake, CA and Lake Magadi, Kenya. More spectacularly, increased production from the vast trona deposits in Wyoming has virtually supplanted the Solvay process in the US. Principal producers of natural soda ash as well as the character of the source deposits are listed in Table 1. [ ]

Jan 1, 1983

R. L. Fleischer (Department of Metallurgy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)— The authors have presented valuable observations of oehavior of aluminum at intermediate and high temperatures. I should like to consider their interpretation of the appearance of cross slip plane traces in sample B-3 as partly due to "bending of the crystal due to grip constraint." Because bending moments might be set

Jan 1, 1960

By J. S. Diller

In 1827, chromite was discovered near Baltimore by Isaac. Tyson, Jr., who initiated the mining of chrome ore and later (1845) the manufacture of chromium compounds in this country. From 1828 to about 1560 the United States, supplanting Russia, supplied chromite for most of the world. Chrome deposits were found also in California, and the Tyson Company shipped ore to Philadelphia by way of Cape Horn. In 1848, J. Lawrence Smith, an American in the employ of the Porte, discovered large bodies of chromite in Asia Minor. They were developed in 1865 and became the chief source of the world's supply for a number of gears. The discovery of the large high-grade bodies in New Caledonia., and later in Rhodesia, with other foreign sources, gives at present an abundant supply for all demands. For a number of years before the great war. the United States produced only a few hundred tons of chromite annually, for local use, but during the war the demand for domestic ore resulted in a production of more than 82,000 long tons of crude ore in 1918, and it was demonstrated that the United States has reserve deposits equal to a war demand of several years' duration. Now that the war is over, the country is con-serving its domestic supplies by employing higher-grade but cheaper ore from foreign countries.

Jan 9, 1919

By M. A. Mahtab, J. D. Dixon

The results of a parametric study of the influence of natural features (stress field, rock strength, and strength and orientation of fractures) as well as the influence of induced features (undercut span, boundary slot, and other boundary-weakening measures) on the cavability of an undercut block of ore in mining by the block- caving method are presented. The two-dimensional finite-element analysis technique was used for this study. A coarse "mesh," along with linear homogeneous assumptions for rock properties, was used to model the problem of initiation of caving in a block of ore. Interpretation of the test results suggests that weakening the "abutments" of the block as well as certain orientations of natural fractures exercise significant influence on cavability. These findings hold promise for immediate application to known situations in block-caving mines.

Jan 1, 1977

By Alfred Weiss

Daniel C. Jackling's innovative concept for handling low grade ores ushered in a new philosophy of open pit mining. As one of the greatest minemakers of all times he revolutionized major segments of the industry and helped strengthen US defense efforts during World Wars I and II by making possible the tremendous copper supplies from US mines. Many great mining men have since followed in his footsteps with their discoveries of new orebodies or development of new mines. Their brilliance in leadership can also be traced to the coupling of a new idea to the physical nature of the materials in the earth's crust or to the extractive stages of minerals recovery. The minerals industry is now in another era of change and must again devise techniques to meet the challenge. The task is not only to create new exploration techniques and develop new mining methods, but, I believe, to optimally apply new concepts and tools in daily decision-making.

Jan 11, 1978

By H. R. Peterson, G. J. Lipovetz, W. F. McDermott

One of the major improvements in ore grinding economics in North America has been the introduction of autogenous grinding. Pickands Mather & Co. has been active in the development of autogenous grinding since 1957. This early work led to the application of autogenous grinding to the Wabush mines ore in 1965, with the installation of six 24 ft diam by 8 ft long, 1750-hp mills. Development work recently completed in 1971 on another ore has led to the decision to install five 36 x 15-ft, 12,000-hp mills when this project goes ahead. Between these two decisions lies a tremendous amount of research, development and application of autogenous grinding to a variety of ores. The Pickands Mather Metallurgical and Research Laboratory in Hibbing, Minn., has tested ores from 9 different deposits in its pi- lot plant facility. Some of these deposits have as much difference within their own ore types as there is between the various deposits. Therefore, it is safe to say that over twenty different ore types have been tested and flowsheets developed for commercial applications. Of the nine projects, three are in operation. These are Wabush mines in Labrador, Canada,' Savage River mines in Tasmania,' and The Griffith mine in Red Lake, Ont., Canada.'

Jan 11, 1972

By J. D. Miller Discussion by N. P. Finkelstein, M. C. Fuerstenau

The point designating 10 -4 nole/per liter sulfonate addition in Fig. 1 has been presented incorrectly. This figure, with the corrected scale, is shown at right. N. P. Finkelstein (National Institute for Metallurgy, Johannesburg, South Africa) - The qualitative conclusion the authors of this paper have reached in evaluating the influence of hydrocarbon chain length on collector effectiveness agrees with conclusions in several published reports. However, in two other

Jan 1, 1969

By Robert B. Fulton

Staurolite, an iron aluminum silicate mineral, is used industrially as a high value-in-use sand-blasting agent, as a premium grade foundry sand, and as the source of aluminum in portland cement manufacture in areas where the aluminum constituent is not economically available from shale or argillaceous limestone. It is produced by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. as a coproduct in titanium mineral production in Florida where it was first recovered on a commercial scale in June 1952 from the Pleistocene sand deposit known as Trail Ridge. In the Trail Ridge deposit it comprises about one-fifth of the heavy minerals, the principal other heavy mineral constituents being ilmenite, leucoxene, rutile, zircon, kyanite, sillimanite, and tourmaline. Staurolite and the other silicate nonconductive heavy minerals are separated from the conductive titanium minerals on high-tension separators. The silicates are then separated from one another magnetically, the staurolite being relatively magnetic. In the total processing, 200 tons of raw sand yield 7 tons of heavy mineral concentrate from which about one ton of staurolite is recovered. This process yields staurolite concentrates of the characteristics given in Table 1. These concentrates are sold as three products with the size distribution of subrounded particles shown in Table 2. All three grades are used in sand-blasting for cleaning metal, for paint removal, and for cleaning buildings. Staurolite compares favorably with lower unit cost abrasives, such as boiler slags and mineral aggregates, in applications where the abrasive is used only one time and is not recovered. Because it is hard, fine, clean, and dense it can reduce blasting time, with less material reportedly being required [ ]

Jan 1, 1983

By V. J. Decarlo, J. J. Gilman

POLISHING pure zinc differs somewhat from polishing less reactive metals. The problem is not that of finding a suitable reagent, but rather of producing the polish in such a way that the surface remains polished after it is removed from the polishing bath. In other words., the anodic film that is vital to the polishing mechanism' must be tightly adherent and nonporous. It is usually desirable that it be thin. Polishing solutions consist of proper proportions of an acid and a strong oxidizing agent. In electro-polishing, the external circuit acts as the oxidizing agent. The proportions are critical because the essential surface film must be maintained at approximately constant thickness during the polishing process. In the case of zinc, chiefly two oxidizing agents, chromic and nitric acids, have been used. The simplest polishing reagent is concentrated nitric acid. However, it has certain disadvantages. It tends to pit: an excessive amount of heat is evolved during polishing; and the oxide film that it produces is not very stable, so that the polished sur-

Jan 1, 1957

By Ali M. Heidarieh Zadeh, Raghu N. Singh

The paper presents a stability investigation of shaft intersections and pit bottom roadways in the vicinity of upcast and downcast shafts at a colliery in the U.K. Aschemeof instrumentation was aimed at monitoring the strata displacement surrounding the pit bottom roadways and shaft intersections with a view to ascertaining the origin of the strata movement and effectiveness of the control measures. The bore- hole instrumentation results together with a theoretical analysis suggested that the cause of instability could be attributed to the drivage of a roadway within the shaft pillar. A semi-empirical technique was used to calculate the amount of support resistance required to reinforce the pillar to take additional abutment load. A rock bolting system was designed to provide a required increase in thrust capacity of the roadway support. The results indicated that roadway closure was effectively controlled after installation of bolts indicating efficacy of the control measures adopted.

Jan 1, 1982

By M. Sheffield

This paper presents a technique lor predicting the flow of oil, gas and water through a petroleum reservoir. Gravitational, viscous arid capillary lorces are considered, and all fluids are considered to be slightly compressible. Some theoretical work concerning the fluid flow in one-, two- and three-space dimensions is given along with example performance predictions in one- and two-space dimensions. INTRODUCTION Since the introduction of high speed computing equipment, one of the goals of reservoir engineering research has been to develop more accurate methods of describing fluid movement through underground reservoirs. Various mathematical methods have been developed or used by reservoir engineers to predict reservoir performance, 193-5,7,8 The work reported in this paper extends previously published work on three-phase fluid flow (1) by including a rigorous treatment of capillary forces and (2) by showing certain theoretical mathematical results proving that these equations can be approximated by certain numerical techniques and that a unique solution exists. DISCUSSION The method of predicting three-phase compressible fluid flow. in a reservoir can be summarized briefly by the following steps. 1. The reservoir, or a section of a reservoir, is characterized by a series of mesh points with varying rock and fluid properties simulated at each mesh point. 2. Three partial differential equations are written to describe the movement at any point in the reservoir of each of the three compressible fluids. All forces influencing movement are considered in the equations. 3. At each mesh point, the partial differential equations are replaced by a system of analogous difference equations. 4. A numerical technique is used to solve the resulting system of difference equations. Capillary forces have been included in two-phase flow calculations.1,4,8 The literature, however, does not contain examples of prediction techniques for three-phase flow that include capillary forces. Where capillary forces are considered, each of the three partial differential equations previously discussed has a different dependent variable, namely pressure in one of the three fluid phases. Therefore, three difference equations must be solved at each point in the reservoir. Where large systems of equations must be solved simultaneously, an engineer might question whether a unique solution to this system of equations actually exists and, if so, what numerical techniques may be used to obtain a good approximation to the solution. It is shown in the Appendix that a unique solution to the three-phase flow problem, as formulated, always exists. It is also shown that several methods may be used to obtain a good approximation to the solution. The partial differential equations and differenceequations used are shown in the Appendix. Matrix notation has been used in developing the mathematical results. Two sample problems were solved on a CDC 1604. They illustrate the type of problems that can be solved using a three-phase prediction technique. SAMPLE ONE-DIMENSIONAL RESERVOIR PERFORMANCE PREDICTION A hypothetical reservoir was studied to provide an example of a one-dimensional problem that can be solved. Of the several techniques available, the direct method of solution as shown in the Appendix was used. The reservoir section studied was a truncated, wedge-shaped section, 2,400 ft long, with a 6' dip. (A schematic is shown in Fig. 1.) This section was represented by 49 mesh points, uniformly spaced at 50-ft intervals. The upper end of the wedge was 2 ft wide, and the lower end was 6 ft wide. The section

Jan 1, 1970

By L. Seigle, R. Resnick

An inert-marker movement experiment indicates that the ratio of the intrinsic diffusion coefficients DC:DTa = 80:l in TaC at 2500°C. Measurements of the diffmion coefficient of carbon in nonstoichiometric TaC at temperatures from 1700° to 2700°C reveal that Dc increases with decreasing carbon content, but much less than expected from the probable change in vacancy concentration with carbon content. A diffusion process involving two simultaneously operating mechanisms is postulated, and shown to be theoretically feasible. The average value of the carbon diffusion coefficient is given by DC = 0.18 exp[(-85,000 ± 3000)/RT] sq cm per sec over the composition range 46 to 49.5 at. pct C. BECAUSE of their high melting points and hardness, the carbides of the IV, V, and VI group transition metals, along with those of uranium, have attracted considerable interest for applications at high temperatures. In these applications the reactivity of the materials is important, and, since rates of diffusion within the compounds influence reactivity, a knowledge of diffusion kinetics and mechanisms is desirable. While many investigations of the mechanical and electrical properties of these compounds have been made, only two fundamental investigations of diffusion in the carbides are known. Chubb, Getz, and Townleyl measured the diffusivity of carbon and uranium in UC, and Gel'd and Liubimov2 measured the diffusivity of carbon and niobium in NbC. This paper describes an investigation of the diffusion of carbon in tantalum monocarbide and, in particular, the influence of carbon deficiency on this process. Tantalum carbide melts at approximately 3800°C, which makes it one of the highest melting materials known. The compound exists over a rather wide range of carbon Content.3-7 At the peritectic temperature, 3240°C, the phase extends from about 36 to 50 at. pct C. Although the compound can exist with a substantial carbon deficiency, the high carbon phase boundary remains near the stoichiometric composition over the entire temperature range; i.e., no carbon excess is observed. The structure of TaC is the NaCl type wherein carbon atoms normally occupy the octahedral sites in a somewhat expanded fcc lattice of tantalum. Decrease of the lattice parameter with decreasing carbon suggests that the removal of carbon introduces octahedral vacancies into the lattice. I) EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS AND RESULTS Inert-Marker Experiments. In a compound such as TaC the interstitial element would be expected to diffuse more rapidly than the metal. This was confirmed by an inert-marker experiment, following Srnigelskas and irkeendall.8 Ideally, the markers should be placed at the interface between a slab of low-carbon TaC and graphite, and their movement during subsequent inter-diffusion measured. Unfortunately, no solid could be found which is unreactive in contact with carbon at the high temperatures employed in these experiments. In order to circumvent this problem, a specimen was designed in which the markers consisted of several small canals running just below the surface of a tantalum slab. This specimen was prepared by machining grooves on the surface of the tantalum slab and then diffusion-bonding a thin plate of tantalum to the slab over the grooves. The surface of the plate was then ground down until the distance between the canals and surface was as small as possible (about 0.01 cm). Thus, the canals would lie entirely within the TaC phase after a short period of diffusion. The diffusion anneal consisted of immersing the metal sample in high-purity graphite powder and heating for approximately 10 hr at 2500°C under vacuum. At this temperature, the vapor pressure is sufficiently high and the transfer of carbon from graphite sufficiently rapid to allow the surface of the diffusion sample to attain the stoichiometric carbon concentration very quickly. Conclusions regarding the relative diffusion rates of carbon and tantalum in the compound layers (TaC and Ta2C) can be drawn from the location of the canals after the diffusion anneals. If the growth of the layers is governed mainly by the diffusion of carbon, as expected, the canals should remain close to the sample surface. If the diffusion of tantalum contributes appreciably to formation of the compound layers, the distance from the markers (canals) to the surface should increase. Fig. 1 shows, diagrammatically, the appearance of the specimens after diffusion, and Table I presents the depth below the surface at which the

Jan 1, 1967

By R. J. Wagner, F. F. Craig, H. G. Riley, J. D. Griffith

Peripheral water injection has been underway in the Sholem Alechem Fault Block "A" Unit, Stephens County, Okla., since 1955. In the engineering planning of the flood, it was recognized that maintenance of pressure in the large, dry gas caps was vitally necessary to prevent the loss of an estimated 27 million bbl of oil through saturation of the gas caps by the oil banks moving updip on the peripheral flood pattern. The development of an abundant, low-cost water supply and the rising cost of makeup-gas purchases indicated that gas-cap control by water injection was desirable from an economic standpoint, provided an eflective water barrier could be placed without premature water breakthrough into downdip oil producers. A laboratory model scaled to the existing reservoir conditions was comtructed to evaluate the feasibility of gas-cap water injection. Model studies indicated that (I) water injected at the edge of the gar-oil contact would form a continuous barrier between the oil and gas zones, and (2) water would advance uniformly downdip without segregation due to gravity effects provided a specified, minimum water-injection rate was maintained. The model test results also indicated that it was not necessary to fill the gas cap completely with water. Water injection at the edge of one of the gas caps was initiated in March, 1958, to field test gas-cap water injection. Water breakthrough occurred at a downstruc-ture producing well in April, 1959, after approximately 2.5 million bbl of water had been injected into the gas cap. This was the volume calculated to be required to form the barrier between the oil zone and gas cap. This performance indicates that prevention of oil encroachment into dry gas caps in a peripheral water flood by water injection at the gas-oil contact appears practical and that the model studies provided a valid prediction of field performance. INTRODUCTION The Sholem Alechem Fault Block "A" Sims Sand Unit was one of the fist major waterflood projects in Oklahoma to utilize a peripheral injection pattern. Design of control measures to minimize oil encroachment into the large crestal gas caps was one of the greatest single problems during engineering planning of this flood. Engineering studies indicated that saturation of the gas caps with oil displaced by the peripheral water flood could result in a loss of about 27 million bbl of oil, or over one-half the estimated waterflood recovery. This estimate was based on a residual oil saturation after water flooding of 35 per cent pore volume, compared to the negligible oil saturation initially in the gas caps. The Sholem Alechem Springer field, located in Stephens County, Okla., is an elongated anticline with structural dips varying from 400 to 1,000 ft/mile. The structure contains numerous faults, some of which are sealing. The portion of the field considered in this paper is Fault Block "A", which is the largest of the five major fault segments in the field. A map of the unit is shown on Fig. 1. The unit is bounded on the east and west by major sealing faults, on the north by a water-oil contact and to the south by a deterioration of sand development. Two domes, each having gas caps, exist in the unit and are separated by a north-south fault as shown in Fig. 1. The sands being flooded are the Sims sand members of the Springer series of early Pennsylvanian age. The Sims sands average over 100 ft in thickness in Fault Block "A" and have a porosity of approximately 19 per cent. Core permeabilities average 160 md, with interstitial water saturation of about 23 per cent pore volume. Three different zones can be correlated over most of the area. However, they are commingled in most of the producing wells. The two upper zones, designated as First and Second Sims, are the most important. Both the First and Second Sims have gas caps in the east dome, while only the First Sims has a gas cap in the west dome. These gas caps, whose limits are also shown on Fig. 1, initially occupied nearly 11 per cent of the total reservoir volume. The major concern of this paper is the control of the two gas caps in the First Sims sand. Fig. 2 is a cross section, to scale, across the east dome of this formation. Notable features are the relatively shallow dip, the deterioration of the First Sims sand on the south side of the gas cap and the water-oil contact on the northern edge. The formation dip at the gas-oil contact in this cross section is approximately 5".

By Thomas C. Wilder

The activities of both components and the partial and integral molar thermodynamic properties of mixing for the liquid Al-Ge system at 1200°K and for the gertnanium-rich Al-Ge liquidus have been determined from data for eighteen alloys of compositions in the range 0.0593 < 0.880 using the reuersible gal-vanic. cell in the temperature interval 9320 to 1258°K. The liqui-dus compositions above 93 2 °K loere also ve determined by observing the discontinuities in the C us T plots for the high-melting alloys. This system shows moderate negative deviation from ideality throughout, the values for y° being 0.212 and 0.189 for aluminum and germanium, respectively, at 1200°K. Pavtial molar Properties of aluminum on the germanium-rich solidus and at infinite dilution in Ge(s) oboue 932°K were estimated from the foregozng measurements and the equlibrium data of previous investzgators. RECENT compilations of data1" have shown an increasing demand for knowledge of the thermodynamic properties of mixing of metallic alloy systems. In the case of binary-liquid systems where one of the components is a semiconductor this information is useful because, primarily, properties of the second (dopant) component on the liquidus, solidus, and at infinite dilution may be determined more accurately than from calculations based on the phase diagram. In this investigation a reversible galvanic cell was used to determine the chemical potential of aluminum in the two-phase region, liquid + [Ge], on the germanium-rich side of the A1-Ge system in the temperature range 932" to 1193°K. In addition, similar measurements for homogeneous liquid A1-Ge alloys for the entire composition range were obtained for the temperature interval 932" to 1258°K. The cell used was: The experimental technique and the treatment of the data were essentially the same as described earlier394 and are elaborated upon only briefly here. Each cell consisted of a liquid aluminum anode and three A1-Ge alloy cathodes of different composition which were held in Morganite alumina crucibles. The alloys were made up from aluminum and germanium weighed to the nearest 0.1 mg to a total weight of 5 to 10 g. Aluminum was a gift of Aluminum Co. of America and had a purity of 99.995+ pct. Germanium of transistor grade was a gift of Bell Telephone Laboratories. The four electrodes were contained in a larger alumina crucible which also held the prepurified fused chloride electrolyte. Contact to the electrodes was made by tantalum wire leads sheathed in alumina. The tantalum leads were centered in the electrodes by suitable positioning of an alumina radiation shield which fitted on the top of the - alulnina crucible. Two chrome l-alumel thermocouples, sheathed in quartz wells, completed the internal cell arrangement. The entire assembly was enclosed in an alumina tube, fitted with a water-cooled copper head so the system could be evacuated and then flushed with purified argon. *

Jan 1, 1967