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By C. O. Brawner

The advent of larger drilling, excavation, and milling equipment is resulting in a tremendous increase in the scale and annual tonnage of open pit mining. At the present time, open pits up to 3000 ft. deep, and tailings dams and waste dumps up to 600 ft. high are being planned. One of the major problems that projects of this magnitude create is stability. Stability at open pit mining developments must be assessed for tailings dams, waste dumps, and open pit slopes in overburden soil and in rock. Soil mechanics principles are used to assess the stability for the first three. This science was developed by Dr. Karl Terzaghi in the 1920’s, and since that time the theories and principles have been tested and evaluated. This experience has resulted in the development of sound theoretical concepts, workable sampling and testing techniques, and accurate methods of analysis. Typical problems that can be analyzed include: -bearing capacity of soil under dams and waste dumps. - amount of seepage under and through dams. - stability of slopes and determination of safe slope angles for tailings dams, waste dumps, and open pits. - influence of earthquakes on stability. - influence and cost of different excavation and construction techniques. To assist in comparing engineering experience, an international soil classification system has been developed and used for several decades. In addition, many excellent text books are available outlining soil mechanics principles and techniques. A high degree of technology exists in soil mechanics. This, the mining engineer cannot afford to ignore. If soil mechanics principles had been applied, many major failures involving tailings, tailings dams, or waste dumps, such as those at Aberfan, Mufulira, Luanshya, and El Cobre would not have occurred. Tailings dams are planned in Canada that will be up to 600 ft. high. Construction procedures used in the past have paid little attention to the compaction of the shell material or to the influence of earthquakes on stability. This neglect has led to failures. While failures in low dams may not be too serious, for high dams such failures could have catastrophic results. Another major area of concern is the stability of rock slopes. From the standpoint of long

Jan 1, 1971

By T. F. Witherbee

Success in this operation is much promoted by adhering to a definite plan. Random work is of little account. In general, anything done that will enable the blast to pass through the obstruction, providing the melted products can be got away from the tuyeres, is all that is necessary. Hence the utility of high explosives in breaking up the chilled mass in the hearth. (This, by the way, should be done with the wind on, so as to prevent the filling of the tuyeres with the usual rush of cinder following the explosion.) If from any cause it is not expedient to use explosives, the simple but very effective instrument known as the kerosene or hydro-carbon blow-pipe can be depended upon to perforate the contents of a blastfurnace hearth to any extent required. It consists, as used in the Champlain district (first by Mr. Charles H. Foote), of several pieces of gas-pipe, liberally supplied with elbows (five in number) so as to be flexible; one end being connected to a tuyere-stock and the other brought to bear upon the place to be melted out. A 1/4-inch pipe leads from the last length, or blow-pipe proper, to a reservoir of kerosene or crude oil, set high enough to overcome the blast-pressure, This 1/4-inch pipe should have a valve conveniently located to regulate the flow of oil, and also another next to the reservoir. With a good hot blast and a surprisingly small quantity of oil, this apparatus will melt, burn or mechanically dislodge anything around a blast-furnace hearth excepting firebrick and water-cooled castings or plates. It may be helped by vigorous prodding with a suitable steel bar, to detach the fused but sometimes sticky material. A very good way to operate on a chilled hearth with it, is to open up a hole from a cinder- or iron-notch to the nose of the most convenient tuyere and then make a blow-pipe of the tuyere by turning

Jan 1, 1885

By R. V. Wheeler

A matter of much concern at present to the coal-mining industry of Great Britain is the effect of the working of the Coal Mines Act, 1930. This Act, which received the Royal Assent on Aug. 1, 1930, contains five parts: (1) production, supply and sale of coal; (11) the reorganization of the coal-mining industry; (111) hours of work; (IV) the Coal Mines National Industrial Board; (V) general. The first three parts are of major interest and discussion can be confined to them. Part I.—Production, Supply and Sale of Coal Under Part I of the Coal Mines Act, 1930, provision is made for central and district schemes to regulate the production, supply and sale of coal by the fixation of standard tonnage, quota and minimum prices. By Nov. 1, 1930, all the district schemes came into force with the exception of that for Scotland, where the majority of the coal-owners did not see their way to accept the amendments to their draft scheme demanded by the Mines Department. A compulsory scheme for Scotland was thereupon prepared by the Mines Department and put into force on Nov. 24, 1930. It is administered by the coal-owners of the district. The essence of the schemes is the allocation of tonnage for each district by a Central Council, and the allocation of quota for each pit in a district by an Executive Board for that district. Up to Dec. 31, 1930, the various bodies of coal-owners engaged in administering the schemes were employed in work preliminary to their full operation. Standard tonnages had to be determined and coals had to be classified. In consequence, it was not found possible to put the regulation of output into force until Jan. 1, 1931. The determination of minimum prices proved to be an even longer process, and only in a few districts were minimum price schedules operative during the first quarter of this year. The working of the schemes during the March quarter, 1931, has been reviewed in an official publication by the Mines Department,' which can be summarized as follows:

Jan 1, 1932

By Paul R. Wieber, Atam P. Sikri

This paper describes the U. S. Energy Research and Development Administration's (ERDA) program to develop in situ coal conversion processes, especially gasification. The potential of this technology, the technical directions being explored, and the program strategy to carry the process concepts toward commercialization are emphasized. The geographic location of the U. S. coal resources and a market analysis are described. Commercially successful in situ coal processes could add over a trillion tons of coal to the U. S. coal reserves. The economics of these processes is compared with surface gasification. Independent studies show this process to be 25% cheaper than surface gasification for Western coals. The major projects are briefly described. The Linked Vertical Well process is in the most advanced stage and shows great promise. The last test produced a low-Btu gas averaging 171 Btu per standard cubic foot for average production rates of 8.5 million standard cubic feet per day. The other projects are Packed Bed, Longwall Generator, and Steeply Dipping Beds. Unique factors of the process development are discussed which may lead to commercial processes in the near term. A development strategy is proposed by which this technology could be commercialized before 1983 with potentially lower gas prices and lower environmental impacts, relative to mining plus surface gasification.

Jan 1, 1979

No review of underground mining should begin with anything but the new world safety record set at the Grace underground iron mine of Bethlehem Steel at Morgantown, Pa., on Friday, November 12. There had not been a disabling injury (an injury which keeps an employee away from his next scheduled shift) for 550 working days. In all, 2,660,080 man-hours had been worked by nearly 950 employees without a disabling injury. The record was wrested from Johns-Manville's Jeffrey mine at Asbestos, Que. At 3 p.m. Friday, December 3, miner Stanton E. Friend was completely buried under several feet of coarse rock, fortunately sustaining only cuts and multiple abrasions. But with his fall, the accident- free period came to an end at 2,778,600 man-hrs worked without a disabling injury-the new record!

Jan 2, 1966

By William Blauvelt

THE type of gas producer in which the ashes are fluxed and run off as slag was among the very earliest made. Ebelmen built the first one in 1840 at Audincourt, France, only a year after the installation of the first gas producer of which we have record. Charcoal was used as the fuel, with blast-furnace slag and clay is flux. My interest in this type of producer began when as a boy I saw the fluxing producer at Chester, N. J., which was invented by W. J.. Taylor, and described by him in 1881.1 This producer was invented independently by Mr. Taylor to meet the difficulties he experienced in making producer gas for roasting sulphurous iron ores. It will be of interest to review briefly his description of his producer. It was built like a small blast furnace, having a hearth 24 in. in diameter and 24 in. high. The bosh angle was 25° from the vertical; the diameter at the bosh 4 ft. and at the top 3 ft.; the total height 12 ft. The producer contained one water-cooled tuyere 12 in. above the bottom, with a 1.5-in. nozzle.. Depth of the coal above the tuyere; 6 ft. Mr. Taylor mixed the coal with from 30 to 40 per cent. of basic blast-furnace slag to flux the ash. Occasionally some limestone was also used, but never limestone alone, as the use of the furnace cinder gave a larger volume of slag and made it easier to maintain a proper fluidity. . The producer was blown with a small Weimer blowing engine, delivering 300 ft. of air per minute, at from 1 to 1.5 lb. pressure. The slag was tapped every 2 hr. and was black and glassy in appearance. Broken or egg size anthracite was used. The fine sizes of anthracite could not he made to work. Mr. Taylor expressed the belief that bituminous coal could be used if not too fine, but no experiments were made with this coal. Runs were made of four weeks' duration, with no stops or changes. Mr. Taylor reported the following advantages:

Jan 12, 1913

By A. F. Lucas

The rock-salt deposit of Petite Anse, in Louisiana, has been known for many years. A description of it, with an account of the method pursued in its exploitation, was contributed in 1888 to the Transactions of the Institute* by Mr. Richard A. Pomeroy. But this locality does not by any means comprise the whole of the resources of the State in rock-salt. A few months ago the writer published a general account + - of all the Louisiana localities now known, together with particulars concerning their technical and commercial development. In view of the fact that active enterprises in this line have increased in number, and promise to constitute an important, if not controlling, factor in the supply of salt for the immense demand of the United States (including, as it does, the consumption of this mineral as a raw material in chemical manufactures), the present paper has been prepared. While it necessarily contains much of the substance of the article above mentioned, it is accompanied with illustrations and details not heretofore published. Moreover, the former article is out of print, the publishers having no copies left of the number of their journal in which it appeared, and the writer is therefore warranted in the belief that a paper placing the essential facts on record in a form more permanently accessible to mining engineers will be acceptable to the members of the Institute.

Jan 1, 1900

By Robert Burrows

IN preparing this paper the object has been to set forth facts relating to illumination problems, which, judging from the results realized in the iron and steel and other industries somewhat similar to mining, will tend toward furthering safety, production, and contentment of employees, as well as economy of operation in mines. By applying the principles of illumination with the assistance of modern appliances, the full benefits in efficiency may be derived from improvements already made in other details of mine operation. The lighting of a typical coal mine may be divided into four distinct parts: 1, The lighting of the buildings about the top; 2, the lighting of the working faces; 3, general illumination at the bottom; and 4, special applications of lighting. The lighting of buildings about the top may be treated in the same manner as that of any other industrial plant, for we have a boiler room, an engine and generator room, a forge, a machine shop, and a hoist room. These can be well and efficiently lighted by the use of 100-watt tungsten-filament multiple lamps with proper reflectors so spaced and suspended that a power consumption of from ¼ watt per square foot in the boiler room to 1 watt per square foot in the machine shop is obtained. The methods that apply to this kind of lighting have been ably treated by a number of authors,1 and for this reason a detailed discussion is unnecessary.

Jan 11, 1915

Jan 9, 1950

E. M. Fitchett (Johnstown, Pa.)—The fact stated by the authors that: "In the laboratory, without marked efficiency decreases, the authors have deposited zinc successfully from solutions containing as high as 1 g per liter of germanium," (p. 465, paragraph 3) is most unusual. A similar statement is made in the summary and conclusions: "Germanium alone, within normal operating limits does not cause large efficiency losses." The limits are not defined. These facts are directly contrary to much of the published history on the effect of germanium in zinc electrolysis. A description of the conditions leading to such a successful electrolysis would be of interest to all engaged in the production of electrolytic zinc. It is unfortunate that the authors of this paper did not determine the actual concentration of germanium and cadmium in the solutions which they electrolyzed after a zinc dust purification. This purification will take out a variable amount of these impurities, depending upon the composition of the dust, type of agitation, presence of activating agents, etc. Probably every electrolytic zinc plant in this country has accurate methods, both wet and spectrographic, for determining germanium and cadmium. These specific methods, adopted from the standard analytical literature, are often available to educational institutions for the asking. The headings of Fig. 2 and of the two tables, with their definite concentrations of germanium and cadmium (which are not so definite according to the footnotes) could possibly be somewhat misleading, since the actual amounts of germanium and cadmium present during electrolysis are not known. Even the 1 hr electrolysis time might be too short for a study of this type; 12 or 24 hr tests might be much better. Commercial solutions have been known that gave over 90 pct ampere efficiency during the first hour of electrolysis, but no metal at all after 24 hr.

Jan 1, 1953

By James R. Cudworth, Joseph C. Mead

The Birmingham district of Alabama has utilized the slag from its blast furnaces consistently since the earliest development of the slag industry. Today there are producers of slag cement who started business in 1900, and who have, under a progressive policy, expanded the number of their products to meet present demands. There are producers of slag aggregates and other crushed slag products who have been successful for periods of over thirty years. There are at the present two companies, Cheney Lime and Cement Co. and the Southern Cement Co., manufacturing puzzolan cement; two companies, Birmingham Slag Co. and Woodstock Slag Co., making slag aggregates and by-products; one company, Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railway Co., a subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation, producing ground open-hearth basic slag for soil conditioning. Two companies, the Sloss Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. and the Woodstock Slag Co., make slag concrete in ready-mix plants and one company, the Superock Company, manufactures fine and coarse slag aggregates under a new granulation process. NO Portland cement is made with slag as an ingredient, because dolomite is used so extensively as a blast-furnace flux that the magnesium content of the slag is excessive. Sources of Slag In the Birmingham district there are 22 blast furnaces, of which the majority are in blast. The present production is 165,000 tons of pig iron monthly; the production in 1935 was 1,297,960 gross tons1. There arc also two blast furnaces at Gadsden and one ferroalloy electric furnaee at Anniston. From these two sources is obtained slag to approximately 1.1 tons per ton of pig iron. History of Development of the Industry The history of the local utilization of slag as an industry probably starts with the Birmingharii Slag Cement Co. This company was

Jan 1, 1938

By W. A. Knoll

THE sinking of a new shaft at the Newport mine, Ironwood, Mich., was started in May 1931 and completed on Aug. 3, 1932. During this period, 2665 ft. of shaft in granite was completed, at, an average advance of 6 ft. per 24 hr. In November of 1930, experimental work was con-ducted oil 65 ft. of shaft through 22 ft. of overburden where ledge was encountered, and this work convinced the operators that all drilling could be clone with vertical holes with the blasting relief to a 4 ½ -in. hole drilled vertically in the center of the cut. The reason for not adopting the conventional V-cut was to get away from damaging the shaft steel. The blasting in a V-cut naturally tends to throw the broken material upward, but with the cut as adopted the relief was in a horizontal direction to a large extent. The scheme of mucking employed made it necessary to keep the steel shaft sets within 511 ft. of the bottom at all times. This could not be clone without serious damage with a V-cut when blasting in granite. The cut as drilled also broke 10.53 ft. per round of drilling, which was considerably more than the experience with a V-cut in the sane material. The extended cut reduced proportionately the delays for charging, blowing smoke and handling drilling equipment in the shaft. Another advantage was the ease in drilling vertical over inclined holes, and the preservation of the proper spacing of the drill holes at the bottom of the cut.

Jan 1, 1938

By J. A. Herbst, O. A. Bascur

Fine coal cleaning by froth flotation has become common practice in the US with more than 73 kt/d (80,000 stpd) treated in this way. In spite of this large tonnage, developments in the automated control of coal flotation circuits have lagged significantly behind those for mineral systems. The primary reason is that instruments have not been available for the online measurement of carbon ash content or other critical variables in coal slurries. A second reason is that the influence operating variables have on coal flotation are not completely understood. During the last few years, some of the needed instrumentation has been developed, while an improved knowledge of the flotation process itself has occurred through mathematical modeling. As a result, certain control strategies for coal flotation are beginning to emerge. This paper attempts to evaluate several control strategies using a detailed flotation dynamic simulator, Dynafloat. After construction of a process matrix for the system of interest, promising alternatives for linking manipulated and controlled variables were analyzed. To develop combined grade and recovery control strategies, it was necessary to construct a grade/recovery map with the aid of the simulator to drive the system to known, final, feasible grade/recovery operating conditions. Finally, an advanced strategy that uses an on-line model to identify disturbances and take control actions is proposed.

Jan 1, 1986

By R. S. Hutton

Jan 1, 1937

The Jeffrey Company Opens Branch in Seattle The Jeffrey Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Ohio, announces the re-opening of its Northwestern Branch Office at Seattle, Wash., and the appointment of Mr. Percy E. Wright, Consulting Mechanical Engineer, as District Manager for Oregon, Washington, Alaska, British Columbia and Alberta. Mr. Wright, who has been in the Northwest since 1910, and whose connection with the Jeffrey company dates back to 1902, has' had a wide and varied experience and training in the handling of the Jeffrey line which will enable him to be of great assistance to customers in solving their elevating, conveying and transmission problems. Trade Catalogs To a majority of the public, the name 'DuPont suggests military powder-munitions of war. The DuPont Products Book A-430 (April, 1916) lists 251 distinct commodities made. and sold by this company, many of which are far removed from destructive work. Mining men are fully cognizant of the need for explosives in constructive work, but they may be surprised to know that side by side with the powder and dynamite this company manufactures such peaceful articles as substitute leather, combs and collar buttons. The substitute for leather is Fabrikoid, varying in weight from a quality light enough for bookbinding to one heavy enough for trunks and automobiles, and the combs and collar buttons (with scores of other articles) are made from Pyralin. The book also contains a long list of chemicals, and a shorter list of special products and miscellaneous materials such as charcoal, wood flour and saltpeter. The Jeffrey Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Ohio, making elevating, conveying, crushing, screening and power transmission machinery, has just issued its. latest Bulletin, No. 177, :featuring self-propelling wagon and truck loaders for handling crushed stone, sand, gravel, clinker, coke, etc. These machines are described as having a capacity of 1 to 1 ½ cu. yd. of material per minute, with power to load crushed stone maximum size pieces through 3 ½ -in. ring and to load trucks or wagons in 3 or 4 min. The self-propelling device is designed to enable one man to operate the loader as it is fed into the pile, and to move the machine about under its own power.

Jan 7, 1916

By Sidney A. Swensrud

The writer has been interested for some time in trying to appraise our industry's prospects for gasoline consumption over the next half dozen years or so. Anyone who has even approached the problem knows the intimate relationship to it of the number of automobiles in use— by automobiles I mean both passenger cars and trucks. Probably at least 90 per cent of our gasoline is used in automotive vehicles. Some recent estimates secured from the Department of Commerce show the following breakdown: Per Cent Passenger cars............................................ 60.0 Trucks................................................... 27.4 Busses................................................... 2.9 Taxicabs................................................. 2.2 Subtotal............................................... 92.5 Aviation, motor boats and railroads......................... 0.5 Agricultural: farm tractors, etc.............................. 3.3 Balance (manufacturing, government use, construction, etc.)... 3.7 100.0 Up to the beginning of the depression there was, of course, a constant annual increase in the number of automobiles in use, for each year the industry added to the total inventory or ''population" more new units than were being scrapped, as may be seen in Fig. 1. Few of us in the oil industry needed to give much attention to the detailed figures, although the automobile industry seemed to interest itself in all sorts of calculations of replacement demand vs. new car demand, the average life of the car, the number scrapped, and the like. Probably many people in the oil industry, as well as outside it, were surprised at the way in which automobile registrations and gasoline consumption held up during the early years of the depression. Nor were they greatly perturbed when, as in the last two years, both registrations and consumption began to fall somewhat. That was natural enough; it

Jan 1, 1933

By F. E. Bash

WHENEVER electric and open-hearth steel men discuss the relative advantages of their respective methods, the question of temperature is always discussed, so that this paper is written in the hope that definite data may settle some of the questions and encourage further investigations along these lilies. The writer has had the opportunity of taking the tapping temperatures of steel from electric furnaces of different sizes in various plants and from a number of open hearths handling the same kind of steel. All temperature measurements were made with the same disappearing-filament type optical pyrometer and the corrections for emissivity applied were those worked out by Burgess,1 which are 0.40 for steel streams and 0.65 for slag. The correction is applied by calculating the curve giving the relation between the true and apparent temperature in the following formula: Log E = CZ log e( 1 _ 1 x \T2 T1) in which E = emissivity; C2 = 14,500; e = base of Napierien logarithms; ? = wave-length of light used = 0.65/4; T2 = true temperature, in degrees absolute; T,1 apparent temperature, in degrees absolute. The curve showing the relation between true and apparent temperature for steel and slag arc given in Fig. 1. For the purpose of comparison of open-hearth and electric furnaces, there are given in Table 1 the tapping temperatures of two 25-ton Heroult electric furnaces and one 6-ton with one 50-ton acid, one 40-ton basic, and one 65-ton acid open-hearth furnace, all making nickel ordnance steel for guns. The two 25-ton Heroult electric furnaces were finishing steel refined by the triplex process and the 6-ton Heroult finished steel that was partly refined in an open hearth.. In this table, the tapping temperature and the temperature of the steel stream into the first ingot

Jan 9, 1919

By George H. Ashley

At the beginning of the war, about 13 years ago, a conference was called in Washington to lay plans for pooling the coals of the United States. A careful review of the various systems of classification then extant showed none well adapted to the needs of coal pooling. The system of Tidewater pools then adopted, using numbers to distinguish one pool from another, was based on typical coals of different localities. At that time, the writer undertook the preparation of such a practical classification. Aside from drawing on his experience of over 20 years in the coal fields of the United States, reaching from the Pacific Coast and the Rio Grande to Rhode Island, he first examined and carded all of the large collection of coals in glass jars made by and for M. R. Campbell. Next, he carded all of the descriptions of coals he could find in the U. S. Geological Survey bulletins and elsewhere, as well as practical tests of coals by the Navy and other organizations and then took account of every published coal analysis of the U. S. Geological Survey and U. S. Bureau of Mines. A study of this information, involving thousands of recomputations, led to the presentation of a paper on "A Use Classification of Coal" before this Institute at the Chicago meeting, September, 1919. That classification was unique (1) in a classification based on "standard coal" which included moisture, but used standardized ash, sulfur and nitrogen, (2) in using physical properties to distinguish the major classes or orders, (3) in recognizing British thermal unit values in the minor subdivision, (4) in the large number of classes recognized (thirty-six), (5) in proposing mineral names for all classes, (6) in proposing a letter code for the several classes for practical use, (7) in proposing a code for expressing what has commonly been called "grade" of the coal, the grade code to be combined with the rank code to designate and describe a coal. The writer still thinks that the principles then offered, though not necessarily the exact proposals, are valid and desirable in any practical classification. The actual classification of coal by rank was based on the ratio of fixed carbon to volatile matter for the high-rank coals—the well-known

Jan 1, 1930

By W. S. Gresley

The object of this communication is to give a description of some remarkable spheroidal specimens of anthracite coal recently encountered in stripping the Mammoth seam at Milnesville, Luzerne county, Pa. Somewhat similar forms of coal, occurring in France and in Australia, have been described already. In vol. xxxvii. (1888) of the Transactions of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, under the title "Coal Nodules from the Borehole Seam at Newcastle, New South Wales," Mr. T. E. Forster describes and illustrates, with two plates of specimens, a series of " nodular " forms of anthracite coal taken from a depth of 300 feet beneath the town of Newcastle, and possessing the following characteristics : The lines of cleavage of the coal-seam are more or less curved, giving a rouuded appearance to the blocks. Dikes of intrusive dolerite intersect the coal, and the coal-nodules occur with with greatest frequency where the seam is most disturbed. They are easily separated from the surrounding coal. "The seam at this point is remarkable, not only for its splendid proportions but also for its extremely bright and rich appearance, which gives the working-places x strong resemblance to those in the Pennsylvania anthracite mines.....The cleavage of the coal is, in some park of the pit, noticeable for a series of small impressions or concavities about the size of, and resembling roughly in shape, a mussel-shell raised vertically on its longest edge.....To some extent the nodules appear to have a more or less concretionary structure, and to be, roughly speaking, composed of several concentric layers, through which the ordinary cleavage of the coal passes, while in others thin layers may be observed, resembling the coats of an onion!' The chemical composition of one of the nodules, as well as of the seam inclosing them, is as follows:

Jan 1, 1893

By H. J. Freyn

The American iron and settl manufacturer finds himself to-day barely at the threshold of enormous possibilities for practicing rational economy in the use of fuels.

Jan 1, 1915