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By Robert L. Bates

Definition An industrial mineral, says the Glossary of Geology, is "any rock, mineral, or other naturally occurring substance of economic value, exclusive of metallic ores, mineral fuels, and gemstones; one of the nonmetallics." Probably most geologists and engineers would accept this simple and straightforward definition, at least as a general statement. On analysis, however, certain anomalies crop up. For example, it may be considered arbitrary to include industrial diamond and corundum and to exclude their precious varieties, gem diamond and sapphire. So the present volume has a section on gems and gem materials, in spite of the definition. Another problem arises when we try to define precisely what is metallic and what is nonmetallic. Bauxite and ilmenite certainly qualify as metallic ores, but both are also raw materials of important nonmetallic substances; hence they are included in the book, A third anomaly is that, by common consent of geologists, engineers, mineral economists, and others concerned, the term industrial minerals may include not only rocks and minerals but also certain manufactured products like cement and lime, and even mixed groups of natural and artificial products, such as abrasives and refractories. Thus the central realm of the industrial minerals is clear enough, but its boundaries tend to be indefinable. Since a definition that allowed for every irregularity in the outer fringes would be excessively unwieldy, the one quoted above may be considered satisfactory. The expression industrial minerals is commonly equated with nonmetallics, and with the somewhat more precise phrase industrial minerals and rocks as in the title of this book. Characteristics of the Field The industrial minerals as broadly interpreted are a highly diverse group of materials; indeed, we may say paradoxically that diversity is about all they have in common. At one end of the spectrum are ordinary earth materials such as gravel and crushed stone, with a value of perhaps $3 per st; at the opposite end are industrial diamonds, which sell (by the carat) at the rate of roughly $18,000,000 per st. Neither the metals nor the fuels, and few if any categories of manufactured products, include items that differ in value by more than six orders of magnitude. Most gravel and stone are of no value unless close to a market; diamonds and other exotic substances possess such unique and desirable properties that their occurrence in remote corners of the earth is no deterrent to their use. The broad range of industrial minerals falls between these extremes of unit value and place value. The industrial minerals penetrate the entire fabric of modern industrialized society, from such fundamental operations as drilling for oil and smelting iron ore to the manufacture of virtually the whole array of consumer products. There is no industrial-minerals industry; there are many industries. The simple term field is convenient as an all-inclusive expression. An industry is considered to belong in the industrial-minerals field if its operations consist of extraction and processing, but not manufacturing. Thus the mining and beneficiation of feldspar is a mineral industry, but the manufacture of ceramic products is not. In the cement and lime industries, processing merges into manufacture, and the line is less distinct. It disappears altogether in a plant that extracts salt as artificial brines, and makes sodium and chlorine chemicals, all under the same roof. An aspect of some industrial minerals that differentiates them from the metals is that their physical properties carry over into ultimate use of the product. Such minerals as mica, asbes-

Jan 1, 1983

Organization Place Date 1919 American Railway Engineering Association Chicago, 111. Mar. 18-20 Society of Industrial Engineers New York, N. Y. Mar. 18-21 American Electrochemical Society New York, N. Y. Apr. 3-5 National Foreign Trade Council Chicago, Ill. Apr. 24-26 American Iron and Steel Institute New York, N. Y. May American Institute of Electrical Engineers Lake Placid, N. Y. June

Jan 3, 1919

The work of the Committee during the year 1914 was especially directed to the securing of a larger representation in the Institute of those engaged in coal mining and coking. While these industries exceed in volume and in monetary importance all other mining industries in the United States, the membership of the Institute representing them has in recent years been relatively small. It was thought that an increase in the membership of the Institute obtained from among those engaged in these industries was desirable in order to increase interest in the work of the Institute, for this result can only be reached by securing the presentation and publication of a larger number of papers relating to these industries. It is evident that the reading of such papers will tend to increase the attendance at the local and general meetings of the Institute. Sessions of the Coal and Coke Committee were held and a number of papers relating to these subjects were presented at the meetings at Butte, Salt Lake, and Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh meeting especially being planned with this in view. The activities of the Local Section of the Institute organized in the Pennsylvania Anthracite region have reawakened interest in that district and it is hoped that the same object can be obtained in the bituminous coal fields, either through the organization of one or more. local sections, affiliation with some of the local coal-mining societies, or through activities of the Coal and Coke Committee. Referring to the work of the Committee in its efforts to increase the membership of the Institute, the Committee desires to acknowledge the services rendered by many members scattered throughout the various coal-mining districts of the United States, in compiling lists of those qualified for membership in the Institute, but who have not yet become members. The lists so compiled comprised about 1,100 names, which were furnished to the Committee by the co-operation of 40 or 50 members of the Institute.

Jan 3, 1915

By AIME AIME

PLANS for the Semi-centennial Meeting have almost reached completion, although in any undertaking of such magnitude a few changes are always to be expected at the last moment. As worked out up to the time of going to press, the program of the meeting is shown below. The headquarters will be the Irem Temple, in Wilkes-Barre.

Jan 1, 1921

By John V. Beall

During the last quarter of 1948, two new machines, which may revolutionize the coal mining industry, made their first public appearance within two months of each other. Both are designed to mine and load coal continuously. On Oct. 27, the "Colmol," invented by C. H. Snyder and A. E. Lamm, president and executive vice-president, respectively, of the Sunnyhill Coal Co., was demonstrated at the No. 8 mine of that Company at New Lexington, Ohio. The "Joy Continuous Miner," invented by H. F. Silver, president of the Silver Engineering Works, Denver, and developed and manufactured by the Joy Manufacturing Co., was demonstrated at the Mathies mine, near Finleyville, Pa., in the Pittsburgh coal seam.

Jan 1, 1949

By Sheldon P. Wimpfen, Ralph H. Sweefser

FOR centuries the pumping of water has been one of the chief problems to be overcome by the persistent men who win the mineral wealth of the world. Profitable operations have often been forced to suspend activities as the mine penetrated well below the water table or when sudden rushes of water were encountered. To operate below the local water level requires continuous pumping equal in volume to the amount of water flow¬ing into the mine workings. Often the water to be removed exceeds the tonnage of valuable material produced. To be above local water level is a valuable asset. Modern mining practice permits nothing short of the extraction of the last pound of profitable ore from a mineral deposit. In the days before the development of mechanical and electrical power as we know it today. water in any quantity was a major

Jan 1, 1948

Jan 1, 1966

By M. A. Cook

Sutherland used an ion-pair adsorption model to derive the author's hy-drolytic pee-acid) adsorption equation for the contact bubble curves of Wark and Cox. To do so it was necessary to postulate that the sum of coverages of surface anion sites by the collector and depressant anions is practically unity. It is here shown that the free energy of Sutherland's postulated collector ion (x-)-depressant ion (OH-) exchange reaction (for no other than the OH- to compete with X-), namely EX + (OH-) Z SOH- + X-, is in some cases positive and X- should not even adsorb. Also, in many cases the (OH-) adsorption must be quite negligible even though the collector covers only about a sixth of the mineral surface at the threshold of air bubble contact. This, however, contradicts the postulate that permits one to derive the correct bubble contact eqwztion for the ion-pair model. Furthermore, the requirement for charge neutrality leads in the ion-pair model to the (impossible) constancy of the ratio @+)/(OH-) along a contact bubble curve in which pH may change by more than seven units. HYDROLYTIC ADSORPTION EQUATION Hydrolytic (free-acid or free-base) and ion-pair (H', X-, or R', OH-) adsorption models of the collector in metal sulfide and similar flotation systems are superficially alike and somewhat difficult to differentiate. This is because they yield, under seemingly valid assumptions, equivalent forms of the equations describing the distribution of the collector between the aqueous solution and the mineral surface. This has been discussed by the author and associates1-4 and more recently by Sutherland,' both for simple collector-mineral and for more complicated collector-depressant-mineral systems. In the hydrolytic adsorption model the equations describing the contact bubble curves of Wark and coxeJ7 are as follows :2 Here X is the collector anion, D- the depressant anion, 9, and On are the fractions of the free-acid sites S on the surface of the mineral covered by collector and depressant free acids, respectively, and @ is the fraction of uncovered sites. Kx is the free-acid collector dissociation equilibrium con- stant, K1 that for the free-acid collector adsorption, KD that for the free-acid depressant dissociation, and K2 the equilibrium constant for the free-acid depressant adsorption. Eqs. 1 to 5 yield upon simultaneous solution the result is the critical free-acid concentration for bubble contact in the absence of depressant-free acid. Eq. 8 expresses the conditions along a simple collector-mineral contact bubble curve for the case HD = 0, or V = 0. Last and Cook showed that Eq. 6 applies generally and with good accuracy in the collector-depressant-metal sulfide mineral systems. Inci-dentally, it has been shown by infrared absorption studies that in some cases the free-acid adsorption process splits out water.' In this case, Eq. 2 might be written SHOH + HX Z SHX + H20, with a similar equation replacing Eq. 4 for depressant-free acid-water exchange. This possibility does not change, however, the basic equations or considerations of the hydrolytic adsorption model. Indeed, this type of free acid-water exchange reaction was predicted for fluorite and iron ore flotation by oleic acid in the dry grinding and boiling processes.410

Jan 1, 1961

By Frederick Görannsen

McDuffie county, once a part of Columbia county, lies in the eastern part of central Georgia, about 20 miles west of the Savannah river, and bounded on the northtwest by Little river. Wrightsboro, now almost forgotten, was one of the principal towns of Georgia before the Revolutionary war, and much of the land hereafter described as belonging to one of the principal gold-bearing sections of the South had been taken up by the early agricultural settlers, and was already under cultivation. Indeed, some of the present mining companies can trace their chain of title back to the original grant of King George III., made in 1771. The first discovery of gold in Georgia, however, was not made until 1823, when two English miners, who had emigrated to this country and were traveling as peddlers through this section, discovered quartz, rich in gold, on what is now known as " the 40-acre lot," and owned by the Columbia Mining Go. These men had no money to buy the lands, and not being able to stake off a claim and begin work, as is the custom in other places, they were forced to seek the aid of the native farmers. In this we are told that they were for a long time unsuccessful; the farmers and land-owners not knowing or caring anything about gold mining. In 1826, Jeremiah Griffin, a wealthy farmer, became interested with them, and they did some prospecting and located several rich veins. Mr. Griffin soon became enthusiastic, and bought about three thousand acres of supposed gold-lands, lying along Little river.. This purchase was unfortunate for the mining industry, as it effectually shut out all other prospectors, and confined entirely to Mr. Griffin and his associates the mining development of the whole region. As a consequence, the ground was never covered, arid there are virgin lands in this section now, which offer to the prospector as

Jan 1, 1903

By J. F. Wolff

CARL ZAPFFE, Brainerd, Minn. (communication to the Secretary*).¬Unless one has actually directed explorations for iron ore, it is doubtful whether the importance of Mr. Wolff's paper, the value of the information contained, and the large amount of detail work involved in what is set forth can be fully appreciated. It is indeed rare to get such a com-

Jan 3, 1917

By J. Bruce Clemmer, P. E. Churchward, Carl Rompacek

The paper describes a cyclic method for processing manganese ores using sodium sulphate as the basic reagent. Sodium sulphate is electrolyzed in a diaphragm cell to give an anolyte sodium sulphate acid and a catholyte containing caustic soda, a part of which is carbonated in a cyclic manner to form soda and reduced ore is leached with the anolyte to dissolve the manganese and the impurities are precipitated by addition of catholyte. Manganese in the pregnant solution is precipitated as synthetic rhodochrosite with a carbonated catholyte, and sodium sulphate is regenerated. Calcining the manganese carbonate site a high-grade product and the carbon dioxide is returned to the carbonation step. the results of laboratory tests using cells equipped with synthetic fiber diaphragms and permselective membranes which permit transfer of using or cations during electrolysis are described. The article from which the above abstract is reprinted appears in Trans. AIME (1955) 203, p. 51; Journal op Metals (January 1955).

Jan 1, 1956

By E. L. WOOD

IN ATTEMPTING to summarize briefly the reconstruction of the Hecla plant since the fire, three important facts must be held in mind; namely: a hurry-up job with the shadow of an insurance company in the background; restriction of working space in the narrow Burke Canyon; and building two-thirds of the plant on a filled area. Construction work was carried on without interruption through the winter season. These adverse conditions have contributed many obstacles not ordinarily encountered in mining work. The first problems immediately after the fire were organization and policy; the-former to create an efficient construction crew out of a mining organization; the latter to determine the type and extent of surface plant to be built. The new crew was organized from a nucleus of mine employees, 25 per cent. of the old crew remaining for construction work. Permanent fireproof buildings were decided upon, the general arrangement of the new plant to be similar to the old one as far as possible, at the same time enlarging it 100 per cent. in anticipation of the demands which would be made upon it when the Star Mine began operating. Cleaning up the wreckage was a big job, the extent of which is indicated by the fact that 30 carloads of scrap iron and steel were moved off the property. In re-establishing transportation facilities at the plant, a previous disadvantage of a steep grade on the high line was obviated by excavating 1600 yd. of solid rock; the fire having destroyed all town buildings below, made this work possible.

Jan 1, 1924

By H. O. Hofman

Jan 1, 1896

By T. F. Witheree

The Fletcherville Furnace was built in 1864 and 1865, making its first blast from August until October of the latter year, when it was blown out to prevent its " bunging-up." Repairs were made in time to enable it to be blown in again December 12th, 1865, the blast ending October 7th, 1866. Total product 1921.15 tons iron, an average of 6.8.2.5 tons per day, from ores yielding 44.8 per cent. Consumption of charcoal 223.2 bushels per ton of iron. The furnace journal up to this time shows no record of furnace dimensions, or temperature of the blast, but as near as can be ascertained, they were as follows, viz.: Height of stack, 42 feet. Diameter of bosh, 11 feet. Angle of bosh, 71/2 inches to 12 inches rise, about 58°. Diameter of open tunnel head, 42 inches. Number of tuyeres 3 ; each 3 inches in diameter. Dam 15 inches high. Tuyeres 24 inches high. Tymp 224 inches high. Diameter of steam cylinder, 20) inches. } Diameter of blast cylinder, 64 inches. } Stroke 5 feet. The engine is direct-acting horizontal non-condensing. December 26th, 1866, the furnace was again put in blast, having been considerably altered in the crucible; the height of stack, bosh, and tunnel head remaining as before. Six tuyeres were put in, three in each of the side arches. The hearth or crucible was rectangular in form, 3 feet wide x 31/2 feet long x 64 feet high. Inclination of bosh 58°. Height of tuyeres 26 inches; nozzles 21/4 inches diameter. Temperature of blast estimated to be about 500°.

By D. H. Bacon

Nearly all men are too busy with their own affairs to keep informed of the progress in other lines. From time to time we read statistics showing the development in some industry that astonish us; but the feeling of surprise soon fades: to be followed by others that likewise pass away. A short resume of what has been done in one line may be of interest. Down to late in the fifties the ore-product of Lake Superior mas handled over a mule-tram-road to Marquette; now the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic, the Chicago and Northwestern, the Wisconsin Central, the Duluth, Superior and Western, the Duluth, Mesabi and Northern, the Duluth and Iron Range and the Lake Superior and Ishpeming railroads serve the shippers. Down to nearly 1870 a 700-ton ship was an enormous craft, the loading of which required two days; the unloading being seldom accomplished in that time. In 1871 the largest ore-barge carried 1050 toils and made twelve trips per season. Now the cargoes reach 5000 tons, the loading requiring less than three hours, and the unloading ten hours. Now the mines cover more land than was familiar to even the " timber-cruiser " when the Jackson mine was opened. The annual shipments have grown from a few thousand to 10,000,000 tons, and the ability of the mines to produce is not taxed. Lake-freights are at one-eighth, and rail-freights at one-quarter, of early prices. The deeper waterways, commodious locks and large ships of to-day are in a greater measure due to the movement of ore than to any other cause. Great savings have been made in each detail of each department. The only item of cost that has not been lessened, I am glad to say, is the money paid to men. Wages, measured by what they will buy, are as high

Jan 1, 1898

By CLYDE M. EYE

THE Sub-province of Benguet is in the North Central part of the Island of Luzon. Baguio, the capital, is situated on a piateau 5000 ft. above sea level, and is the main health resort of the Philippines. It is rapidly becoming the favorite resort for the China Coast as well, and has many miles of beautiful, curving drives with nearly every pine-covered knoll surmounted by a summer home. The United States Army has a recreation post here, known as Camp John Hay, with a well-equipped hospital, and there is a Country Club with a good golf course adjacent. The weather during the winter months and until late spring is ideal. The business center consists mainly of Chinese and Japanese stores, several hotels, and a large public market, in which are displayed all of the vegetables of the temperate zone, which are flown near Baguio, and many tropical and other products brought up from below. This district is reached from the Coastal Plain either by the old Benguet road built in 1904 by the United States Government, or by the Naguilian road, built some years later. The former is now a toll road, with a line of stages operating over it to and from Des Mortes in connection with the government-owned rail- road. Auto travel from Manila is also along this road, the trip from Manila to Baguio requiring about seven hours, following up the great valley north of Manila for nearly 150 miles to the lower end of the Benguet road, and thence to Baguio, 25 miles. This is an interesting, scenic trip; the road is especially famous for the zig zags where it climbs out of the canyon of the Bued River to the plateau. In the September number of the National Geographic Magazine, a fine aerial picture of this road, as well as of other interesting points in various parts of the Philippines, appears. Freight for the district is taken in mainly over the Naguilian road connecting with the railroad at Bauang. This route follows the ridges of the mountain slope with broad vistas and views of the coast.

Jan 1, 1930

By V. Koump, T. F. Perzak, R. H. Tien

A series of experiments were carried out in which the rates of propagation of the liquidus and the eutectic fronts Mere measured during essentially one-dimensional freezing of Al-Cu alloys. The dimensions of the ingots were 3 by 5 by 6 in. Three different alloys containing 0.1, 4.5, and 17 pct Cu were used in these experitments. For each alloy the rate of heat removal was varied to give a total jreezing time in the range 3 to 30 min. The results of these measurements cowlpared favorably with the theoretical model of freezing of binary alloys with time-dependent surface temperature. IN engineering analysis of solidification of commercia1 steels and nonferrous alloys it is a common practice to assume that an alloy freezes by propagation of an isothermal solidification front, i.e., essentially as a pure metal. In two recent theoretical investigations'j2 the present authors explored the possibility of a more realistic approach to the problem of solidification of alloys. In the proposed model the freezing of an alloy is assumed to take place by propagation of two isothermal fronts, i.e., the liquidus front and the solidus (or eutectic) front. The region between the two fronts contains both liquid and solid and is referred to as the solid-liquid region. The width and the solid content of the solid-liquid region vary with alloy type, solute concentration, and cooling rate. For a given alloy system, initial concentration of solute, and the mode of heat removal, the proposed model yields the temperature distribution within the solid skin, temperature, solid fraction, and concentration distributions with the solid-liquid region, and the rates of propagation of the liquidus and the solidus fronts. This model is obviously of considerable practical importance in engineering analysis of solidification processes, since it gives a more realistic estimate of skin strength during solidification and a better estimate of the total freezing time. Before the new model can be used with confidence, however, it is necessary to test this model experimentally. The experimental testing of the proposed model is a relatively simple matter since the effects to be measured are large and a relatively simple experiment will suffice. The theoretical model predicts, for example, that during freezing of an alloy containing substitutional type solute (negligible diffusion in the solid during freezing) the solid-liquid region occupies an appreciable portion of the ingot, even at low concentration of solute.' Another prediction of the theo- V. KOUMP, formerly with U. S. Steel Corp., is now with Research and Development Center, Systems and Process Division, Westinghouse Electric Corp., Pittsburgh, Pa. R. H. TlEN is Senior Scientist, Fundamental Research Laboratory, U. S. Steel Corp., Research Center, Monroe ville, Pa. T. F. PERZAK, formerly with U.S. Steel Corp., is now with Fiber Industries, Greenville, S. C. Manuscript submitted March 6, 1968. IMD retical model, easily verifiable by experiment, is that the rate of propagation of the solidus (or eutectic) front increases as the solidus front approaches the center of the slab. This prediction is contrary to well-known behavior of the solidification front during freezing of pure metals, where the rate of propagation of the solidification front decreases with time and freezing is completed at the lowest rate. A rather severe test of the proposed model is provided by comparison of theoretical predictions and experimental measurements of the effects of cooling rate and composition on the rates of propagation of the liquidus and the eutectic fronts. In order to test the soundness of the formulation and the method of solution of the problem of solidification of alloys a series of experiments were carried out in which the rates of propagation of the liquidus and the eutectic fronts were measured during essentially one-dimensional solidification of A1-Cu alloys. The A1-Cu system was chosen strictly as a matter of convenience. Three different alloys containing 0.1, 4.5, and 17 pct Cu were used in these experiments. For each alloy the rate of heat removal was varied to give the total freezing time in the range 3 to 30 min. The results of these measurements are compared with the predictions of the theoretical model of solidification of binary alloys, with time-dependent surface temperature.' Before the experiments described in this paper were undertaken, a serious attempt was made to utilize the measurements of previous investigators to test the theoretical model. In the course of this preliminary study a careful review was made of experiments of Pellini and coworkers3 and Doherty and Melf~rd.~ The measurements in Pellini's work were carried out using a steel containing at least four major components. Evaluation of the solid fraction-temperature relation for this steel (required in the theoretical model) is difficult and uncertain. Doherty and Melford, on the other hand, measured the solid fraction-temperature relation experimentally, but did not give sufficient data to explore the effects of composition and the cooling rates on solidification. Hence it was not possible to utilize these measurements to test our theoretical model. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD The experimental technique used in this investigation differs somewhat from the more conventional techniques employed in solidification studies. This technique was developed primarily to eliminate con-vective mixing in the molten metal caused by pouring of molten metal into the mold. In our experiments A1-Cu alloys were melted directly in the mold. The mold assembly used in solidification experiments is shown in Fig. 1. The mold was fabricated from *-in. stainless-steel sheet. The dimensions of

Jan 1, 1969

A $5000 contract to explore for asbestos in Marinette County. Wis., has been entered into between the Government and the Star Mining Co. of Madison, Wis. The Government will contribute 90 pct or $4500 to the cost of the project. The United States presently produces about 8 pct of its asbestos requirements. "Sulphur stockpiles are at a minimum for national security arid must not be further reduced," was the warning given by L. M. Williams, Jr., president of Freeport Sulphur Co. He stated that although the long-range outlook is favorable , current sulphur production cannot meet the demand and as a result the United States faces a crisis in the coming months.

Jan 12, 1951

By Ernest Gayford

When the United States Government started buying gold at varying prices per ounce, set by the President and the Treasury Department, the gold miner found himself facing new conditions, as gold became a commodity with a fluctuating market price. While it was self-evident that the miner was to receive more for his gold than the old established price of $20.67 per ounce, there was an element of uncertainty, which made it difficult, and perhaps dangerous, to decide to invest his time and money to produce gold, especially if the profit would represent only the difference between $20.67 an ounce and the new price as set from day to day by the Government. When, however, on Jan. 30, 1934, the United States went off the gold standard, the price of newly mined gold being rather definitely set at $35 per ounce, with some assurance that the price would be maintained at or near this figure for a long time to come, the gold miner was justified in revaluing his property on the basis of the new price, and the prospector was offered inducement to spend his time and energies hunting for new mines, or going back to old locations previously abandoned as of doubtful value. It is interesting to see what this new price means to the producer of newly mined gold, and how much of the increase is passed on to the producer. It will be found that, as with the base metals, the nearer he can get to producing a finished product himself the greater his reward will be; the net returns for bullion being necessarily higher than for the same amount of gold shipped in concentrates to the smelter. Bullion can be shipped to the United States mints or Government assay offices under the following terms and conditions. An affidavit must accompany the shipment, stating, among other things: 1. The source of the gold; whether ore, tailings or placer. 2. The tons of ore, tailings or cubic yards of gravel from which the shipment was recovered.

Jan 1, 1935

By AIME AIME

AN enthusiastic crowd, cheerfully confident that the upturn in the oil industry has arrived, gathered in Los Angeles on Sept. 29 for a Petroleum Division meeting arranged by the Southern California Section. The assembly room of the California Oil and Gas Association was the place of meeting. H. Norton Johnson was in the chair for the morning session, with about eighty members and guests present. Four papers were presented before lunch and a fifth, on electrical coring, was withdrawn as the work on which it was based is still confidential. Joseph Jensen read his contribution on the "Kettleman Hills Middle Dome Unit Plan" and, as he had an active part in framing the plan, his outline and discussion of it was authoritative and informing. J. H. Woods asked concerning the operation of the casing-head gasolene plant under the plan and was informed that one company would operate the plant and royalties would be paid participating companies

Jan 1, 1933