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By James F. O'Neill

Brown iron ore deposits in Quitman County , Ga . , were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Mines in cooperation with the State of Georgia , Department of Commerce , and the University of Alabama . Ninety- one holes were drilled , having an aggregate footage of 2,188 feet ; seventy- one holes penetrated 248 feet of iron mineralization . Average thickness of the ore zone was 3.5 feet under an average thickness of 14.7 feet of overburden . The drilling developed inferred reserves containing nearly 30 million long tons of crude ore with an average analysis of 28 percent iron plus minor quantities of manganese . Test work done by the Bureau on the crude ore samples indicated that they would upgrade by current log washer practice , with the use of a 1 /8 - inch screen , and yield 4.4 million dry long tons of concentrate with an average analysis of 52.1 percent iron plus manganese . The weight recovery obtained was 14.7 percent . Research studies made by the Bureau showed that the weight recovery would be increased by changing the screen size without any appreciable sacrifice of grade . The average weight recovery was increased to 18 percent with a 10 - mesh screen and 22.8 percent with a 20 - mesh screen . Screen tests studies indicated that there was no appreciable interlocking of the iron and manganese minerals and the clay and silica waste particles of the materials retained on a 200- mesh screen . Clay was prominent in micron - size slimes . Silica was deleterious in the minus 20 - mesh size .

Jan 1, 1965

Commodities statistics and other information are available through the following three systems: Internet Access: To acccess the USBM Gopher server on Internet, connect to: gopher.usbm.gov port 70, using gopher client software. Or contact the Systems Administrator for technical questions: Matt Klevemann, 412-892-6499 (klevemmc@miner.usbm.gov) These USBM materials are available on Internet, with more to come in the future: Publications and other research findings, including this bimonthly publications list, newsletters, tech transfer updates, enviromental technology research, health and safety information. USBM software products Media materials and speeches. Mines Data: Computer bulletin board. Log on via modem through 202/501-0373, or call 202/501-0406 for technical assistance. Mines FaxBack. Return fax service. 1. Use the touch-tone handset attached to your fax machine's telephone jack. (ISDN [digital] telephones cannot be used with fax machines.) 2. Dial 202/219-3644. 3. Listen to the menu options and punch in the number of your selection, using the touch-tone telephone. 4. After completing your selection, press the start button on your fax machine.

Jan 1, 1995

By Jennifer Riefenberg

The U.S. Bureau of Mines has long recognized the hazards associated with rock burst activity in underground mines. Concern over lost lives and resources prompted this study to further characterize rock burst occurrence as related to microseismicity and mining. A period of over 1,079 days of mining with 101 bursts, where microseismicity rates and blasting were recorded, was used in this study. Statistical analyses investigated relationships between (1) rock burst occurrence versus blasting, (2) rock burst size versus damage, (3) rock burst occurrence versus average micro seismicity rates, and (4) rock burst occurrence versus local mine geometry. Statistical analyses showed that 91% of all rock bursts occur with blasting while only 3% of all rock bursts occur, apparently, independent of blasting. Additionally, the long-term average daily micro seismicity rates appear to dictate when blasting will trigger rock bursts. Time series analysis on the daily microseismicity resulted in model equations that may be used to forecast the daily microseismic activity.

Jan 1, 2010

By M. W. Pullen

It is recognized that the determination of electrical resistivity of the earth within a given area may furnish information concerning the location of certain mineralized strata of economic importance. Present knowledge of the electrical resistivity of the various rock formations is almost nil, and the geophysicist who is detailed to make a survey of an area without any data as to the relative resistivity of the underlying rocks is greatly handicapped. Such surveys are usually made within areas known to contain mineral deposits to aid in locating desirable points for drilling. Usually these areas have been prospected by diamond drilling, and drill cores of the various rocks and ores are usually obtainable. Were it possible to make resistivity tests in a laboratory of the drill cores or from pieces of the rocks and ore within an area before attempting a field survey, this would indicate not only the advisability for such a survey but would aid considerably in the interpretation of the results of such a survey. To be of most value a definite method should be used for all such tests, and as yet such a method has not been established.

Jan 1, 1929

By D. A. Reynolds

The Bureau of Mines-American Gas Association survey of the carbonizing properties of American coals was begun in 1929, and has been continued almost without interruption since that time. Upwards of 100 coals have been carbonized at low, medium, and high temperatures in this survey, and about 200 additional coals have been carbonized at high temperatures only. All survey coals were blended with coal of different rank for carbonization at one high temperature (900° C,). During the past few years, 12-high-volatile A coals were blended with Pocahontas No 3 coal from Kimball, McDowell County, W. Va., and in this report the physical properties of the cokes from these high-volatile coals and their blends are compared.

Jan 1, 1949

By John Ward Smith

Aragonite, co-occurring with calcite and dolomite as matrix minerals, has been discovered in Mahogany zone oil shales of Colorado's Eocene Green River Formation, posing puzzles on the geochemical patterns of their separate origins, reasons for their simultaneous existence, and their interrelation. The presence of aragonite is demonstrated by X-ray diffraction. Amounts of aragonite and dolomite are significantly and inversely related, but the calcite quantity is essentially independent of either aragonite or dolomite quantity. A geochemical pattern outlining the deposition conditions that created the Green River Formation oil shale is postulated from characteristics of the oil shale. The development of the three separate carbonates--aragonite, calcite, and dolomite--the inverse relationship between aragonite and dolomite, and the independence of amounts of calcite and the other two carbonates are shown to be natural consequences of this oil-shale genesis pattern.

Jan 1, 1973

By J. E. Doo1ey

To process and use the heavy ends of petroleum effectively, the development of suitable separation and characterization procedures not currently available was required. A systematic procedure was developed by the Bureau of Mines using such techniques as isothermal and molecular distillation, chemical treatment, silica-alumina gel chromatography, gel permeation chromatography, and spectrometry. Using these techniques, the Bureau achieved a detailed separation and characterization of a 370° to 535° C distillate from Gach Saran, Iran, crude oil. Such a systematic procedure and the semiquantitative data resulting therefrom should be of value in selecting feedstocks and in optimizing petroleum processing operations.

Jan 1, 1973

Commodities statistics and otter information are available through the following t et systems: Internet Access: To acccess the USBM Gopher server on Internet, connect to: gopher.usbm.gov port 70, using gopher client software. Or contact the Systems Administrator for technical questions: Matt Klevemann, 412-892-6499 (klevemmc@miner.usbm.gov) These USBM materials are available on Internet, with more to come in the future: Publications and other research findings, including this bimonthly publications list, newsletters, tech transfer updates, enviromental technology research, health and safety information. USBM software products Media materials and speeches. Mines Data: Computer bulletin board. Log on via modem through 202/501-0373, or call 202/501-0406 for technical assistance. Mines FaxBack: Return fax service. 1. Use the touch-tone handset attached to your fax machine's telephone jack. (ISDN [digital] telephones cannot be used with fax machines.) 2. Dial 202/219-3644. 3. Listen to the menu options and punch in the number of your selection, using the touch-tone telephone. 4. After completing your selection, press the start button on your fax machine.

Jan 1, 1995

By L. E. Schultze

Experiments were conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Mines to verify enhancements due to chloride and surfactant additions in the leaching system of chalcopyrite with ferric sulfate and sulfuric acid. A statistical experimental design was used and equipment was designed to eliminate contributions from changes in solution electrochemical potential during the course of the measurements. Results confirmed that chloride additions increased chalcopyrite leaching by as much as 94 pct over the electrochemical potential versus hydrogen electrode range of 630 to 750 mV at pH 1.7 and 50°C. Total iron concentration had no effect over the range of 1 to 5 g/L. The effect of surfactant addition was less well defined. While additions of LA 790 (a polyoxyethylene lauryl ether) resulted in increased copper leaching in several of the tests, the differences were too small to be statistically significant. No interaction effect could be verified.

Jan 1, 2010

By G. B. Atkinson

The Bureau of Mines investigated a method for increasing the leaching rate of bulk superalloy scrap to facilitate recycling and recovery of critical metals such as Ni, Co, and Cr. Three superalloys were investi- gated, the cast-nickel-base superalloy IN-738, the wrought-nickel-base superalloy Rene-41, and the cast-cobalt-base superalloy Mar-M-509. Superalloys melted with 20, 30, 40, and 50 pct Al metal to form inter- metallic compounds were easily crushed to a convenient particle size and reacted rapidly with acid solutions which dissolved the metals. For example, leaching 1/2-in pieces of unalloyed IN-738 with excess 6N HC1 at 95° C for 2 h dissolved about 0.5 pct, while leaching 10 g of minus 20-mesh 30 pct Al-70 pct IN-738 with excess 6N HC1 at 95° C for 2 h dis- solved 96.2 pct.

Jan 1, 1983

By K. E. Soroka

More than 500 fires are now burning in abandoned coal waste banks and coal deposits in the United States. Once established, such fires can burn for decades, and extinguishing them by conventional methods such as surface sealing to exclude air, excavation to remove fuel, or flushing to cool the fire zone is usually difficult and always expensive. Burnout Control, a technique developed by the Bureau of Mines for the control of abandoned coal fires, involves the accelerated combustion of coal in place with total management of the heat and fumes produced. A burning waste bank or mine is placed under negative pressure relative to the atmosphere, and heat and combustion products are drawn from the combustion zone through an exhaust ventilation system. Heat produced appears as sensible heat in the exhaust, at temperatures as high as 1,0000 C (1,832° F), and could be recovered for the production of steam, hot water, process heat, or electricity. The Bureau's first held field demonstration of Burnout Control was at Calamity Hollow in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh). Calamity Hollow was the site of an underground mine in the 1900's and was surface mined in the 1940's. In the winter of 1961-62, a fire of undetermined origin was discovered in the exposed coal. In 1963, the Bureau constructed a trench barrier around the fire and a surface seal over the affected area. The fire was isolated but not completely extinguished. In 1979, when the Bureau began work on the Calamity Hollow Mine Fire Project to demonstrate controlled burnout, the fire was still smoldering on the hot side of the trench barrier. The project, which was begun in December 1979 and ended in July 1982, consisted of the design, construction, operation, and subsequent dismantling of a Burnout Control ventilation system. This report is the fifth in a five-part series that describes the Calamity Hollow Mine Fire Project. The first report, part 1, describes the design and construction of the field installation. Part 2 will present the results of a continuous 4-month burnout operation. (Because part 2 involves the analysis of a substantial body of data, it will not be published until after publication of parts 1, 3, 4, and 5.) Part 3 describes the instrumentation used to control and monitor the progress of the burnout operation. Parts 4 and 5 deal with the closeout phase of the field demonstration. Part 4 describes the procedure used to quench the fire, and this part (part 5) describes the final excavation and backfilling of the heated zones. The reports in this series document the Calamity Hollow controlled burnout demonstration which showed that (1) controlled in situ combustion is a feasible method for controlling underground fires in abandoned mines, (2) the resultant thermal exhaust output is sufficient for energy utilization, and (3) water injection-fume exhaustion is a potentially effective method for cooling large underground fire zones. Further investigations of both Burnout Control and the water-injection-fume exhaustion quenching procedure are planned.

Jan 1, 1986

By A. R. Mumford

During the course of an investigation conducted by the fuel section of the Bureau of Mines , on a hand- fired return- tubular boiler plant , it was found that the average cost of fuel to produce 1,000 lb. of steam was $ 0.5287 . Tests conducted after some simple changes had been made in the furnaces , and in the control of the boilers , showed the previous high cost of fuel per 1,000 lb. of steam could be reduced to the reasonable figure of $0.3540 , or the equivalent of over 30 per cent saving in fuel cost .

Mar 1, 1923

Minerals are vital to any industrialized civilization. Annually, the United States uses more than 4 billion tons of new mineral materials, or about 40,000 pounds per person-about half being mineral fuels and the other half being metals and nonmetallics. Stable and economic domestic mining, mineral, metal, and mineral reclamation industries are essential to the economy. The value of United States energy and processed materials of mineral origin exceds $200 billion annually. Although a number of minerals are imported, especially some designated as "strategic and critical," most U.S. mineral supplies are derived from the domestic mines and processing facilities that you will be seeing, reading about, and visiting as you use this visitor guide. We hope you enjoy your experiences. This pamphlet, a guide to mining and mineral operations that may be observed or visited and some other points of interest relating to minerals, is intended to aid tourists and students who are interested in mining. Some may wish to study our Nation's romantic past; others may plan to enter the minerals industry as a career; still others may have a primary interest in conservation practices. The pamphlet is also intended to aid State and local officials, Chambers of Commerce, and mining firms in answering some of the many questions of tourists and students.

Jan 1, 1976

By W. W. Odell

"It is common knowledge that extensive lignite deposits occur in the States of Montana, North and South Dakota and Texas. The total area of these deposits and the total amount of lignite in them is so great that the true economic value of lignite is seldom realized. These deposits underlie areas of thousands of square miles. The area of the lignite lands in North Dakota alone is estimated to be approximately 32,000 square miles. Nearly one-third of the total solid-fuel resources of the United States is lignite and approximately 90 per cent of this lies in the Northwest.To the people of the Northwest the more extended utilization of lignite is of fundamental importance, hence any methods for commercially producing salable products from lignite that promise further development of these great fields deserve careful study.The development of our lignite resources has been slow, partly because the districts wherein lignite is found is not thickly settled or highly developed in manufacturing industries, but also because of the physical and chemical characteristics of the lignite. Lignite is classed as a low-grade fuel and may be con¬sidered as imperfectly developed coal -which has a more or less woody structure; it may be of the brown-coal type or darker, denser and more homogeneous, approaching subbituminous coal in character. As mined it contains more than 30 per cent of moisture exclusive of the -rater of decomposition formed .then it is carbonized or burned. The heating value as determined by the calorimeter is approximately half that of good quality bituminous coal. Upon exposure to the air lignite loses part of its moisture, whereupon the lumps chock and split until after considerable exposure, a large percentage of slack is formed. It cannot be stored in large piles so successfully as come other fuels, and it some instances it is more apt to ignite spontaneously in storage or in transit then the higher grade fuels."

Feb 1, 1924

By Charles L. Kimbell

For a study such as this, which summarizes and amalgamates much information collected, compiled, and utilized by the numerous U.S. Bureau of Mines country specialists and branch chiefs for inclusion in their country and regional reports that comprise the five other volumes of the international studies of the Minerals Yearbook, it is clearly impossible to cite all sources of information used in its presentation, but some recognition seems due. Generally speaking, this study and its related detailed studies on countries and areas would be much more difficult, if not impossible, without the efforts of the personnel of our counterpart agencies throughout the world. Information they collect, compile, and then publish, either in their own volumes or those of central statistical agencies in their countries, are the foundations on which this work rests. Thus, we must begin by expressing our appreciation to the multitude of persons employed by these agencies for their contributions.

Jan 1, 1993

By Y. Miron

Previous studies at the Bureau of Mines outlined the hazards of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (AN-FO) mixtures in the presence of pyrite-bearing ores. The recent trend in the mining industry to strengthen AN-FO by the addition of aluminum metal raised the question regarding the effect of aluminum in AN-FO in the presence of pyrite-bearing ore. Laboratory work, similar to that done previously, demonstrated that the temperature of a self-sustaining reaction in the presence of AN-FO ore-aluminum is not lower than that for a comparable AN-FO-ore mixture. However, as might be expected from known thermochemical data, once initiated, the resulting reactions between AN-FO, aluminum, and pyrite are much more vigorous than those observed for AN-FO and pyrites alone. The temperature required to produce a self-sustained reaction for the combinations tested in this study is 250°±20° F while in the previous Bureau study, reactions were noted, in some instances, at 150° F. The different pyritic ores may be the cause of this variation.

Jan 1, 1976

By Kevin Malone

Chrysotile asbestos occurs in many counties in California, and a small production had been reported at times, but development of deposits had been disappointing. A reconnaissance survey by the Bureau of Mines indicated that several deposits in the serpentine belt in Shasta, Trinity, and Siskiyou Counties might contain enough asbestos of filler grade to supply the growing demand on the west coast. Accordingly from 1956 to 1958 parts of the Mount Eddy and Shasta View deposits were investigated by trenching and diamond drilling to determine their potential. The work comprised construction of roads, bulldozer trenching, excavation of areas for diamond drilling, sampling, and upping. The trenches were excavated to expose the surface extent of some of the asbestos-bearing areas, To determine the downward continuation of asbestos-bearing sections and to secure samples for test purposes, six diamond drill holes, totaling 1,738 linear feet, were drilled in two selected areas. The trenching and core-drilling indicated that the asbestos-bearing material occurs as ribs and lenses of varying thicknesses in a broad belt of serpentine, about 600 feet wide and several miles long,

Jan 1, 1962

By W. K. Sawyer

Resistivity, porosity, permeability, and saturation data were obtained on core samples from the Big Injun, Clinton, Gordon, Bradford Second and Third, and Venango Second oil sands and formation factor-porosity relationships were derived using the general form of Archie's equation F = aø-m, where F is the formation factor, ø is the porosity, and a and m are constants that depend on characteristics of the rock. It was found that a and m varied significantly between sands, as did the exponent in the Archie relation I = Sw-n, where I is the resistivity index and S, is the water saturation. The average exponent, n, determined from all data was 50 percent greater at residual oil saturation than at residual water saturation. Samples from each sand exhibited differences in directional resistivity and/or permeability. The Bradford Third sand data showed correlation between resistivity and permeability anisotropy.

Jan 1, 1971

From 1886, the first year shipments were recorded, until 1939, the Leadville district produced over 3,500,000 long tons of manganiferous ore. Of this total, metallurgical-type ores comprised 27 percent and manganiferous iron ores suitable for fluxing in lead smelters made up 73 percent. In 1939, the Bureau of Mines, as part of the strategic minerals investigative program being conducted at the time, requested the Mineral Industries Survey Section of the Mining Division to make a comprehensive study of the manganese resources of the Leadville area. This investigation, owing to the caved and flooded condition of the underground mine workings, was necessarily confined to a study of old maps, production records, and geological reports, and the results were published as an Information Circular in July 1940.

Jan 1, 1949

By T. E. Sterner

The Bureau of Mines investigated the use of a chromatographic gas analyzer in determining the concentration of combustion products in gas produced during field and laboratory thermal oil-recovery tests. Several parameters (carrier-gas flow, cell current, sample size, and temperature) known to affect quantitative analyses were studied using a commercially available dual-column, dual-detector chromatographic gas analyzer which had been modified to provide close control of these variables. The apparatus made possible a much closer control of air-and gas-injection rates and provided adequate data for performing material-balance calculations and for determining oxygen utilization during the laboratory and field combustion tests. The chromatographic analysis also aided materially in evaluating and measuring bypassing and gas travel times and in detecting high-permeability zones that were present in the reservoir.

Jan 1, 1965