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By Otto F. Pfordte

Although the subject has no practical bearing on the metallurgy of the present day, it may not be entirely uninteresting to note how the art of silver-lead smelting has been, and in a few remote districts of Peru is still practiced by an old method, and under conditions widely different from our own. The subject will be considered under the following subdivisions,. viz.: The general conditions; construction and plan of furnaces;, fuels and ores; method of working; furnace products and slags. The mineral region of Peru varies in altitude from 10,000 to 16,000 feet above sea-level, comparatively few mines being locatedh above or below these limits. The timber-line in the valleys is at about 12,000 feet altitude on the western slope of the mountains, and even there the supply of wood is not sufficient to be utilized as fuel for furnaces. The sides of the mountains are either bare or covered with a hard bushy grass, which is most luxuriant during the latter part of the rainy season, from February to April. Agriculture on the western slope rarely reaches above 12,000 feet, while on the eastern slope its limit is at 14,000 feet; and in either case the height named is reached only in sheltered places. Transportation is slow, being carried on mainly by llamas, donkeys and mules; the former (taking 100 pounds at a load) are almost

Jan 1, 1893

By George W. Lower, William A. Hockings, Donald A. Kaczynski

The rate of dissolution of polycrystalline metallic copper in aqueous cupric ammonium nitrate solutions in the non-film-forming region was investigated by the rotating disc method. The investigation was performed in solution concentration ranges applicable to hydrometallurgical processes. This investigation was an extension of a study on the cupric ammonium carbonate system previously reported by Smith, Lower and Hockings, in which the following kinetic model was proposed: (1) Diffusion of cupric ammine ions to the copper surface; (2) Forward reaction - first order reaction of cupric ammine ions with metallic copper; (3) Reverse reaction - disproportionation of cuprous ammine ions to metallic copper and cupric ammine ions ; and (4) Diffusion of cuprous ammine ions from the copper surface. The nitrate system was selected for this study because it simplified the determination of the ionic composition of the solutions. The variables studied were stirring speed and cupric, ammonia, and nitrate concentrations. The dissolution rate increased linearly with at low values of but exhibited increasingly negative deviations from linearity at higher values of m. The rate also increased with increasing cupric concentration but decreased with increasing ammonia and nitrate concentration. Good agreement was obtained between the experimental rate data and the proposed model. Further verification of the model was indicated by the close agreement of the diffusion coefficient calculated from the data and comparable literature values.

Jan 1, 1974

By Stuart St. Clair

IN view of the great interest shown in the oil possibilities of Kentucky, one is impressed with the paucity of reliable literature on the oil fields of the state. A few brief reports by the Federal and State Geological Surveys are about the only reliable data available. When the estimated production figures, for 1918, are published by the U. S. Geological Survey, they will show a revival of the oil industry in the Blue Grass State during the past half decade. There will also be an increase in the production for 1919 and 1920, at least. Although as an oil-producing state Kentucky is small, compared with sonic of the other oil states, the present production and the area of undrilled proved territory is large enough to classify it as one of the important oil states of the Union. This paper will be confined to the Irvine District and the immediately adjoining areas which have been prospected with varying success. The Corniferous limestone or Irvine sand is the oil-producing formation in the area discussed.

Jan 7, 1919

By R. G. McQueen, E. G. Zukas

THE production of isotropic fine-grained ingot iron would be most useful since physical measurements associated with the elastic properties of iron are influenced by the size and orientation of the individual grains. This can be accomplished at present for small samples by established metallurgical procedures, but for large samples (in excess of 2 in. diam by 1 in. thick) it is virtually impossible to produce reasonably small uniform grains with random orientation. Such pieces can, however, be produced by impulsive loading followed by a suitable recrystallization treatment. The shock loading system employed is diagrammed in Fig. l. Here the 3/8-in. iron plate is accelerated by the plane-wave initiated high explosive charge through a 1 5/8-in. air space. Collision of this plate and the specimen of interest generates a shock wave in excess of 300 kbars which passes through the specimen. For this type of work it is not necessary to use machined parts: for example, the ingot iron pieces are saw cut from the billet so that they can be inserted in short sections of iron pipe. The recovered specimens are less distorted, however, if the air gap between the iron sample and pipe is filled with Woods metal. The dimensional changes resulting from this type of loading technique are minor, usually less than a 10 pct reduction in thickness. Compressive yield

Jan 1, 1962

By A. E. J. Engel

The New York talc deposits of commercial importance are in St. Lawrence and Lewis counties, in the northwest Adirondack Mountains (Fig 1). All of the deposits are of pre-Cambrian age and occur within highly deformed and recrystallized marble of the Gren-ville series. The deposits in St. Lawrence County, near Gouverneur, are the largest and most productive of their type known in the Western Hemisphere. In 1948 the seven mines which are in operation will produce about 130,000 tons of ground talc. All talc production in Lewis County is from one mine. There the annual production ranges from 15,000 to 30,000 tons. These so called talcs of New Yorb State include earth materials of different chemical and mineral compositions. In general the mineral talc is subordinate in amount to other minerals in both the Gouverneur and Natural Bridge deposits. In the Gouverneur district the mineral talc comprises less than 25 pct of the mined and ground rock. Most of the rock mined is a tremolite- or tremolite-anthophyllite schist somewhat altered to serpentine and talc. This characteristic in no way tlevaluates the "talc" for certain markets, and in some instances makes the material more desirable. The Natural Bridge talcs include types high in serpentine, as well as complex aggregates of serpentine, talc, carbonates, and diopside. Usage of the term talc, however, for

Jan 1, 1950

Surface mining of coal is widely condemned as a despoiler of the countryside and wastrel of land and natural resources. Yet the fact has been as widely ignored that the ingenuity of those engaged in developing the methods and equipment utilized in surface mining have made several hundred million tons of coal available for utilities and industry which could never have been mined by any other method. While doing this, the surface mining companies have recovered nearly 100% of the coal in the mining area instead of approximately 50% as is common in underground methods. Efficiency has been increasing constantly, thereby maintaining low cost to the customer. Mining has provided economic health in many areas by virtue of the direct payrolls and by the attraction of other industries to enjoy low cost, dependable fuel supplies. Surface mining of coal generally falls into two categories: contour mining, which is the result of mining in hilly or mountainous terrain where the hillside or slope limits the width of the area which can be surface mined; and area mining, which results from the surface of the land being approximately parallel with the coal seam so that a wide area may be mined in a succession of pits or open cuts.

Jan 10, 1972

Beyond the industrial suburbs of Melbourne to the southeast are brown coal deposits just under the fertile soil of the Latrobe Valley. These deposits rank as one of the wonders of the world. The manner in which this resource is put to use is one of the great engineering accomplishments of our time and also a prime example of Australian elan. The brown coal, with over 60% water content, occurs in beds from 200 to 400 ft thick, under 50 ft of cover. Fifty thousand tons of coal per day move in a nearly continuous stream from mining face to boilers. The power plants supply two thirds of the State of Victoria's requirements, about 800 megawatts. Surge capacity between mine and power plant is sufficient for 12 hr steaming time! Victorian brown coals have been known since the middle of the 19th century. However, it took a strike of bituminous coal miners in 1915 to bring brown coal permanently into the picture as a fuel for power generation. In Australia, power generation is a State function. The great development of brown coals has been under the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.

Jan 10, 1964

By T. M. Berry

In the past few years changes have taken place in shaft sinking. Progress has been made with types of machinery designed, developed, and made available to shaft sinking contractors. This is particularly true of drilling and mucking equipment. Compared with conventional clamshell loading, mucking or loading with a crawler-mounted overshot loader is a new technique for shaft work. There are several methods of clamshell loading. Dravo Construction Co. mounts an air tugger on the clamshell to operate the closing line. The load, or holding line, is attached to the hoist of a crane or whirler at the shaft collar. The clamshell is raised or lowered by the hoist when a signal is given by a bell or light system operated by men at the bottom of the shaft. Two men control the drift of the clamshell with tag lines, pulling it to any position in the shaft for loading, or over the shaft muck bucket for emptying. One man operates the air tugger to open and close the clamshell by means of two lines attached to the operating air valve, just as reins are used to drive a horse. One man operates the signal telling the hoist operator when to raise or lower the clamshell. This method requires two hoisting lines in the shaft-the line from the mine hoist that lifts

Dec 1, 1956

By Frederick Prime

AT the last meeting of the Institute, Mr. A. L. Holley read a paper on "Steel," in which he proposes for it a definition so opposed to the one generally received, as to call for some remarks. Until within the last five or six years there has been no dispute on the subject, and it seems worth while to investigate the matter. For not only does a proper tax on all importations depend on a proper appreciation of the term steel, but it is necessary to know whether steel, or wrought-iron, or homogeneous iron are requisite in all processes of manufacture in which malleable iron is employed, on account of cost, strength, etc. Karsteu* says : " Iron may be obtained, either as an unforgeable, unweldable metal, which melts at a high heat, termed cast-iron; or as a ductile, weldable, soft metal, which can only be melted at the * Karsten, Handbuch der Eisenhüttenkunde, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 6. Berlin, 1841.

Jan 1, 1876

Weiss Transit and Level The illustrations shown are the transits and levels manufactured by the Weiss Instrument Co. of Denver, Colo:, and they state that city and mining engineers are securing satisfactory results. It is claimed that their patented prismatic telescope gives increased illumination with an astronomical eye-piece. The prisms are set in a milled seat for this purpose, and cemented in so they can never come loose or out of adjustment. All adjustment for collimation is clone with the cross-hairs. This telescope is 8 in. long for magnifying power of 20 diameters against 12 in. for regular old style. The field is 1° 45' with a clear aperture of 1 1/8 in. The standards are 4 ¾ in. high from plate; to center of telescope axis. Weight 10 lb. Fig: 2. FIG. 1. FIG;. 3. The Light Mountain Transit of the same type, Fig. 1, has a telescope 6 ½ in. long, magnifying power 17 diameters; field 2° 15'; clear aperture 1 1/16 in.; weight 9 lb. The Mine Transit made by this ?company is interesting because it may be sighted directly down a shaft.. The principal advantage claimed for this type is the arrangement by means. of which vertical' sights can be had without an additional telescope.. As illustrated in Fig. 2 the telescope is in the position of a regular transit, and used exactly the same.

Jan 10, 1915

The banquet Wednesday evening was attended by about 700. The list of speakers was unusually brilliant and each one proved to be so interesting that it was nearly midnight before the dancing began. Capt. Robert W. Hunt was toastmaster. Captain Hunt is about to celebrate his eighty-first birthday but is blest with unusual vigor and it was a great pleasure to all his friends to honor him at this time. His selection is toastmaster was a happy one. The guest of the evening, if among so many stars one could be selected from the rest, was Charles M. Schwab, who said nothing but the urgent telegram from his dear old friend, Captain Hunt, could have drawn him away from his seclusion on his Pennsylvania farm to attend the meeting in Chicago. Mr. Schwab's address was, as usual, scintillating with wit and humor; and while lie did not directly or indirectly allude to the steel strike lie did at the end of his talk discuss serious things and gave it as his opinion that any effort to legislate or control the high cost of living would be futile until this country got down to a basis of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage.

Jan 11, 1919

By T. A. Read, M. S. Wechsler, D. S. Lieberman

IN the formation of martensite in steel, it has been observed that the habit plane does not change continuously as the alloy content is varied. Instead, it appears that discrete habits correspond to certain ranges of composition. Greninger and Troiano' found that in low-, medium-, and high-carbon steels, the habits are approximately (1l1), (225), and (259), respectively.* The work of Mehl and Van Winkle2 indicated that the change from the (225) to the (259) habit is fundamentally a consequence of the lower transformation temperature rather than the higher carbon content. Also, Otte and Read3 observed that the habit plane orientation for a chrome-carbon steel scattered within a cone of semivertex angle of 5 deg, which was outside of the experimental error in the determination of the habit plane. These observations suggest the importance of investigating what factors in the crystallography of the formation of martensite account for the several types of habit and the inherent scatter in the precise orientation of the habit plane. A theoretical treatment of the austenite-martensite transformation has been given,4 which considers the total transformation distortion to be composed

Jan 1, 1961

By N. B. Wittman

The working of blast-furnaces is always of interest to many members of the Institute, for which reason I present an account of the working of the furnaces of the E. and G. Brooke Iron Company, of which I have had charge for the past four years. Although there are no phenomenal runs to record, there have been long periods of satisfactory work, and also periods—altogether too long—when one of our furnaces has behaved in a way which may be described as "nagging." All the conditions were apparently normal,but only a very light burden could be carried, which of course resulted in a high fuel-consumption to the ton of iron, as well as increased cost of labor. The two active furnaces of this company have the following dimensions and equipment : No 2. No 3. Feet. Feet. Height ....55 60 Diameter at bosh,.....- 15, 16 " hearth,...... 8 74 " stock-line,..10 91/2 Height of bosh,..23 23 " tuyeres,. 5 5 Diameter of bell,.7 6 Front,....closed open Both furnaces are blown with I. P. Morris condensing-engines, sim

Jan 1, 1890

By D. Y. Geng, S. S. Peng

Surface subsidence of two longwall panels, one with a private residence and the other with an arch bridge, was monitored over a period of 1 to 1' ½ years. Surface subsidence data were analyzed in terms of zone of advance influence and delay angle of maximum subsidence velocity. The variational characteristics of both features coincide with the periodic weighting at the advancing longwall face. Surface heaving in the subsidence process can also be attributed to periodic weighting. It was found that residential damages occurred when subsidence velocity exceeded 4.5 mm/day (0.15 ft/day). The effects of locating structures on the panel center and near the gob edges are illustrated. The effect of mining on ground water was also discussed. Finally, methods of reducing structural damages are recommended.

Jan 1, 1984

By Thomas M. Chatard

Every one engaged in the mining of phosphates is well aware that the price he gets for his product depends upon tile results of chemical analysis. He knows that the value rises with the percentage of phosphoric acid, whether stated as such or as so-called " bone phosphate," and that deductions are made for certain constituents, such as alumina or oxide of iron, when the amount of these exceeds certain limits. The reason for these deductions is but vaguely understood by many, and there are few who possess the special knowledge required to form a competent judgment, either as to the reli-

Jan 1, 1893

By R. W. Raymond

This paper is simply a summary, prepared at the request of the Council of the Institute, of the report of Mr. Albert Ladd Colby, of South Bethlehem, Pa., presented at the New York meeting (October, 1896) of the Association of American SteelManufacturers, on " The Advisability of the Endorsement by the Association of the United States Standard Gauge, approved by Act of Congress, March 3, 1893, to the Exclusion of the Birmingham Gauge, the .Brown and Sharpe, and all Others:" a subject on which, at the Pittsburgh meeting (April, 1896) of the said Association, Mr. Colby had been appointed as a committee. The report favors the adoption, not of the United States standard gauge to the exclusion of others, but of a decimal system of gauging all materials in thousandths of an inch, thus doing away entirely with arbitrary gauge-numbers running in inverse order to the actual thickness. The American Institute of Mining Engineers originated this movement. The report of its committee on a standard wiregauge, presented in October, 1877,* recommended the abandonment of the system of fixed gauges for commercial use, and of the system of representing the diameters and sizes by numbers, and the adoption, in lieu thereof, of the system of expressing sizes in thousandths of an inch or fractions of a millimeter, and the use of the micrometer-gauge as a means of measuring sizes. In 1892 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers appointed a similar committee, and corresponding action was

Jan 1, 1898

By Jack C. Bokros, Philip C. Rosenthal

DEVELOPMENT of the autoradiographic method in metallurgical research has been directed mainly toward gaining higher resolution, i.e., toward being able to locate segregation of a radioactive isotope on a finer scale. In the investigation reported, the liquid emulsion autoradiographic technique' used in the biological science was adapted to the autoradiography of metals. The distribution of carbon-14 in pure iron after various treatments was studied using this technique. Amorphous carbon uniformly labelled with carbon-14 at a specific activity of 6.95 microcuries per millimole was obtained from Tracerlab Inc. Carbon-14 emits P particles having a maximum energy of 157 kev and an average energy of about 50 kev. These ßs have a maximum range of about 30 mg per cm' and a half-thickness of about 3 mg per cm2. The iron used was spectroscopically pure electrolytic iron prepared by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Unhardened nuclear track emulsion, type NTB, was kindly supplied by the Eastman Kodak Co. This emulsion contains approximately 80 pct Ag halide,

Jan 1, 1957

By A. U. Seybolt

Precipitation of FeO from Fe-O solid solutions has been studied by metallographic methods. Such precipitation, which is visible, is composed largely of barely resolvable spheroidal particles. No metallographic evidence has been found for grain boundary oxide films. Oxygen diffusion into a iron does not occur chiefly by inter-granular penetration. IN an earlier communication' dealing with the solid solubility of oxygen in a iron, it was shown that under one set of conditions it was possible to show FeO precipitated from supersaturated solid solution. However, to assist in rationalizing the effect of an FeO second phase upon the mechanical properties of iron, it would be desirable to have more information on the possible modes of precipitation and on the thermal treatments required to produce precipitation.

Jan 1, 1955

By L. Adler

Some estimate of the geologic pressures existine at the site of a proposed underground opening is essential for its economic design and construction. Regardless of the size of such an opening, drill hole, or mine stope, these primitive stresses need evaluation; at present a number of techniques are available for this purpose. However, a new method of analysind stresses is proposed in this paper. Some estimate of the geologic pressures existing at the site of a proposed underground opening is essential for its economic design and construction. Regardless of the size of such an opening, drill hole or mine stope, these primitive stresses need evaluation. At present a number of techniques are available for this purpose, and another one is to be proposed. These may be grouped into three general methods: 1) precedent, 2) instrumentation, and 3) theoretical analysis. The first two are covered in the literature where their advantages, as well as limitations, are discussed.'9' Generally a theoretical approach combines structural geology with engineering mechanics. The former deals with the geodynamic causes of residual stresses (stresses not related to overburden weight) and presents interesting, but controversial, views.'" A general and useful conclusion, however, can be drawn - vertical residual stresses are much less prevalent than horizontal. However, if for some reason, the values and effects of horizontal pressures were better known to engineers the following analysis

Jan 1, 1962

By Frank S. Shuri

INTRODUCTION The Calumet Pumping Station, located on the south side of the Greater Chicago area, is part of the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan to accomodate the city's wastewater. The Station consists of two parallel rock caverns, each 18 m high, 20 m wide, and 62 m long, located in Silurian dolomite approximately 91 m below the ground surface. The caverns are oriented N-S with a 24-m-wide pillar between them. Prior to construction, rock mechanics studies were conducted in an L-shaped test adit at the location of the west cavern. The purpo3e of the rock mechanic studies was to characterize the site, particularly the in situ stress field and deformation characteristics of the rock. This information, together with other physical properties of the rock and geologic data, was used to evaluate the stability of the preliminary cavern design, with particular emphasis on cavern orientation, rock reinforcement, and pillar stability. GEOLOGY OF THE SITE Stratigraphy The Chicago area is located on the Kankakee Arch, a broad, gently sloping arch of Paleozoic sediments. Rocks in the project area consist of Silurian dolomites unconformably overlain by Pleistocene glacial deposits. The formations of interest to this study are: - Racine Formation, inter-reef facies. This dolomite is gray- brown, silty, and compact. It contains occasional prominent bedding surfaces. The Racine Formation in the project area varies from 73 to 74 m in thickness.

Jan 1, 1984