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By E. H. GRAFF

PREPARATION of mechanically loaded coal in mines where seams contain considerable impurities is a subject that requires careful consideration before machines are installed, unless provision is made at the tipple for its preparation. Conditions vary a great deal in the different seams, so much so that a mechanical loader may be unsuccessful in one seam and yet the same machine may make good in another where conditions are different. The effect of impurities in the coal seam on mechanical loading will also vary according to the thickness of the seam. In thin seams impurities will be more difficult to remove than from thick seams, as will appear later. For the past several years the New River Co. has done considerable experimenting with loading equipment and during this process has changed from one machine to another.

Jan 1, 1926

By AIME

Generally speaking, the mining industry had a good year in 1948 with most mineral products being produced in record quantities for peacetime standards. The big boys-iron and steel, coal, and petroleum-indicated the industry-wide trend by surpassing 1947 production figures. Although exploration and expansion are being pushed aggressively in all branches of the industry, there is a pronounced trend to engineering and research directed at cutting production costs, improving the product, and finding new markets. These improvement campaigns are making headway; in the bituminous coal industry, 5.43 tons per man employed is the new production record; 83 million tons of iron ore were unloaded at lower Lake ports, breaking another peacetime record; magnesium, due to improvement in manufacturing techniques, now competes on the market with aluminum.

Jan 1, 1949

By AIME

Rapid exhaustion of iron ore in Minnesota's Mesabi range has led the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. to develop the world's largest open quarry mine for magnetite iron ore, at Star Lake, N. Y. Already contributing more than one eighth of the total iron ore used by the Corporation, the expanding Benson mines are destined to become Jones & Laughlin's important source of ore within the next ten years. In 1947 over 650,000 long tons of high-grade ore was produced. Output this year is expected to reach 800,000 long tons and studies are under way to increase production further. The future of the Benson mines is assured as present indications show large reserves of ore. The property, briefly described in M & M for November 1943, then under

Jan 1, 1948

By W. M. Peirce

WITH the supply of zinc, like that of most other nonferrous metals, inadequate to meet the demand, efforts to increase domestic ore supplies and production capacity have been of primary interest. No major sources of new ore have been disclosed during the year but improvements have been reported in facilities for mining and concentrating ores from existing mines. The American Zinc, Lead and Smelting Co. has announced its intention of erecting a new mill in the Ouray district of Colorado. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co. of Canada is reported to be planning improvements costing $3,000,000 to its Sullivan mine and concentrator at Kimberley, B.C., where the sink-float process is to be used for preliminary ore treatment. In the reduction field, the St. Joseph

Jan 1, 1947

By AIME AIME

AT A meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute held in London on May 6, Dr. J. E. Stead was formally inducted into the chair by Dr. Eugene Schneider, the retiring president. After presenting the Bessemer gold medal to Harry Brearley, of Sheffield, England, for his distinguished services to the British steel industry, Doctor Stead delivered his presidential address, a masterly review of iron and steel making progress during the past 50 years, emphasizing economy in production, and pointing out suggestions for future improvement. A considerable portion of the address was devoted to blast-furnace operation.

Jan 1, 1920

By CARL B. SNYDER

PERHAPS the most extraordinary thing about business, the trade and production of the country as a whole, is its amazing continuity and growth, its momentum and energy. It goes on year after year, growing steadily, almost without breaks, in spite of every kind of disturbance. We have been grossly deceived into the idea that business is highly variable. We have taken a few things like pig iron, and the like, constructional activity broadly, and imagined that these are a trustworthy measure of trade. Actually they are the worst that we could find. They do not apply to more than 10 per cent or, at the most, possibly 15 per cent of the total of the country's industrial activity. The other 85 or 90 per cent, or even more, goes on growing surely and steadily just like the growth of population and the steady advance in technique, invention, discovery, and improved methods of production Let me give you what seems to me one of the most remarkable examples of this amazing momentum and regularity. You know that 90 per cent or more of the business of the country is done 'by means of checks. About seven-eighths of the total of all checks drawn are reported regularly every week in the newspapers. Let us follow these reports from week to week, just as they come, and plot them up against the correspond- ing weeks of last year, and the year before, and the gear before that, as far back as you would like to go. Take especially the figures for 140 selected cities out- side of New York.

Jan 1, 1929

Conservationists have launched an attack on the mining law of 1872, accusing it of permitting the min- ing industry to rob the public and despoil the environment while doing it. Michael McCloskey, executive director of the Sierra Club, and one who has made known his opposition to the law said, "environmentalists are unified in their agreement that repeal . . . is one of conservation's most urgent tasks . . . ." Charles H. Callahan, executive vice president of the National Audubon Society, paralleled McCloskey's sentiments, calling the law a "disgrace" and a "give-away." In his opening statement before the Senate Interior Committee, Chairman Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) said that legislation pending before the committee would put the hard rock minerals under a leasing system as is the case with oil and gas.

Jan 1, 1971

By J. Henry Harden

I desire to call the attention of the Institute to a new form of drawing-board trestle. With the ordinary four-legged trestle, commonly used, one has not the means of adjusting the height of the board to the draughtsman. To obviate this inconvenience, and at the same time to enable one to incline the board, I have devised an arrangement of curved and straight slots and thumb-screws, by means of which the hoard can be raised three or more inches, and placed at any desired angle of inclination on either side. Figures 2, 3 (Plate I) show side and end elevations of the trestle for a single board, and Figure 4 for two boards. The latter form is adapted for use in schools, or where it is desired to economize space.

By William Kranz

Discussion of the paper of WILLIAM G. KRANZ, presented at the San Francisco meeting, September, 1915, and at the New York meeting, February, 1916, and printed in Bulletin No. 101, May, 1915, pp. 927 to 930. J. W. RICHARDS, So. Bethlehem, Pa.-At the present time I believe there are 35 electric steel furnaces under construction in the United States, and many more in operation. The United States Steel Corporation, for example, is putting up for one firm a plant of eight electric furnaces. The principal increase in use of the electric furnace at the present time is based on its superiority for making steel for shrapnel and for munitions of war. I understand that electric steel has been found far more reliable and suitable than ordinary steel for these purposes in Europe.

Jan 5, 1916

According to published reports, controlled production from the Masjid-i-Sulaiman and Haft Kel fields for the year 1934 was as follows: No new development of major importance in either of these areas is reported. Owing to the increasing- demand in North Iran, particularly for gasoline and kerosene, it has been arranged that this market shall in future draw its supplies from a newly constructed refinery at Kennan-shah. This refinery is connected by a 3-in. pipe line, 145 miles long, with the Naft-i-Shah field, on the borders of Iraq and Iran. The crude oil will pass through a topping plant at the field and the products will be stored and pumped to the Kermanshah refinery in such proportions and quantities as are demanded by actual market requirements.

Jan 1, 1935

G. K. BURGESS,* Washington, D. C.-In the service tests, the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics considered it highly necessary, particularly for seaplanes, to find out whether or not it was necessary to paint exposed parts; reports have been obtained but have not been pub-lished at the present time. Investigations were carried on at three Navy Yards. On just a hurried examination, the inspection was made about two weeks ago and the results are now being digested an examination shows that the aluminum alloys, whether painted or unpainted, stand up very well. It apparently is not necessary to paint, which, of course, is a very important item in the question of the weight of seaplanes. We will be able to report on that, I expect, probably at the next meeting.

Jan 12, 1919

By J. Henry Harden

I DESIRE to call the attention of the Institute to a new form of drawing-board trestle. With the ordinary four-legged trestle, commonly used, one has not the means of adjusting the height of the board to the draughtsman. To obviate this inconvenience, and at the same time to enable one to incline the board, I have devised an arrangement of curved and straight slots and thumb-screws, by means of which the board can be raised three or more inches, and placed at any desired angle of inclination on either side. Figures 2, 3 (Plate I) show side and end elevations of the trestle for a single board, and Figure 4 for two boards. The latter form is adapted for use in schools, or where it is desired to economize space.

Jan 1, 1874

By Guy R. Johnson

In working brown iron-ore mines on the system employed at Longdale, namely, stoping from the top down, the usual procedure is to drive a succession of upraises from the lowest adit to the highest, or to the top of the deposit, as the case may be. These up-raises are usually driven 120 feet apart., along the strike of the vein,. As the work goes on, they are connected by levels, 10 feet spa* (vertically), and then serve as chutes. A transit is useless in surveying these chutes, and the writer has for several years made use of a hanging compass. The method of using this instrument, described in a former paper (Trans., xx.,.105), embracing as it does the use of a cord and several strips. of wood,

Jan 1, 1894

By J. E. Lawver

On the basis of both laboratory and pilot-scale tests, a newly developed high-tension electrostatic process is technically and economically feasible for the production of iron ore superconcentrates containing 0.02 to 0.20% silica at iron recoveries of 85 to 90%. The process can be used to recover both a superconcentrate and a pellet-grade concentrate, from a feed containing middlings, and the system is not unduly upset from changes in feed structure and composition. The adverse affect of excess quantities of material finer than 30 microns, i.e., above 10% in quantity can be avoided by a desliming step. Finally, because of the cost of drying, the best feed for the process appears to be dry-ground ores as well as spiral, flotation, or magnetic concentrates.

Jan 1, 1970

By S. H. Ash

Safety records in the mineral industry for 1954 will do well to hold their own as compared with 1953, because of the poorer rate in the coalmining branches, even without the recent mine explosion at the No. 9 mine of the Jamison Coal & Coke Co., Farmington, W. Va., that killed 16 persons. .The cause of that disaster has not yet been ascertained. The metal-mining branch appears to have improved its record over the last year, however. Health Diesel equipment continues to be favored in non-coal mines. Equipment includes locomotives, trucks, tractors, and muckers. Of major concern and interest is the establishment of a new threshold limit for oxides of nitrogen-5 ppm as compared with 25 ppm. This gas is the most harmful component of diesel-engine exhaust gas

Jan 3, 1955

By Takahide Wakamatsu, Douglas W. Fuerstenau

Contact angles on alumina are related directly to the adsorption of alkyl sulfonates at the solid-water interface and thus are strongly controlled by the pH of the solution, the concentration of surfactant, and the number of carbon atoms in the alkyl chain. As the pH of the solution is increased above the point of zero charge, sulfonate adsorption ceases and alumina remains hydrophilic. However, in neutral and acidic solutions, contact angles increase markedly in magnitude when the adsorbed sulfonate ions form hemimicelles at the solid-water interface. Under a wide variety of solution conditions, a limiting value of the contact angle is attained at the point of reversal of the zeta potential. Finally, contact angle phenomena are empirically correlated with the sulfonate adsorption density through the work of adhesion.

Jan 1, 1974

By T. W. Healy, M. S. Moignard

The use of electrokinetic or zeta-potential phenomena in studies of the properties of mineral sulphides has increased greatly over recent years. This review aims to examine and discuss the body of literature on the subject of electrokinetic properties of sulphides in a comprehensive and critical manner. Although the review covers the period from 1925 to 1975, it is only in the past ten years that researchers have been fully aware of the implications and problems of chemical reactions, notably oxidation and precipitation reactions, on the surface properties of sulphide minerals. These papers are discussed in more detail than the earlier publications. A table containing a list of determinations of iso-electric- points and points-of-zero-charge of mineral sulphides, and the methods employed in obtaining these results, is presented.

Jan 1, 1976

By AIME AIME

EUGENE McAULIFFE will be the fifty-ninth man elected President of the Institute. Looking back to the first President, David Thomas, and reading Dr. Raymond eulogy of him, written eleven years after lie had served his term, we cannot help but feel that Mr. McAuliffe is much the same type of man. Like Mr. Thomas. Mr. McAuliffe takes office in his middle seventies the first President was 76 and our new chief will be 75. Dr. Raymond said A Mr. Thomas: " .. those of us who attended the first few meetings of the Institute ... will bear witness that his indomitable agility, activity and

Jan 1, 1941

By A. B. Kinzel

IT has often been stated that the steel industry did no research or development work in the decades preceding 1920. If restricted to organized research on the quality and field of application of structural and engineering steels, this statement may be true. But the industry did conduct a vast amount of process research during this period, although some of the projects were not carried out as separate organized research programs. Securing a low cost of tonnage production was the sole problem receiving serious attention from the industry prior to 1920, and today this is still the major problem. Those in the industry deserve much commendation for the important increase in production capacity per dollar invested and for the markedly lowered cost of production. In recent years, a distinct change may be noted in the attitude of the steel industry toward research involving its product. With the advent of high-speed machinery both in the manufacturing and transportation industries, steel as a quality engineering material has come to the fore. In the past, high-quality carbon steels and alloy steels have been introduced over a period of years, largely at the insistence of the consumer and partly prompted by research carried out by those interested in the use of the alloys. The commercial introduction of these materials made slow progress.

Jan 1, 1935

The adoption of a plan of safeguarding American industry against extreme revolutionary industrial propaganda is the keynote of a report just issued by ex-Governor Robert P. Bass, of New Hampshire, covering the period of his service as. Director of the Marine and Dock Industrial Relations Division of the United States Shipping Board. He thinks that the only hope of America's resisting the tide of industrial unrest that is sweeping over the civilized world is in the development and early application of a constructive industrial program, in which program publicity and education carrried on by the Government will hold a leading place. He says: The Government should systematically inform both employers and employees in regard to many matters of the utmost interest and importance of each. It should acquaint labor with the Government's activities and service to labor in the past and should create in labor an appreciation of its joint interest with capital and with the Government in the problems of production. Satisfactory assurances should be given that labor will have a substantial voice in determining the distribution between capital and labor of the profits of production. Labor should be promised its reasonable share of any increase in production. There should be a joint determination of wages, hours, and conditions of work. Based on the foregoing principles, great emphasis should be placed on labor's interest and responsibility in the processes f production.

Jan 6, 1919