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By Harry Gard Knox, F. R. Harris

This paper covers some of the problems presented to the oil industry in the drilling of oil wells in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The hazards, delays and relative costs of offshore drilling are reviewed and various forms of drilling platforms discussed. The requirements of the offshore drilling rig are summarized together with the principal items affecting the cost of construction. Sea waves and their size and characteristics as affecting offshore platforms are reviewed. Drilling platforms are classified as fixed, or fixed and floating. Fixed platforms of the conventional cofferdam and pile-supported type are discussed together with their good points and their limitations. The desirability is pointed out of eliminating as much offshore work as possible where operations are subjected to constant and expensive delay and substituting therefor the prefabrication of structures ashore or in sheltered waters. Marked economy will come with the standardization of offshore rigs aid special means of transporting them to the site. Several types of structure which are partly pile-supported and partly buoyancy-supported are discussed and their possibilities of future usefulness commented upon. General Considerations The predominant attribute of offshore drilling equipment is that it must be equal to the job in hand. We therefore give first thought to the matter of adequacy. In view of the probable depth of drilling, the investment involved and the per diem labor costs, it is assumed heavy modern drilling equipment will be employed. In order to usc such equipment efficiently, the working deck must be ample in size and strength and supported so as to be relatively free from motion and from green seas even in heavy storms. These requirements necessitate a high and rigid land-based support for the drilling rig and machinery with plenty of space for supplies, such as pipe, mud, water and fuel, with reserves for days when transportation from shore is impracticable. In offshore rigs the crew will be housed onboard in comfortable quarters, probably air conditioned and equipped with a galley and refrigerated food storage. An important consideration will be the ability to transfer stores and crew to and from the rig in all but the heaviest weather and the platforms must be protected from the impact of supply vessels when alongside. It will be essential to maintain continuous communication with shore by radio or cable, not forgetting the possibility of a helicopter landing space for the transfer of crew and light stores as well as a means of general communication. Whatever structure is constructed must be secure from storms of hurricane force and a safe place for the operating crew to work. If the well comes in, the drilling rig will presumably be removed and a small but rugged pile-supported platform will remain to carry the Christmas tree with safe working space around it. It will be protected from damage on all sides by buffer piles or dolphins. It is assumed that the flowing oil will be piped to storage tanks in the vicinity of the well. An individual tank for each well or a

Jan 1, 1949

By Howard I. Young

WHEN so many statements are being made relative to the requirements of zinc metal, it is difficult for some of us who are acquainted with the industry to visualize how it is possible to step up production so as to supply some of the fantastic requirement figures that are published from time to time. I shall attempt to approach this subject from the standpoint of existing conditions which affect production, also keeping in mind the price ceiling under which the industry operates. Total production of primary and secondary zinc in the United States for 1941 will be about 878,000 tons, to which should be added about 36,000 tons of Mexican slab zinc available for consumption or export from the United States, giving a total available of 914,000 tons. Production of slab zinc of all grades in 1942 should be 953,000 tons. Adding the available Mexican supply should bring the total to 989,000 tons.

Jan 1, 1942

By J. Y. Oldshue

INTRODUCTION The field of fluid mixing involves many different kinds of process objectives. In order to classify these objectives, Table 1 gives a listing of five basic application categories, gas-liquid, liquid-solid, liquid-liquid, miscible liquids, and fluid motion. However, each of these areas can be broken up into two different concepts one involved with uniformity of solids or liquids as a criteria, and the other involved with chemical reactions or mass transfer. The things that we would do to design a fluid mixing for solid suspension are quite different from things that we would do to design a mixer for heat transfer or gas-liquid mass transfer. Therefore, there are really ten separate mixing technologies. Each of these areas has its [ ] own principles of fluid mechanics, scale-up techniques and application experience. We will take a look at each of these areas and look at some of the ways that we can handle fluid mixing applications which.

Jan 1, 1979

By Walter W. Bradley

FOR a number of years up to the economic setback of the 1929-1931 period, the greatest proportional advances in the mineral industries in California were made among the substances in the nonmetallic groupings, particularly among the so-called industrial minerals and the salines. During the past year or two, although these have not regained the stride that marked their progress in the preceding decade, we can still record, -some new developments. California produces annually between 55 and' 60 different minerals on a commercial scale. Of these, some 40 to 45 comprise the "structural," "industrial," and "salines" materials as grouped in the reports of the State's Division of Mines. Barite-The barite deposits of California were described in Report

Jan 1, 1935

By Leslie C. Richards

The competitive position of producers of industrial minerals depends upon the delivered price of their product. Freight charges are a major factor in the sales to consumers. A comparison of freight rates on movements of limestone and silica rock in the Pacific Northwest shows a wide variance in mills per ton mile for like hauls, thereby favoring some localities over others.

Jan 1, 1950

By Jack M. Jodrey, Neil D. Donnell, O&apos

Bituminous sands of the Lower Cretaceous McMurray Formation in northern Alberta constitute the ore for the surface mining operation at Syncrude Canada Ltd. These sediments represent a complex succession of fluvial, estuarine and marine depositional environments. Grade prediction is realized through a combination of geological interpretation, computer modeling, and reference to past mining experience. Accurate forecasts of feed grade permit reliable predictions of volumes for removal to meet budgeted synthetic crude oil production. This planning facilitates efficient allocation of mining equipment and resources. The feed grade to the Extraction Plant is monitored at various points along the delivery system.

Jan 1, 1985

By G. B. Gould, F. M. Gibson

IN DECEMBER, 1934, the joint Committee on Fuel Values, of the American Institute of Minim and Metallurgical Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, submitted a preliminary report, which briefly stated its conclusion that it was not possible to devise any formula for the valuation of coal, based upon the various physical and chemical properties, that would be generally applicable. That report also listed those chemical and physical properties of coal that are generally recognized to have some effect on its use in steam plants, and those physical characteristics of steam plants which affect, in one way or another the relative importance of the properties of coal used in them. Since then, the Committee has considered and discussed in greater detail the interrelationship of the properties of coal and plant characteristics. The conclusions of the Committee are summarized below, with certain recommendations regarding engineering procedure, which will promote the collection of more easily correlated observations with respect to this subject, and thus advance more rapidly the accumulation of data capable of general application.

Jan 1, 1936

By B. K. Larkin, H. R. Bailey

A model Of heat flow in an underground combustion process is studied. This model includes convection effects and thus is more general than previous studies which considered conduction as the only mechanistn for heat transfer. Both linear (tube run) and radial (field application) geometries are considered. The effects of ignition heaters, vertical losses and finite source width are considered for the linear case. The results are in the form of equations and are presented in graphical form for a number of cases. Convection effects increase frontal temperatures about 25 per cent over those computed for conductive transfer for typical field operating conditions. This increase in temperature is a result of heat being transported toward the front by the injection gas. Even greater temperature increases are realized as the per cent oxygen in the injection gas decreases. It is well known that compression costs are of considerable importance in estimating the economic feasibility of underground combustion. By assuming an ignition temperature for the combustion fuel, predictions of limiting conditions on fuel density and injection rate necessary to sustain the combustion zone are made. For typical field conditions, at least 0.75 lb/cu ft of fuel are needed with air as the injection gas. If the injection gas is 10 per cent oxygen and 90 per cent nitrogen, this figure is 0.69 lb/cu ft. INTRODUCTION The possibility of increasing oil recovery by underground combustion has been considered for many years. Recent field tests indicate that the underground combustion process is technically feasible. The economic feasibility depends to a large extent on the amount of air which must be injected to sustain combustion. Prediction of the success of employing underground combustion in a particular reservoir must be based on existing field tests, laboratory tube runs"' and solutions of mathematical or analog models. Vogel and Krueger5 devised an electrical analog of the heat transfer problem in an underground combus-ion process. They considered the problem of heat conduction from a cylindrical source with increasing radius assuming no vertical losses. Bailey and Larkin and Ramey solved the corresponding problem including vertical losses by considering a mathematical model of the conduction process. Ref. 9, 10 and 11 also present information related to the subject study. The present paper generalizes these results to include both conduction and convection mechanisms for heat flow. A model of the conduction-convection process is described. The partial differential equations governing this model are written and solved for a number of cases of interest. The formulas are evaluated and the results are presented graphically. A CONDUCTION-CONVECTION MODEL Description of the Model A number of models are employed in this paper, each of which approximate a particular physical situation depending on the geometry, i.e., linear or radial flow, the type of vertical heat losses, the nature of the source, etc. The geometry for both the linear and radial case is shown in Fig. 1. A particular linear model is described in this section, and variations from this model are described in later sections of the paper. Consider a homogeneous, semi-infinite porous prism with lateral sides insulated as shown in Fig. 1. The left end, x = 0, is heated for a time t, with a plane heater supplying a constant heat flux and during this time; gas (nitrogen) is passed through the pores of the prism at a constant mass flux. At time t, the heater is turned off and air is injected in place of the nitrogen. This causes combustion to take place, and a uniform source of width 1 is formed which moves at a constant velocity v, to the right. The frontal velocity v, is related to the gas velocity v,, through stoichiometric considerations

By R. G. Bowman

LEAD is a dull and sober metal, and in times of economic stress it en- joys, or at least occupies, a position which partakes somewhat of its physical lethargy and stability. The past ten years have witnessed in this country a decline in the production of lead, and a shrinkage of ore reserves, following closely the general economic situation. Metal prices have not justified exploration and development of new sources. Momentary rallies in industry have brought no response from lead.

Jan 1, 1940

By A. B. Parsons

LAST YEAR (1934) saw the completion of a ten-year program of reconstruction and modernization of the world's largest lead- smelting plant, that of the ' Broken Hill Associated Smelters Proprietary, at Port Pirie, South Australia, which has a capacity for smelting and refining 220,000 (short) tons of lead per year. It deals with the entire output of lead concentrates from the famous Broken Hill district in Australia, being owned .jointly by the three leading companies: North Broken Hill, Broken Hill South, and the Zinc Corporation. These companies, together with the Sulphide Corporation, are credited with a production of 198,000 tons of lead in 1934. When one says regarding any metallurgical plant that modernization is "completed" he should add "for the moment." Development in the art of metallurgy and in the equipment used never ceases; that which seems close to the last word today is likely to be obsolete in a few years even in a process so well standardized as smelting and refining lead. However, the reconstruction at Port Pirie has altered the procedure materially. More im-

Jan 1, 1935

By Leo Wolrnan

IN the relations that exist between capital and labor in this country, there is a bright as well as a dark side. After many years of distressing conditions of labor and a plentiful supply of propaganda, it is doubtful that the doctrine of the class struggle, however defined and stated, has been embraced by any influential and numerous elements of our population. Extreme and uncivilized methods of conflict, whether they be the labor spy as used by the employer or the sit-down strike by organized, labor, have come to be abandoned as the result of the pressure of sober and distinterested public opinion. Unwise terms of our law of trade unions and the unbridled zeal of its administrators show some slight signs of being revised in the light of 'experience and the protests of the law's own beneficiaries. At the point where labor policy touches economic conditions, the two powerful factions in the American labor movement appear to look with a less friendly eye on the bewildering succession of economic experiments and to have a deep nostalgia for a simpler and more prosperous economy.

Jan 1, 1938

THE Pacific Northwest's joint meeting of the Industrial Minerals and Metals Branch in Spokane, Wash., drew 260 members, 72 students, and 30 ladies. Theme of the meeting was to acquaint men in the industry with students and younger men. The special appeal to the students was coupled with an attempt to attract young technical men from the companies located in the northwestern area. The activities of the meeting were available without charge to students. Contributions were made by the industries in the area to assist student attendance. Following the special student and faculty trip to the Trentwood rolling mills and research laboratory on Friday afternoon everyone enjoyed a complimentary dinner. A. Y. Bethune of the Sullivan Mining Co., spoke to the group on the operations of Kellogg, Idaho electrolytic zinc plant. The Industrial Minerals Div. session was opened on Saturday morning by R. G. Vervaeke, Conference Chairman who introduced A. O. Bartell of the Raw Materials Survey, Portland, Ore. Mr. Bartell in turn introduced C. W. Sweetwood who discussed Open-Pit Phosphate Mining.

Jan 1, 1952

By C. S. Finney, John Mitchell

The introduction of ovens for the production of metallurgical coke is believed to be due to L. L. Norton who operated an iron foundry in the vicinity of Connellsville, Pa. Persuaded by his foreman, an English immigrant named Nickols from Durham, L. L. Norton put up a 12-ft square oven which produced coke in 1833. The coal used was taken from a local mine at Mounts Creek. The oven seems to have been used in conjunction with the customary method of coking in mounds. It was in the Connellsville district also, in 1841, that two carpenters, Provence McCormick and James Campbell, formed a partnership with John Taylor, a stone mason, for the manufacture and sale of oven coke. The task of the mason was to construct the ovens, while the carpenters were to build the arks by which the coke could be taken by water to the market at Cincinnati. The following account of the enterprise was given by McCormick: "James Campbell and myself heard in some way that I do not now recollect that the manufacturing of coke might be made a good business. Mr. John Taylor, a stone mason, who owned the farm on which the Fayette coke works now stand, and who was mining coal in a small way, was spoken to regarding our enterprise, and proposed a partnership-he to build the ovens and make the coke and Mr. Campbell and myself to build a boat and take the coke to Cincinnati, where we heard there was a good demand. This was in 1841. Mr. Taylor built two ovens. I think they were about 10 feet in diameter. My recollection is that the charge was 80 bushels. The ovens were built in the same style as those now used, but had no iron ring at the top to prevent the brick from falling in when filling the oven with coal, nor had we any iron frames at the mouth where the coke was drawn. The top and mouth had to be repaired when they fell in. In the spring of 1842 enough coke had been made to fill two boats 90 feet long-about 800 bushels each-and we took them to Cincinnati down the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, and Ohio, but when we got there we could not sell. Mr. Campbell, who went with the boats, lay at the landing some two or three weeks, retailing out one boatload and part of the other in small lots at about 8 cents a bushel. Miles Greenwood, a foundryman of that city, offered to take the balance if he would take a small patent flour mill at $125.00 hi pay, which Mr. Campbell did. He had it shipped here. We tried it, but it was no good, and we sold it to a man in the mountains for $30.00, and thus ended our coke business." So successful did the coke subsequently prove to be in use that the three partners were asked to deliver more. Evidently they had had enough of the coke business, however, for they refused to have anything more to do with it. Few ovens were built between 1841 and 1855, and it is reported that in the latter year, "there were only 26 coke ovens along the river above Pittsburgh". Successful coke makers of these years included Mordecai Cochran, Richard Brookius, and Colonel A. M. Hill. It was the use of coke in 1859 in the Clinton furnace erected by Graff, Bennett and Co. in a plant on West Carson Street, Pittsburgh, that brought the real beginning of the coke-iron era in America. Here the successful use of Connellsville coke as a blast-furnace fuel was demonstrated beyond all possible doubt, and from the year 1859 the coking industry expanded tremendously. The era of beehive coke ovens During the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, the major percentage of metallurgical coke produced in the United States came from beehive ovens. It was not until 1893 that the first battery of by-product ovens came

Jan 1, 1961

By Samuel B. Christy

At the last meeting of the Institute, several contributions were made to the subject of miners' aid funds. Such matters will always form important factors in the administration of large industrial enterprises. From the frequently remote and isolated position of mining properties, it is a subject that often forces itself upon the attention of the mining engineer. Local conditions are usually so variable that no single method can be found equally well adapted to all localities. At the same time, a study of different types is often suggestive and valuable, and it is with this in view that these notes are presented. The Miners' Fund of New Almaden is a remarkably successful example of what may be done for miners by a wise and at the same time firm management, by simply directing their own efforts and without incurring any great expense to the stockholders,—a practical consideration not without importance in most cases. The quicksilver mines of New Almaden are situated at a distance

Jan 1, 1885

By D. A. Dahlstrom

Although the liquid-solid cyclone is a relatively recent innovation in the field of coal preparation, various authors have already indicated three distinct applications to operations encountered in the modern tipple. Driessen's articles and work at the Dutch State Mines exhibited its possibilities in the beneficiation of fine coal with apparently high efficiencies down to the 200-mesh fraction. 1 2 3 4 Other publications point out its use as a recoverer, thickener, and preliminary dewatering agent of fine coal which in too many cases is being wasted due largely to former high operating cost limitations 5 6. Finally, certain authors have emphasized the practicability of applying the cyclone to the elimination of coarse and fine solids from water slurries in the tipple in order to produce a water suitable for recycle purposes containing only minute particles far below the 200-mesh size.6 This would result in a closed water system for many cases, with its accompanying economic and operating advantages to locations where water quantity and quality problems are severe; better operation of washing equipment using a consistent water devoid of injurious fine particles; lowered maintenance costs due to the lesser abrasion resulting when the fine abraiding particles are removed; and the greater ease of disposing of refuse streams of reduced volume containing greater percentages of solids.

Jan 1, 1949

By L. L. McDaniel

Copper smelters of various kinds have operated in the Morenci district since 1872, but all have been abandoned with the exception of the present Morenci Smelter of Phelps Dodge Corporation, which was completed in 1942. During the five-year period starting in 1937, the Morenci ore body was prepared for open pit mining, pilot mill test work was carried out, and a complete reduction works, of which the Smelter is a part, was designed and erected. Actual construction work on the Morenci Smelter was started in the fall of 1940, and warming up of the units began on April 1, 1942. Charging of the reverberatory furnaces commenced on April 18, 1942, and the first anode copper was produced on April 26, 1942. The smelter was originally designed to handle the production of the Morenci Concentrator on a 25,000 ton per day program, but by the time the smelter was in operation, plans were already underway to increase the smelter capacity to handle the production of the concentrator which was being enlarged to 45,000 tons a day capacity as a war-time necessity. This extension to the smelter was completed and the new units were put in operation toward the beginning of 1944. The original smelter consisted of a smelter crushing plant, bedding plant, two direct-smelting reverberatory furnaces with two waste-heat boilers on each furnace, three converters, an anode department, a stack, and all of the usual accessory smelting equipment. The extension consisted of increasing the bedding plant from three to five beds, the reverberatory department from two to four furnaces, and from four to eight waste-heat boilers, and the converter department from three to six converters. A third converter aisle crane was added and additions were made to the flue systems and conveyor systems throughout the smelter; but no change was made in the smelter crushing plant or the anode department, and the same stack was used for all additional Smelter units. A blister casting machine was installed at that time in the south end of the converter aisle to handle excess and emergency production above the capacity of the anode department and in 1947 a converter aisle skull breaker and a lime burning plant were added as the final units for a complete plant. The choice of direct smelting over calcine smelting for the Morenci Smelter was made after careful study by members of the Western organization of Phelps Dodge Corporation and after test runs on direct smelting of Morenci concentrate had been made at the Douglas Smelter of Phelps Dodge Corporation. The Morenci furnace charge is made up of comparatively high grade concentrate with no ores of smelting grade available and with only flux, a small amount of copper precipitate and the usual amount of smelter secondaries to be smelted with the concentrate. The simplicity of direct smelting for this charge and the large amount of waste-heat steam available from direct smelting operations were factors influencing the decision to adopt direct smelting for Morenci. The design of the Morenci Smelter and the type of units selected followed best experience at the Douglas Smelter of Phelps Dodge Corporation. A description of the original smelter before operations started was given in an article in the May 1942 issue of Mining and Metallurgy. The purpose of the present article is to describe the enlarged Morenci Smelter, with a discussion of metallurgy and operating practice and to show tabulations of operating and metallurgical results obtained. Because of beginning operations during the early years of World War 11, many problems caused by labor shortage were encountered, but no major difficulties developed in starting the new plant. However, because of labor shortage, full scale Smelter production was not reached until the fall of 1946. Fig 1 shows a general plan of the Morenci Reduction Works. The arrangement of the smelter equipment is shown in Fig 2, a sectional view of the smelter is shown in Fig 3, and the smelter flow sheet is shown in Fig 4. Metallurgy The metallurgy of direct smelting, being more or less fixed by the character of the charge, is not subject to the control available in calcine smelting. Slags may be modified by the addition of suitable fluxes, but the grade of the matte is determined almost entirely by the iron:copper ratio of the concentrate. The direct smelting operation involves distributing the wet concentrate along the sidewalls and in the bath of a reverberatory furnace by means of some suitable feeding device and raising the temperature of the charge so that first the moisture is driven off, then the first-atom sulphur is eliminated, and finally the sulphide portion of the charge melts and runs into the bath, carrying with it the non-sulphide portion which has been partially fluxed to form a suitable slag. The fusion of the non-sulphide portion is completed by contact with the irony converter slag which is regularly being poured into the reverberatory furnace. The smelting rate of the charge is influenced by the mineralogi-cal composition of the sulphide portion of the concentrate and by the composition and amount of the non-sulphide portion including the fluxes added. The copper in Morenci concentrate is chiefly in the form of chalcocite, intimately associated with pyrite, and non-sulphide content is very low so that

Jan 1, 1950

By E. Orowan

LONG before the role of dislocations in the plastic deformation of crystals was recognized, the stress-strain field around dislocations received considerable attention in the theory of elasticity. It seems that Weingarten1 was the first to consider dislocations as simple and typical sources of internal stress in elastic solids, and Volterra2 and Timpe3 investigated their elastic field. Fig 3-1 shows the two basic types of dislocations considered by Volterra. The first arises by making a straight-edged .plane cut in a solid, displacing the two surfaces of the cut in their own plane relatively to one another by a constant amount in a direction perpendicular to the edge, and welding them together; this is shown in Fig 3-la, where the outer cylindrical surface represents the boundary of the solid, and the thin spiral cylinder around the edge of the cut has been removed in order to avoid infinities of stress and strain. The second type of dislocation is shown in Fig 3-lb; here the surfaces of the cut have been displaced relatively to one another by a constant amount parallel to the edge, and then welded together. After J. M. Burgers,4 these two types are called edge and screw dislocations, respectively. They represent simple limiting cases; in the general case, the surfaces of the cut are displaced by a constant vector that lies in the plane of the surface but has components both parallel and perpendicular to the edge of the cut. This vector is the Burgers or slip vector. The name “dislocation” was given by A. E. H. Love;5 it was bor-

Jan 1, 1954

By Ronald J. McGregor, Anton R. Hendriksz

INTRODUCTION The NIMCIX contactor was developed in the late sixties at the National Institute for Metallurgy in South Africa, for the main purpose of extracting uraniuy from relatively low-grade uranium solutions. ' The concept was sufficiently developed by 1974 to permit the operation of a 1500 litre per minute column to treat unclarified urgnium-bearing solution under industrial conditions. The plant operated so successfully that several large-scale units have subsequent18 teen constructed and are operating efficiently. ' Total resin consumption figures as210w as 3 per cent per annum have been reported, and the extraction efficiencies of the installations have been exceptionally good. All the solutions treated have been acidic in nature and in every case have been of such a nature as to significantly depress the maximum uranium loading on the resin beads. The chemical constituents of the leach solution fed to the loading column determines the ease with which the soluble uranium can be absorbed by an ion exchange resin. The concentration of competing ions and various resin foulants define the nature of the continuous ion exchange equipment required for efficient extraction performance. The basic NIMCIX concept is retained in these various alternate designs, but batch or continuous elution methods with fully automated or manual control systems may be selected for the different process solution conditions. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE NIMCIX CONTACTOR The NIMCIX ion exchange column is a multi-stage fluidized bed contactor which is designed to permit a counter-current flow of solution and resin in order to maximize extraction efficiency. The flow o resin is periodic, based on the Cloete and Streat 5 principle of reverse flow. The basic operating cycle can be divided into five periods, as illustrated in Figure 1. For the purposes of describing the cycle, the loading column is considered; how- ever, a similar sequence may be applied to the operation of a NIMCIX continuous elution column. S'I'EP 1: During the forward flow period, Solution flows up through the column and fluidizes the resin contained in each stage. The uranium depleted solution overflows the upper flared-section of the column as the tail solution. Step 2: The flow of solution to the column is temporarily stopped and the resin is allowed to Settle onto the plates in the column. STEP 3: During the reverse flow period, a fixed volume of solution is drained from the column to the transfer vessel. This flow causes resin transfer to occur from stage to stage and also out of the bottom stage. At the end of this period, which expires when the low level switch (LS) is actuated, some of the resin is left in the conical section of the column and the pipe interconnecting the column and the vessel. STEP 4: The cone flush period ensures that all the resin left in the cone of the column and the pipe is transferred to the transfer vessel before forward flow commences. STEP 5: The loaded resin in the transfer vessel, which has been isolated from the column, can either be hydraulically transferred to the top of the elution column or eluted in the vessel before being transferred to the top of the loading column. The major advantages associated with the NIMCIX concept are: (i) Simple method of operation (ii) Contactor can readily be scaled up to large diameters. (iii) Because the resin does not pass through pumps or airlifts, and valves cannot be closed on resin beads at any time, the resin losses are exceptionally low. (iv) Operating costs are low. (v) Relatively few valves in the system. (vi) Stable operation is achieved over a wide range of feed rates and concentrations.

Jan 1, 1980

By M. TAYLOR

AT Grand Saline, some 65 miles east of Dallas, the Morton Salt Co. of Chicago has for some years operated a brine pumping and evaporation plant on a salt dome. They recently drilled trial holes to obtain data on the dome, preparatory to opening, a new mine, with the following results: The dome is in the form of a truncated cone, with an average of 210 ft. of cover. The top of the dome is approximately one mile in diameter, with the town of Grand Saline lying over the northern rim, and the sides slope off at an angle of 50" to 80" from the horizontal. The deepest holes were drilled to 900 ft. without penetrating beyond the salt, and indications are that the salt deposit is several thousand feet thick. As the deposit increases in area with the depth, there is undoubtedly enough salt to supply a mining operation for an almost unlimited period of years.

Jan 1, 1930

By William B. Millar

IN ONTARIO development of the gold mines is being rapidly pushed, while the intensity of the search for new mines has probably not been equaled at any time in the past. Even to outline the results of recent prospecting activity in Ontario would be a big undertaking, but it would be timely and, I hope, interesting to Institute members to review some generalities regarding the work of the prospector and then to discuss in some detail the growth of Ontario's most promising prospect area, the Swayze district, where serious mining operations are already under way. Probably no one writing about prospectors and pros¬pecting can resist hoping that his article will not reach the eyes of a certain portion of the uninformed general public and cause a further influx of "prospective prospectors" into any given area. It is somewhat mystifying how so many people reach the conclusion that prospecting is in

Jan 1, 1933