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By W. M. Tuddenham, R. J. P. Lyon

In many areas surrounding the orebodies in mining districts rocks have been bleached and altered by the ore-forming solutions and have been oxidized during later weathering processes. A number of the rock-forming silicates have been broken down to clay, sericitic micas and chlorites have been developed, and pyrite may be found hundreds of feet outside the economic limits of the orebody. These halos of altered ground are prime targets used by geologists in many districts to delineate promising sites for drilling. Both in the field and in the laboratory it is often difficult to map these mineralogical changes in the halos in detail without numerous petrologic examinations. The secondary minerals are generally fine-grained, and since conversion of one mineral to another is often progressive, many alteration processes have not proceeded to completion (feldspars to clay to sericite mica). Qualitative detection of these minerals is difficult; quantitative determination is frequently impossible.

Jan 12, 1959

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Jan 12, 1959

By D. W. Fuerstenau

Recently R. J. Charles1 showed that comminution of brittle or semi-brittle materials in batch operations is described more appropriately by a variable energy relationship than by the specific relation- ships proposed by Rittinger,2 Kick,3 and Bond.4 That is, the value of n in the empirical differential operation which applies to crushing and grinding (Eq. 1) is variable. Independently, Holmes6 developed an identical generalized equaton for size reduction. The experimental data of Charles and Holmes show that the value of n is determined by the material and the comminuting machine and is constant for a given combination of these two conditions. The general objective of the present article is to extend the Charles-Holmes concepts to continuous ball milling. The specific objective is to analyze the operation of a vibratory ball mill dry-grinding chromite in a continuous open circuit and to develop an equation for the comminution of chromite in this mill.

Jan 12, 1959

By O. E. Palasvirta

Close examination of most so-called new processes in mineral dressing reveals that they were conceived and developed a long time ago. High-intensity magnetic separation is no exception. Although its application in iron ore beneficiation seems new, in Germany the process has been commercially successful for almost two decades. High-intensity separators have long been standard equipment in the glass sand industry; they have also been used in concentrating some of the more unusual paramagnetic minerals. The basic features of an induced-rotor, high-intensity magnetic separator were described by Désiré Korda in Paris in 1905,1 and many patents have since been issued for improvements on the original design. Fig. 1 shows the basic design of an induced-rotor separator. Several U. S. manufacturers have been supplying induced-rotor separators for many years, but these are all devices of relatively low capacity, not suitable for treating such low-cost commodities as iron ore. On the other hand, two German manufacturers are offering induced-rotor separators of high capacity, both proven in the field.

Jan 12, 1959

By O. A. E. Jackson

Pebble milling has been practiced in the reduction works of South Africa gold mines for well over 50 years. Originally flint pebbles were imported from Denmark to grind stamp-mill amalgamation- process tailing, which contained a good deal of extractable gold, but local operators soon found that large pieces of ore could be used for the same purpose. The ore is a hard, tough conglomerate in which quartz pebbles are cemented together by a matrix of redeposited silica interspersed with pyrite crystals. The gold, rarely visible, occurs as fine particles mostly segregated at the interface of the pebble and matrix, although a small fraction occurs within the pyrite crystals. There is seldom any gold in the pebbles themselves.

Jan 11, 1959

By Stanley M. Jarrett

Operating one of the world's largest underground copper mines, Braden Copper Co. has been able to reduce its total accident frequency rate per million manhours by 84 pct, from 27.4 pct in 1945 to 4.45 pct for the first ten months of 1958. It has also won the Inter-American Safety Trophy for 12 consecutive years. The record may seem to indicate a secret formula, but there is none. The results stem only from hard work, and more and more of it.

Jan 11, 1959

By Raymond B. Ladoo

The Paley report made little attempt to project future production and consumption for any industrial mineral except fluorspar and only about a dozen minerals were mentioned by name. Except for fluorspar the treatment consisted mainly of statistics of production, consumption, imports, and sometimes reserves up to 1950. FLUORSPAR In 1954 the author had occasion to evaluate the Paley fluorspar estimates. At that time a fairly detailed study of the world picture was made and bases for the Paley estimates were studied. Data for later years confirm, in the main, the conclusions reached in this earlier report and it will be drawn upon here.

Jan 11, 1959

By W. L. McMorris, Shiou-Chuan Sun

The Convertol process was first described in Ger- many by Muschenborn1 in 1952. In the U. S. Fraser2 reported this new process in 1953, and Brisse and McMorris-resented the results of a Convertol pilot plant at the Alpheus preparation plant in Gary, W. Va., illustrating the mechanics of the process by a series of sketches. The purpose of the present investigation was threefold: 1) to determine the relative effectiveness of various oils and hydrocarbons for recovering coal by the Convertol process, 2) to ascertain the behavior of coal pulps in this process under various operational conditions, and 3) to compare Convertol with flotation in the recovery of fine coals.

Jan 11, 1959

By Agustin S. Segura, Luis G. Gutierrez

Foreign investment in Mexico, particularly of American capital, has increased steadily since 1940. At present, however, these investments are less important to the Mexican economy than in earlier periods. In the last few years, local or Mexican capital has participated in most American investments in Mexico with the encouragement of the Mexican Government. Foreign investment in a wide variety of industrial activities has gone up in the last decade, placing mining investments in second place. This growth is the result of the Mexican Government's favorable attitude toward industrial expansion. The process has been encouraged through tax exemption on infant industry, through customs protection, and through other incentives.

Jan 11, 1959

By R. J. P. Lyon

It is usually assumed1,2 that ore deposition is relatively slow, taking place over tens of thousands of years. Yet many syntheses and phase changes can be completed in the laboratory in a matter of hours, under essentially the same pressure and temperature conditions to be expected in nature. Much has been written about geothermometry, and Ingerson's recent summary2 can hardly be surpassed. Rather than review the whole field, this article will deal specifically with diffusion rates in solid solutions* of the sulfide minerals.

Jan 11, 1959

By Robert Laurich

Chuquicamata pit was opened in 1915 with steam shovels and steam locomotives brought down from the Panama Canal excavation project. With expansions in the early years, more steam locomo¬tives were brought into the mine. IMPROVED LOCOMOTIVES During the period 1927 to 1937, electric locomo¬tives were purchased and main line and bench tracks were electrified. Third rail was installed up to the working areas. At first, the locomotives were equipped with batteries for service at the shovels, but charge life was too short and they were con¬verted to use the third rail and a reel with 3000 ft of trailing cable for service in the loading area.

Jan 11, 1959

By Leonard A. Wood, A. G. Winslow

Subsidence has occurred in several areas of the upper Gulf Coast region of Texas, although in most cases this is not evident without precise instrumental leveling. As referred to in this report, the region com- prises about 7200 sq miles of the Gulf Coastal Plain and includes all or parts of the following counties: Harris, Fort Bend, Waller, Brazoria, Galveston, Liberty, Chambers, Orange, and Jefferson (Fig. 1 ). Topographic relief is low, ranging from sea level at the Gulf of Mexico to 300 ft or more in northwestern Harris County.

Jan 10, 1959

By Thomas E. Ban, Charles D. Thompson, Charles A. Czako

Continuous sintering-a metallurgical process for more than 50 years-has broadened from its origin in nonferrous metallurgy to present-day applications in ferrous, chemical, and nonmetallic fields. During the past year, self-fluxing sinter production has been a subject of active interest to iron metallurgists in North America. Accomplishments however, have come predominantly from Europe and proper interpretation of these reports requires an understanding of European raw materials and European economics. The technology, of course, can be applied universally.

Jan 10, 1959

By Evan Just

Attempting to analyze a 25-year forecast after less than a third of the time has elapsed may seem premature. The President's Materials Policy Com- mission's report necessarily painted with a broad brush and made no claim for pinpoint accuracy in its predictions. More importantly for present purposes, it made no attempt to predict the detailed courses of production and consumption during the period forecasted. Several statistical highs and lows may very well lie between now and 1957, so comparing recent figures with points taken from the report on a straight-line basis would be illogical. Moreover, the report assumed that the general trend of consumption-domestic and foreign-would be upward. Contrarily, domestic figures were lower in 1957 than in 1950. Therefore, to project curves from 1950 through 1957 leads to conclusions that are probably false. Many in the industry would feel more uncertain about forecasting 1975 domestic conditions now than they would have been in 1950, even though nearly a third of the 25 years has elapsed. In making comparisons, several statistical problems are encountered. The Paley report figures for 1950 were estimated in several cases and corrected figures vary as much as 10 pct. For example, the report placed 1950 lead consumption at 800,000 tons, whereas actual consumption was 885,000 tons. Obviously, in comparing more recent figures with the report's projections, adjustments must be made for positions taken in error from the start. Over the long pull, such discrepancies will probably be insignificant, but they must be noted in comparing short-term changes.

Jan 10, 1959

By L. O. Millard

Stockpiles in the minerals industries serve a wide variety of purposes. Usually they are for surge between stages of processing, for a dependable plant feed in anticipation of delays, or to provide for single or double shift mining in conjunction with round-the-clock milling. Often surge piles are necessary to insure a uniform feed to continuous process equipment where the material is received as an intermittent or variable flow. Extensive use is made of stockpiling for the primary purpose of blending. The significant fact about all stockpiling of bulk materials is that storing and reclaiming are two separate and distinct operations and they may present widely different problems in the selection of methods and tools.

Jan 10, 1959

By Rudolph G. Wuerker

With stepped-up work in rock mechanics, more and more data on strength and elastic properties of rocks has become available. Results of measurements of tensile strength, in addition to determinations of compressive strength, allow us to deter- mine, even if only in an approximate way, the third property influencing failure of a brittle material: shear strength. It is fairly generally agreed upon in rock mechanics, in drilling and blasting research, that Mohr's theory provides an acceptable method for explaining the failure of a brittle material. Mohr states that a material may fail either 1) through plastic slip when shearing stress Y in the planes of slips has reached a limiting value (which in general depends on the normal stress, X, acting normal to the surface), or 2) when the largest normal tensile stress has reached a limiting value. The mode of failure depends upon which of the two stresses is the smaller.

Jan 10, 1959

By Robert F. Shurtz

When an ore deposit is evaluated on the basis of core sampling, questions always arise as to how much weight should be given the various sample grades and how the deposit should be divided into specific volumes assigned to corresponding grades. For a tabular deposit it is customary to use the so- called zone-of-influence. This zone is usually de- fined as the polygon in the plane of the deposit having corners halfway between a given core drill intersection and each of the nearest neighboring intersections. The volume of the ore in this polygon is assigned the analysis obtained from the drill core taken at the intersection. In massive or irregular deposits, volumes of various shapes may be defined with respect to the locations of drill core samples. These volumes may be regarded as three-dimensional zones-of-influence; the theory involved in assigning the values of the central analyses to the ore in the volumes is the same as that used in the case of a tabular deposit. The zone-of-influence method was used in evaluating one of the magnesite deposits at Gabbs, Nev.1-3

Jan 10, 1959

By Henry J. Schwellenbach

Lack of a system in scheduling the replacement of capital equipment can result in emergency purchases of units which may later be found unsuitable for the job. New York Trap Rock Corp., which produces crushed stone for use as construction aggregate, was faced with just such a situation some years ago. The company replaced capital equipment only when machinery in use was no longer serviceable, or when there was an obvious need for different equipment. Operating and maintenance costs were generally neglected because an efficient method was lacking. New York Trap Rock has four plants located along the Hudson River, all within 70 miles of New York City. Crushed stone output-6 million tons a year-is moved to markets in metropolitan New York, New Jersey, and Long Island areas by water transport. Customers are contractors with ready-mix concrete and asphalt plants located on the water.

Jan 10, 1959

By J. M. Ohm, Carl M. Bunker

Two special tools for recovering gamma-ray probes and logging cable from drillholes have been designed by Ohm and Bunker and constructed by Ohm. Though intended specifically for U. S. Geological Survey equipment, they may be used with other equipment of the same general type. Fishing Tool for Probes: A fishing tool of the overshot type (Fig. 1) was designed to retrieve logging probes (sondes) that become disconnected from the logging cable and are trapped in the drillhole. When the tool slides over the top of the gamma-ray probe, studs on the bottom engage the shoulder near the top of the probe (Fig. 2), which is then pulled to surface.

Jan 10, 1959

By Lawrence Adler

Any design of a mine roof in bedded deposits which ignores differential deflections at the supports can quickly lead to dangerous overstressing. As illustrated by the typical case presented on page 1029, if one support deflects only 0.1 in. more than its neighbor, stresses 50 pct higher than anticipated will result. Previous studies1-3 have assumed that the mine roof acts like a beam clamped at both ends, with no deflection or slope4 at the supports (Fig. 1). Essentially this assumes:5,6 [BA = OD = 0 and dA = dB = 0.]

Jan 10, 1959