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By Robert Goodwin, Frank R. Milliken

IN September 1939, the Ohio Copper Co. inaugurated the treatment of its copper-bearing mill tailings at Lark, Utah. These tailings had been accumulated during the regular operation of the Ohio Copper mine and mill over the period 1907 to 1919. Gravity concentration had been employed except for a comparatively short period in 1919, when flotation was used. The ore milled during that period assayed about 1 per cent Cu. The chief copper mineral, chalcocite, was disseminated in a shattered quartzite, mainly along fracture or cleavage planes. The quartzite gangue was extremely hard and grinding to liberation resulted in excessive sliming of the "sooty" chalcocite, with consequent high tailings losses. Recovery on the seven million tons treated was probably less than 6o per cent of the total copper content. As early as 1918, attempts had been made to sample the dump. In 1928, a complete sampling program was undertaken. The sampling consisted of seventy-four 5-in. post auger holes drilled to the full depth of the dump at regular intervals of 250 ft. Each 10-ft. portion thereof comprised a sample for analysis. Each sample was screened, rolled, divided into three parts, dried and assayed. The reject was retained for testing purposes. From the depth of the auger holes a contour map of the dump was plotted, Fig.1, which gives percentages of tonnage and copper content. The tonnage within the limit of the drill holes was estimated at about five million tons with an average content of 0.42 per cent Cu, 31 per cent of which (0.13 per cent) was acid-soluble. A screen analysis of the composite dump sample is shown in Table I. Flotation tests by several companies and individuals were then made, the results of [ ] which ranged from 62 to 74 per cent recovery. On the basis of these, a Zoo-ton pilot plant employing straight flotation was built and operated for a few months. Operation of this plant was unsuccessful, as no provision had been made to handle the copper-bearing solutions resulting from the water-soluble copper, a point that was overlooked in the laboratory test work. Attempts to decant the copper-bearing solution for precipitation in the usual manner ahead of flotation were not satisfactory because of low water recovery (owing to poor settling characteristics of the pulp) and contamination of the copper precipitate with unsettled slime. Low copper prices in 1931 necessitated the termination of testing. With the stimulus of higher copper prices in 1937, a review was made of metallurgical

Jan 1, 1940

PHILIP D. BLOCK, JR., vice president of Inland Steel Co., visualizes a fine future for the Menominee Range of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He sees a future unclouded by threat from foreign ore imports or the development of low grade ore processing in Minnesota. The statement was made during the opening of Inland's new Cayia mine near Crystal Falls. Inland, according to the vice president, is planning to use an increased amount of the high phosphorous ores found on the Menominee Range. He said that other steel companies will probably do the same, because the steel industry has learned how to use ores of high phosphorous content. He said: "I do not mean to imply that we can use an unlimited amount of high phosphorous ores or that we can burden our blast, furnaces with 100 pct high phosphorous ores, but we have reached the point where we can absorb a much larger percentage of these ores without any detrimental effects. Foreign ores and lowgrade Minnesota ores cost too much to offer real competition, Block said. Transportation costs from the Menominee range to steel producing centers in Chicago and on Lake Erie are less than for any other range in this country. In the meantime, the American operators of the Bomi Hills iron ore mine in Liberia, have reportedly signed a new agreement with the Government. Several months ago, President Tubman of Liberia expressed a definite dissatisfaction with the original contract. Informants state that the agreement only needs the approval of the Export-Import Bank, which loaned Liberian Mining Co. $4 million to develop the iron ore properties. Majority stockholder of the Liberian Mining is Republic steel, with 61.57 pct of the stock. Under the new contract, the Liberian Government will start to share in the profits when the indebtedness is liquidated and the return of invested capital accomplished, or April 1, 1957, whichever is earlier. Under the old agreement the Liberian Government received a 5 cent per ton royalty and an additional sum based on the price of pig iron. The royalty rate reached more than 17 cents per ton this year. After debt liquidation the Liberian Government will receive 25 pct of net profits for the first five years; 35 pct for the next ten years; and 50 pct thereafter. Until the Government starts to share in profits it will receive a royalty of $1.50 per ton in U. S. currency, in addition to royalties provided for in the old agreement.

Jan 1, 1952

By Walter S. McKee

Discussion of the paper of WALTER S. McKEE, presented at the New York meeting, February, 1916, and printed in Bulletin No. 108, December, 1915, pp. 2399 to 2411. J. W. RICHARDS, So. Bethlehem, Pa.-I regret that the author has overlooked the great usefulness of the electric furnace for the melting of ferromanganese in the manufacture of manganese steel. WALTER S. MCKEE, Chicago, Ill. (communication to the Secretary*)-In an article as brief as mine it was not possible to .fully cover the metallurgical field; this accounts for my not mentioning the electric furnace for the melting of ferromanganese in the manufacture of manganese steel, although the advantages of such an apparatus are fully appreciated by me. FREDERICK LAIST, + Anaconda, Mont. (communication to the Sec-retary?).-Manganese steel has proved very serviceable in our plant.. We are using manganese steel for the jaw plates on the 5-' by 15-in. crushers in the concentrator instead of cast-iron jaw plates which we formerly used. The manganese steel wears five times as long as the cast iron. We are also using manganese steel in our 8- by 20-in. crushers. In our primary crushers, which are 12 by 24 in., we still use cast iron because the manganese-steel plates wore unevenly and left shoulders which caused trouble in setting up the crusher. Another reason for preferring cast iron in these crushers is that they grip the ore better on account of wearing of the rougher surface. The surface of the manganese steel becomes polished and large pieces of ore fail to be drawn in. We recently tested 8- by 16-in. manganese-steel elevator buckets working on 2-in. undersize against malleable-iron buckets and found that manganese-steel buckets lasted two and one-half times as long as the malleable-iron buckets. We use manganese-steel screen plates on our 2-in. trommels and have found that they last about five times as long as cast iron. We also used manganese-steel wheels and rails under the 20-deck round table in our slimes-treatment plant. We first used cast-iron rails and wheels and found that these wore badly at the end of two or three weeks, while the life of the manganese steel seemed to be almost indefinite; we never had occasion to change any of the manganese steel rail sections or wheels in the year and nine months that the plant was in operation.

Jan 5, 1916

By D. H. Newland

New York has a small but not insignificant place in the oil and natural gas industries of the United States. It has had a continuous record as an oil producer since 1872, with an aggregate yield of about 104,000,000 bbl. The reported output for 1935 was 4,237,000 bbl., a gain of more than 10 per cent for the year and a total that has been exceeded only in the early period of flush production half a century ago. The industry has been steadily building up since 1920 with the successful practice of the water drive, which has given a new lease of life to pools that had been practically drained of oil recoverable by pumping. An additional output of 2000 bbl. or more per acre is being procured by this method. Altogether the fields in New York State cover about 55,000 acres. Their limits are well defined and it is unlikely that they will be extended in the future, although there is some prospect of finding additional supplies by deeper drilling. The oil from New York is all classed as Pennsylvania grade, for which the recent price has been about $2.50 a barrel. It is refined at Olean, Wellsville and Bolivar, in the oil district, and partly in Pennsylvania refineries. Exploration for natural gas, outside of the established districts, was considerable during the year. Altogether 59 wells were drilled, distributed over 13 counties, of which 33 were listed as producers and 26 were dry. At the close of the year, 13 wells were in process of drilling. The 33 producing wells had a combined estimated flow of 278 million cubic feet per day. The best results were obtained from exploration in Allegany County, where out of eight wells drilled to the Oriskany sandstone five were successful and showed a combined open-flow capacity of 107 million cubic feet. The Oriskany sandstone was encountered at a depth of 4500 to 4900 ft. In Steuben County, next east of Allegany County, two out of seven wells to the Oriskany proved productive, and one of these, in the town of Greenwood, on the Watkins structure, was probably the largest that has so far been opened in the state, with a reported yield of 35 million a day. In the central part of New York interest was awakened by the activity shown in exploring for gas in the Trenton limestone, in Camden, Florence and Rome townships, Oneida

Jan 1, 1936

By C. E. Sims

IN an earlier paper by Sims, Moore, and Williams: data were given to show that hydrogen contents of 0.3 relative volume (0.00033 wt pct), existing at the center of 4-in.-square cast-steel coupons, could be removed by aging at 400°F for 125 hr. At the end of that time, complete restoration of normal ductility for the steel was obtained. Replicate specimens of the same steel were aged at room temperature up to 555 days or .18 1/2 months. At the end of that time, the hydrogen content at the center had fallen to 0.13 relative volume or 0.00015 wt pet, but there was no perceptible change in the ductility. On the basis of experience with accelerated aging of 1-in. and 4-in. coupons and room temperature aging of 1-in. coupons, it was predicted that, some time after two years and when the hydrogen content has been reduced to about 0.10 relative volume, there would be some recovery of ductility. One set of three bars remained, and these were held for 1310 days, or more than three years. Then tensile test bars were cut from the center, and these bars were sampled for hydrogen analysis at the time they were broken. The sample specimens were cylinders % in. in diam x 1 1/4 in. in length. The data showed that in this time the average hydrogen content had fallen to 0.096 relative volume or 0.00011 wt pct, and the ductility had increased sharply. Elongation had risen from 10 to 17.3 pct, while reduction of area increased from about 16 to 27.5 pct. On the basis of these data, fig. 1 was drawn to replace fig. 15 of the earlier paper. Extrapolation of the curves of fig. 1 indicates that it would require a period of about 2200 days or approximately six years at room tem- perature to reduce the hydrogen to the minimum value and to recover full ductility in the center of the coupons. The aging process apparently involves the movement of hydrogen from the interior to the surface of the bar and evaporation at the surface. This flux of gas presumably follows some diffusion mechanism, and an effort was made to use the aging data, obtained at room temperature and at 400°F, to calcu-late coefficients of diffusion, in the hope that they might indicate the nature of the diffusion. The conclusion was reached. however. that the data were inadequate for such a purpose.

Jan 1, 1951

By T. Sterry Hunt

AT the meeting of the Institute in Easton, October, 1873, I made a communication on the Ore Knob copper mine, in Ashe County, North Carolina (Transactions, vol. ii, p. 123), in which I called attention to the chemical decomposition alike of the pyritous lode and the inclosing gneiss rock to a depth of 60 feet, by which the feldspar of the latter had been converted into clay, and the whole rock very much softened. Such a decomposition is well known to be almost universal in the crystalline rocks of the Appalachians south of the Potomac ; and if it is only seen in rare and exceptional cases farther to the northward, this, as I have elsewhere pointed out, is due to the fact that the decomposition began and ended in the ages anterior to the drift period, and that the decayed portions which still remained were at that time removed from the surface, except in some localities which were protected from the eroding agency. I have lately had an opportunity of studying a remarkable instance of this kind in an examination made last month for the corporators of the Hoosac Tunnel.* The locality is at the western base of Hoosac Mountain, the western slope of which rises rapidly 1300 feet above the town of North Adams, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, itself 700 feet above the sea level. Through this mountain, as is well known, a tunnel for the Troy and Boston Railroad has lately been opened, a distance of 25,081 feet from east to west. The rock of the mountain consists of mica schist and micaceous gneiss, including in its western half a great mass of harder feldspathic and quartzose strata in part a granitoid gneiss, the strata for the most part dipping to the eastward with variable angles, but with occasional western dips, apparently due to inversion. The crystalline strata of the mountain crest and sides are in many places exposed, and present rounded surfaces, often deeply grooved and striated, but with no appearance of decay. At the western base of the mountain, however, the gneissic rock is in a state of complete decomposition, which was well displayed in opening the tunnel, which, for a distance of several hundred feet, was driven through highly inclined strata so much decomposed that they were excavated with pick and shovel, and without the aid of blast- * See, for a detailed account of this examination, Dr. Hunt's report, published by the General Court of Massachusetts in House Document No. 9, 1875.

Jan 1, 1875

Frontino operates three underground lode mines at Segovia in the area of northwest Antioquia, Colombia, which has been an important gold producing district since the late 1800s. Auriferous pyrite, the pre-dominent sulfide, carries very finely disseminated gold. Other minor sulfides are galena, pyrrhotite, and sphalerite in quartz gangue with the host rock being granodiorite. Silver is associated with the galena and also occurs as a sulfo-salt. In 1.973 and 1974, at an annual milling rate of 145,000 mt (160,000 st), average mill heads were 7.80 g per mt (0.23 oz per st) Au; 20.0 g per mt (0.58 oz per st) Ag; and 0.37% Pb; with a production of 1,150 kg (35,700 oz) Au and 4,500 kg (141,000 oz) Ag. Over 300 mt (330 st) of Pb concentrate were shipped. The ore is crushed to minus 16 mm (5 18 in. ) and fed to a rod mill with the discharge passing over a 1.07 m by 1.07 m (42 in. by 42 in. ) jig operating in closed circuit with the underflow from a cyclone in closed circuit with two ball mills. Cyclone overflow is bulk-floated for sulfide recovery from which the tailings are sent to the river as waste with the flotation concentrate joining the jig concentrate for cyanidation. The combined gold bearing concentrates, after cyclone classification, are reground to a very fine mesh in closed circuit with cyclone classification, with the overflow going to the primary thickener. Regrinding, classification, and thickening is done in cyanide solution, and the primary thickener produces a pregnant solution for Merrill -Crowe precipitation. The thickener underflow is the feed to the agitators, thickener, and filter from which the overflow and filtrate are sent to precipitation. The washed filter cake is repulped and floated for the recovery of a galena concentrate for shipment. About 40% of the recovered silver is in this concentrate. In the refinery the precipitate is melted into a dore bullion. This 600 mt (660 st) capacity mill employs several interesting techniques. Gold recovery of 85% to 90% from a complex sulfide denotes good practice. While total power at 42 kwh per mt (46 kwh per st) is high, it would be recognized that the grinding units are small in size and the flowsheet is complicated due to the gold occurring in the sulfide minerals. The extremely low-cost electric power is generated by

Jan 1, 1981

SEC. 1. This Institute is incorporated under the Membership Corporations law of the State of New York; its corporate name is American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Inc.; and its abbreviated title A. I. M. E. SEC. 2. The objects of this Institute, as set forth in its certificate of incorporation, are: "To promote the arts and sciences connected with the economic production of the useful minerals and metals, and the welfare of those employed in these industries by all lawful means; to hold meetings for social intercourse and the reading and discussion of professional papers, and to circulate by means of publications among its members the information thus obtained, and to establish and maintain a place for meeting of its members, and a hall for the reading of papers and delivery of addresses, and a library of books relating to subjects cognate to the sciences and arts of mining and metallurgy." ARTICLE II MEMBERSHIP SEC. 1. The membership of this Corporation shall include all those who on the third Monday in February, 1928, were members and all others subsequently elected and qualified in accord with the By-laws of the Institute at the time of such election. SEC. 2. The membership shall be divided into such classes as may be from time to time fixed by the By-laws. ARTICLE III DIRECTORS SEC. 1. The business, financial, professional, technical, scientific and social interests of the Institute shall be managed by a Board of Directors, elected annually by letter ballot in the manner specified in the By-laws, to serve for the terms as set forth in the Certificate of Incorporation. ARTICLE IV AMENDMENTS SEC. 1. Proposals to amend this Constitution may be made by resolution of the Directors or by written petition signed by at least ten members. Such proposals must reach the Secretary not later than October fifteenth. The Board of Directors shall consider them and, in case of petitions, the proposers shall be notified of the opinion of the Board in regard to them, when they may cither withdraw their proposals, or accept any changes suggested, or insist on the original form. All proposals when in final form shall be mailed to all members on or before January first, with the election ballots, and with a ballot in proper form for voting on the amendment in its original or amended form. Ballots shall be received by the Secretary until the second Tuesday in February. The Tellers of the election shall count these ballots,

Jan 1, 1929

By B. F. Koch

COPPER reverberatories develop large amounts of exit gases of a temperature in the neighborhood of 2000°F. The gases are not only of a noxious nature but must usually be disposed of at considerable heights above the yard level by a stack. Handling these gases at the temperature mentioned would require rather expensive construction of conveying flues and stack. Moreover, wasting such amounts of heat is certainly most uneconomical. Numerous investigations have indicated that waste heat boilers of the water-tube type are the most practical and economical means for utilizing that heat although the gases are heavily laden with rock dust and copper-bearing slag, which upon cooling form hard deposits on the surfaces of dampers or heat absorbing elements placed in the gas stream. Avoiding Slag and Dust Deposits Based largely on the experience of the paper industry in burning black liquor, a waste heat boiler design was developed a few years ago, providing not only extensive water-wall surfaces for cooling the gases below the fusing point of the slag but also settling out, as far as possible, the solidified particles of slag by creating low gas velocity. Matter carried in a stream of gases or air has a tendency to maintain its original direction upon a change in the direction of the flow of the conveying medium. Reverberatory waste heat boilers installed at Hurley and Morenci endeavored to utilize that tendency for the elimination of slagging particles at predetermined places and before they would strike the tube banks of the boilers. Both installations were successful in minimizing the slagging of boiler tubes and thereby minimizing the need for hand lancing. However, the low draft carried at the up-take of the reverberatory furnaces resulted in a positive pressure in the upper part of the furnace of the waste heat boilers, causing the emission of gases from lancing doors and making more difficult the already unwelcome work of cleaning the boilers by handlancing. Attempting to correct this nuisance as much as possible, the overall height of the Chuquicamata waste heat boilers has been reduced to the minimum considered necessary to obtain proper water circulation in furnace walls. Moreover, it is attempted to solidify slag and dust particles by providing large amounts of water-cooled surfaces before the gas stream reaches super-heater and convection banks of the boilers. The furnaces have been made as deep as an economical and practical arrangement of headers for water

Jan 1, 1952

By William Klement

KNELLER' has recently reported that extensive metastable solid solutions may be obtained in Cu-Fe alloys by simultaneous vapor deposition. This note reports that solid solutions, apparently single -phase, can be obtained for Cu-Fe alloys containing 0 to 20 and 85 to 100 at. pct Fe by rapid quenching from the melt; the inability to extend the solid solubilities further is related to the liquid miscibility gap, Fig. 1, as for Cu-Co alloys.2'3 Accurate lattice spacings of the copper-rich fcc and iron-rich bcc solid solutions have been obtained. Homogeneous alloys were prepared by casting4'5 and sintering2 from elements of 99.9+ pct purity. The quenching techniques were as before,' except the iron-rich alloys were liberally covered with argon while at elevated temperatures. Flakes about 1 sq mm in area were obtained and investigated with the Debye-Scherrer technique, as previously described.2,4 All X-ray work was done at 25° 2°C using filtered copper and cobalt K radiation. Relative visual intensities of the diffraction lines for the phases in the quenched alloys are shown in Table I. The lattice spacings of the fcc structure for alloys containing up to 80 at. pct Fe are plotted in Fig. 2. The variation of these lattice parameters with composition is in good agreement with the re- of cementite spots usually present (all hkl reflections are allowed) and the ease of confusing them with ferrite or martensite reflections. Copies of the report can be obtained by writing to the Materials Research Department, Rocketdyne. 6633 Canoga Avenue, Canoga Park, Calif., 91304. A copy is also available at the Engineering Societies Library, 2nd floor, 345 East 47th Street, New York, N.Y., 10017. Photocopies, either full-size or microfilm, may be purchased from the Engineering Societies Library. sults6 of Andersen and Kingsbury, Fig. 2, although there is some disagreement in absolute value. This discrepancy may be due to the different temperatures at which the X-ray measurements were carried out and perhaps to the different extrapolation procedures. Also, Andersen and Kingsbury6 state that their lattice spacings were computed relative to the wavelengths given by Siegbahn in 1933; this reference has not been found and it is assumed that the well-known 1931 wavelengths were used, the lattice spacings then being in kx units which are converted into angstroms by the factor 1.00202. There is no support for the contention that solution of iron decreases the lattice parameter of copper, as con-

Jan 1, 1965

By Ernest G. Enck

"The Rockets' Red Glare" of the Fourth of July is produced by strontium compounds. However, strontium has a number of less spectacular uses; i.e. in, or in connection with, the manufacture of ceramics, caustic soda, glass, railway and truck signal flares, beet sugar and steel. The principal ore of strontium for use both as the mineral and for production of compounds is celestite (SrSO4). This mineral varies in color from white to pink or blue depending on presence of impurities. It has a hardness of about 3.5 and specific gravity of 3.9. It is brittle and has perfect basal and prismatic cleavages. The high grade ore is obtained from England, hence it has become the standard for all other producing areas. (See analyses, Table 1.) The most objectionable impurity in English celestite is iron, coming mostly from adhering clay. On the other hand, Mexican celestite, while no higher in strontium sulfate content, is extremely low in iron (less than 0.2 pct), hence it is more desirable for certain uses. Most of the celestite in Spain and in the United States is high in calcium and barium, and commonly high in iron, and requires some form of beneficiation in order to be equal to English ore. The natural carbonate (SrCO3), or strontianite, is less important than celestite as a source of strontium, because it is less abundant and is not so widespread in its occurrence. Furthermore, it generally occurs with calcite (CaCO3) and lead sulfide (PbS), and for most uses these impurities are detrimental. This mineral is generally white or yellowish, forming needle-like crystals. It has a hardness of about 3.7 and a specific gravity of 3.68-3.8. The mineral is brittle and has an imperfect cleavage. A typical analysis of German strontianite is shown in Table 1. [ ] Distribution of Deposits UNITED STATES Occurrences of strontium minerals are known in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. Celestite occurs in the Vulture Mountains, Maricopa County, Arizona in beds three to ten feet thick associated with sandstone, gypsum, and barite. Because of the low strontium content, approximately 86 pct SrSO4, it has no commercial value. A large deposit of celestite occurs in San Bernardino County, California, in the Cady Mountains near Argus Station, about eight miles west of Ludlow. The celestite here is interbedded with shaly and clayey tuff in a zone about 300 ft thick. Massive, finely crystalline ore has been recovered with an analysis

Jan 1, 1960

By W. T. Thom

All engineering education is faced by certain basic problems, three of which seem to have particular present importance in geological engineering training in general, and in respect to training for oil field geo-exploratory work in particular. Problem i The first of these problems has to do with present and future educational objectives and with the numbers and qualities of the men who should be coming out of our geo-exploratory training programs. Before the war we needed ever-increasing numbers of graduates at the Bachelor's level and a very much smaller number of men who had reached the Doctorate degree. Now, with more difficult, more extensive, and more costly exploratory work; with a rapid expansion of company "staff" activities, and with the initiation of many new research organizations and laboratories; it is clear that men of exceptional ability will be more and more in demand, and that the schools will need to carry a greater proportion of their students through to the Ph.D, degree. Problem 2 Assuming that the mineral industries will need an increasing supply of well-qualified Ph.D.s for future geoexploratory work (staff, line and research), can the schools expect to provide this supply of able Ph.D.s merely by expanding the proportion of B.S. and B.A. majors who go on through to the doctorate stage of training? And the answer is definitely "No"—as the situation stands at present. Most A.B. graduates are years short of the preparations in basic science and elementary engineering prerequisite to effective graduate study in the geoexploratory fields (paleontology ex-cepted), and similarly many of the annual crop of B.S. graduates lack adequate training in English; in ancient and modern history; and in the modern principles of labor and public relations. Indeed, several basic problems of undergraduate curricular organization and integration remain to be solved before most recipients of a Bachelor's degree will have that sound and broad educational foundation prerequisite to graduate training on a really effective basis. It is for these reasons that we have continued to experiment with our geological engineering program at Princeton, in an endeavor to provide a pilot-plant demonstration of a suitably broad and flexible undergraduate curriculum. Problem 3 But assuming that the schools can and do get undergraduate curricula set up in proper phase and scale to meet needed enrollment quotas for graduate training, what about the most urgent part of our whole mineral-industry educational problem? What about finding and bringing into mineral-industry training those youngsters of superior ability who are, by potential or known inclination, especially well-qualified for geoexploratory work?

Jan 1, 1949

By R. L. Sandefur

Professor Kim's excellent review article1 on ultimate pit planning contains a statement of the apparently widely held but incorrect belief that "kriging provides information on the confidence limits around the estimate which no other extension technique is capable of supplying." If a geostatistical approach is valid, there are several good reasons for using kriging but uniquely provided confidence limits is not among them. If kriging is possible, then confidence limits can be calculated for any other linear estimate. Kriging is the procedure which finds the weighing coefficients which minimize the estimation variance [ ] is the variance of blocks like the one being estimated. wi is the covariance of the estimated block and the i-th sample. oij is the covariance of the i-th sample and the j-th sample. Ai is the weighing coefficient for the i-th sample. N is the number of samples. The formula for estimation variance can also be used to calculate confidence limits on blocks estimated by any linear combination of sample grades including: 1) Polygons a. Hole nearest block centroid is assigned weight 1. All other holes are assigned weight 0. b. Polygonal area weighing. The samples are assigned weights directly proportional to their polygonal areas of influence within the block. The weights sum to 1. 2) Inverse distance weighing. The samples are assigned weights directly proportional to the reciprocal of their distance to some power from the block centriod. The weights sum to 1. Often only holes nearer than a certain distance and/or the nearest hole in each octant is considered. If there is an antisotropy to the ore body, an elliptical transformation often gives more accurate results. The most popular inverse distance weighing function is inverse squared distances (IDS). 3) Simple average. All samples within a certain distance are assigned the same weights which sum to 1. As an example of the applicability of the above formula to any linear estimate an internal verification on copper grade of 665 blast holes on the 1040 bench at Utah's Island Copper mine is presented. Internal verification is simple and applicable to non-linear estimates as well. Any sample (drill hole, bulk, trench, or chip) is dropped out, the value of the dropped sample estimated and compared with the actual value. If this is done for all samples, a measure of confidence limits is obtained. Internal verification is used in Cominco's MEPS system4 and in the BLUEPACK system.5 Comparison of block values against estimates697 is not dissimilar to internal verification. Results of the internal verification are presented below:

Jan 1, 1980

The following paragraphs have been extracted from a recent publication of the U. S. Department of Commerce; Miscellaneous Series, No. 65, " German Trade' and the War, " which portrays the industrial, commercial and economic conditions of Germany, at the present time, and has been compiled largely from sources published in Germany. Iron and Steel The Krupp company, the greatest of the German munition works, was faced at the outbreak of the War with the disappearance of its great international business, but this was amply compensated by orders from Germany and her allies, and the activity of the company has been greatly extended. The general meeting of December 1914, voted an increase in the capital to 250,000,000 marks. The gross profits of the company, amounting to 61,900,000 marks in 1912-13, have been more than doubled during the war. The gross profits were 128,260,000 marks in 1914-15 and 143,360,000 in 1915-16. Large sums have been written off; 10,000,000 marks have been placed in the pension fund during the war, and 5,000,000 were appropriated for workmen's dwellings in 1915. Thirteen million marks have been devoted to war assistance in the last three years. The assets of the company were valued at 967,000,000 marks at the end of 1916. For the year 1916-17, the company paid a dividend of only 10 per cent., but set aside 85,425,000 marks for depreciation. The Bismarckhütte in Upper Silesia, capitalized at 16,000,000 marks, with a bonded indebtedness of 7,907,500 marks in 1913-14, reported 3,912,000 marks of net revenue from operation for that year. During the three years of war the revenue increased successively to 8,077,000, 11,805,000, and 16,994,000 marks. While the capital remained unchanged, and the bonded indebtedness was but slightly reduced, the dividends paid during the last four years were increased from 9 per cent. in 1913-14 to 15, 25, and 30 per cent. during the war. During the year 1916-17 the amount written off, chiefly on the works and plant account, was 10,553,000 marks, or nearly as much as the total set aside during the three preceding years. The turnover for that year reached a sum many times the amount of the capital. At the end of 1916 the company's shares were quoted at 275, as against 144 at the end of 1913.

Jan 8, 1918

By John Henry Harden

IN 1874, with Mr. H. Y. Attrill, of Baltimore, Md., I made an examination of some property at Goderich with reference to sinking for and mining salt. With this end in view we visited all the wells in the neighborhood, but the information sought being of so unreliable a character I advised the putting down of a borehole on the property. This has since been done, the result of which has lately been published by Dr. T. Sterry Hunt in the Toronto Globe. From this there appears to have been passed through six beds of salt of an aggregate thickness of 123 feet. Rock-salt was known to exist, for, by the boring of existing wells, small crystals had been brought to the surface in the dirt, but no attempt had before been made to obtain a reliable sample or to prove the number and thickness of the beds. The question now remaining for discussion is, shall the present method of obtaining the salt be continued, or shall the beds be won by a shaft in a regular mining fashion, by which means the salt may be gotten in a condition almost ready for the market? The present mode of obtaining salt is by boreholes from 6 inches to 8 inches in diameter drilled to the beds, into which is inserted a pump. The "feeders" of fresh water intersected in drilling the well are allowed to descend on the outside of the pump-tube to the salt beds and there become saturated, when, on use of the pump, brine is obtained for evaporation. In the beginning brine can only be had in limited quantity, but by the daily application of the pump, and the gradual solution of the salt, a larger surface becomes exposed to the action of the fresh water, and a continuous supply of brine is obtained. It will then be understood that the supply of brine is dependent upon the feeders of fresh water intersected in boring the well, which, we are told, have never shown any sign of diminution, and this is the water that must be encountered in sinking a shaft. There are ten wells in operation at Goderich, the most important one to the present project being known as the Hawley Well, located at an elevation a few feet above Lake Huron at the mouth of the river Maitland, at a much lower level and nearer to the proposed shaft than any other well in the district. At this well the feeders

Jan 1, 1877

By G. H. Enzian

W. C. Ellis—The intergranular fracture observed by these authors in brass seems to be characteristic of metals when tested under similar conditions. It has been observed by us in room temperature tests on lead alloys subjected to constant stress when the stress has been low enough to afford a small strain rate. If, however, the test be carried out at a high stress and therefore at a large strain rate, a characteristic, tapered, transcrystalline fracture is obtained. The same change of fracture has been observed by others with decrease of strain rate and increase of temperature for other metals—for example aluminum—and may be presumed, as the authors point out, to be general for metals. These findings suggest a plastic flow mechanism under conditions of small strain rate and high corresponding temperature differing from classical block slip. The required conditions point to a process fundamentally diffusive in nature—a less organized process than block slip. Nabarro18 has shown that plastic flow can occur by stress induced diffusion of vacant sites— a process of self-diffusion. Movements of a pseudo-viscous nature at grain boundaries are suggested in the work of Ke.15 Deformation near to a grain boundary by other than a slip mechanism appears necessary to Boas and Hargreaves.19 Wood and Rachinger20 report a cellular structure in slowly deformed alumi- num—the cell size is larger, the higher the temperature and the slower the strain rate. Presumably in the latter case diffusive movements occurred in the cell boundaries. In any case the nonslip mechanism seems somewhat obscure and further work is indicated. Such studies will undoubtedly clarify the nature and behavior of lattice imperfections—the very core of the strength and plastic properties of metals. F. H. Wilson and E. W. Palmer (authors' reply)—It is certain that the metallic behavior which has been termed "creep" includes many interdependent phenomena of which a nonslip type of plastic flow may well be one. The reports to which Mr. Ellis refers are illustrative of the many different observations that must be correlated for a complete understanding of creep. The list could be extended considerably. For example, we ourselves have been impressed by the sensitivity of creep phenomena to the presence of minor impurities and feel that this aspect of the problem warrants more thorough study than it has yet received. References 18 F. R. N. Nabarro: Report of Bristol Conference on Strength of Solids. P. 75, (1948) London. 19 Boas and Hargreaves: Proceedings Royal Society. (1948) 193. 89. 20 wood and Rachinger: Journal Institute of Metals. (1949) 17, 237.

Jan 1, 1951

By E. D. Gardner

When the National Forests were created, all lands embraced in their boundaries were exempted from all forms of entry, except mineral claims. Later, by Act of June 11, 1906, and as amended by Act of Aug. 10, 1912, provision was made allowing homesteads on areas chiefly valuable for agriculture and not necessary for the public use. Patents to mining claims in the Forests are granted the same as on land not in the Forests, irrespective of timber or other values. It is the policy to encourage the highest use of the Forests. As a business proposition, it is a good policy to have mines developed in the Forests. Their development in remote or inaccessible regions causes the country to be opened up and, in addition to the local market which the mines create, means of transportation are afforded to outside markets. No examination of mining claims is made until patent has been applied for, unless they are actively interfering with the administration of the Forest. In this case, an examination is made, and if there is evidence that the claims are being held in good faith they are in no way interfered with. Timber is never sold from a mining claim except with the consent of the claimant, or unless it is clearly shown, after an examination, that the claim is abandoned. In the case of fire-killed timber, which rapidly deteriorates by standing, a contract bond arrangement can be made for the sale of the timber which protects the interests of both the mining claimant and the government. The promiscuous locating of mining claims has in the past caused considerable trouble. It has been, and still is, the custom in some parts of the West to locate a mining claim when the surface rights of any particular area are desired, irrespective of the mineral character of the ground. This has been done to hold power sites, town sites, summer residences, springs, etc. When the ground is desired for any of these purposes, what is known as a Special Use Permit will be issued at a nominal sum, to legalize the occupancy. In most instances, it is far cheaper to take out one of these permits than to do the annual assessment work on a mining claim, but, of course, patent to the ground cannot be obtained in this manner. If mineral were discovered on the land covered by a Special Use Permit, it would ordinarily be the policy to cancel the permit if it were clearly

Jan 1, 1915

By Grover R. Castle

INTRODUCTION Banks are being asked to assume more and more of the project risk in connection with project financings and, as a result, they are seeking to become more sophisticated in the way that they approach these kinds of financings. For example, a large number of banks that are active with the mining companies have established mining groups which typically will include mining engineers, economists, and bankers, in order to specialize their service to the mining industry. These banks have geared up these special service staffs so that they will be better equipped in their lending activities to analyze, measure and evaluate the project risk. The hope is that a team of these specialists will be able to predict the potential success or failure of these new "green fields" mining ventures that the banks are asked to finance. This paper shall focus on this subject and try to determine just how successful these specialists can hope to become as they analyze these various projects that are brought to them for financing. The approach that shall be taken in this paper shall be to examine how successful the mining companies themselves have been in the past with this same problem. These mining companies should be the most sophisticated in their approach to the analysis of the potential for success of a new mine because they have had the most experience in evaluating these projects. After all, who knows more about developing a mine than the companies that have developed similar mines in the past? For the purposes of this paper, the writer has selected a sample of 18 mines that have been developed over the years and measured the actual performance of each of these sample ventures against the original projections. All of these cases have involved the development of large projects where the sponsors or partners in the venture are substantial and sophisticated companies and where the feasibility studies have been prepared by engineering firms that are considered very professional in the industry or alternatively where the feasibility has been done by a comparable in-house staff. The sample cases have been chosen from a period which starts in 1965 and continues through 1981 with the cases distributed over that period as indicated below: [ ] Fourteen of the projects are open pit mines, three are underground mines and one mine starts on the surface and gradually goes underground. Seven of the mines are in the the far east with the remaining three in either South or Central America. The following four specific questions were examined for each project:

Jan 1, 1985

By Earl C. Herkenhoff

Publication of the article "The Flotation Behavior of Digested Asphalt Ridge Tar Sands" by R.J. Smith and J.D. Miller has confirmed and again spotlighted a most significant and important development in the field of tar sand and heavy oil mining. This is the ability to recover 95% of the bitumen in dry tar sands by a hot water process. The initial investigation by Miller and Sepulveda in early 1978. "Separation of Bitumen from Dry Tar Sands," was the first blockbuster. It is disappointing that there has been so little scientific and industry ackowledgement that the authors laid to rest the long entrenched belief that the sand grains had to be "water wetted" for a hot water process to be applicable. Dr. Miller and his researchers at the University of Utah used slightly different mineral dressing terminology in describing their process but it is essentially the old, established technique of high &lids attrition scrubbing at elevated temperatures with a conditioner or modifier, followed by dilution and froth flotation. Similar techniques were described in detail for other nonmetallic minerals in the mid-1940s by Stuart Falconer of American Cyanamid Co. The authors used a 15-minute "scrub" period (or in their terminology "digester step") at 73% solids and 95OC (203°F) in a 0.3 m solution of sodium carbonate-about 4 kg/t (8 lb per st) of tar sand. Flotation was at 10% solids. Obviously, the scrub is an expensive step with respect to energy input but the high recovery of bitumen appears to justify it. Two basic questions then arise: What are the effects of shorter scrubbing time, lower temperature, and less sodium carbonate? Would a two-stage approach be advantageous? That is, could you get the major proportion of the bitumen with a mild scrub and apply the high power and temperature only to the refractory portion? These variables should be evaluated. Apparently, all results were only for rougher flotation. What would the grade and recovery of bitumen be if multiple cleaner flotation steps were employed? We must concede that a 60.62% grade of bitumen leaves considerable room for upgrading. Finally, it should be noted by all executives who approve funds for heavy oil recovery schemes, most of which are variations of in-situ methods, that mining can yield a 95% recovery of bitumen. That is correct, 95%. Imagine what that does to the total barrels recovered from a heavy oil resource compared with the scrawny 30-35% maximum recovery we are getting now. The conclusion-let's mine heavy oil and tar sands.

Jan 1, 1983

By John Henry Harden

IN 1874, with Mr. H. Y. Attrill, of Baltimore, Md., I made an examination of some property at Goderich with reference to sinking for and mining salt. With this end in view we visited all the wells in the neighborhood, but the information sought being of so unreliable a character I advised the putting down of a borehole on the property. This has since been done, the result of which has lately been published by Dr. T. Sterry Hunt in the Toronto Globe. From this there appears to have been passed through six beds of salt of an aggregate thickness of 125 feet. Rock-salt was known to exist, for, by the boring of existing wells, small crystals had been brought to the surface in the dirt, but no attempt had before been made to obtain a reliable sample or to prove the number and thickness of the beds. The question now remaining for discussion is, shall the present method of obtaining the salt be continued, or shall the beds be won by a shaft in a regular mining fashion, by which means the salt may be gotten in a condition almost ready for the market? The present mode of obtaining salt is by boreholes from 6 inches to 8 inches in diameter drilled to the beds, into which is inserted a pump. The "feeders" of fresh water intersected in drilling the well are allowed to descend on the outside of the pump-tube to the salt beds and there become saturated, when, on use of the pump, brine is obtained for evaporation. In the beginning brine can only be had in limited quantity, but by the daily application of the pump, and the gradual solution of the salt, a larger surface becomes exposed to the action of the fresh water, and a continuons supply of brine is obtained. It will then be understood that the supply of brine is dependent upon the feeders of fresh water intersected in boring the well, which, we are told, have never shown any sign of diminution, and this is the water that must be encountered in sinking a shaft. There are ten wells in operation at Goderich, the most important one to the present project being known as the Hawley Well, located at an elevation a few feet above Lake Huron at the mouth of the river Maitland, at, a much lower level and nearer to the proposed shaft than any other well in the district. At this well the feeders