VI. NICKEL
BY C. S. CORBETT
USES OF NICKEL
Nickel is used chiefly in the manufacture of special steels. It is estimated[65] that about 60 per cent. of the entire nickel production goes into steel making in normal times and more under war conditions. Nickel steels are the most important of all the alloy steels and are the most used.[66] They are used where unusual tensile strength is required. Nickel-chromium steels are used in the manufacture of armor plate.
[65] Report of the Royal Ontario Nickel Commission, 1917, p. 300.
[66] STOUGHTON, BRADLEY: “The Metallurgy of Iron and Steel,” 1911.
Ordinary nickel steels commonly carry about 3¹⁄₂ per cent. nickel. “Highly nickeliferous steels carrying up to 40 per cent. nickel are used for special purposes where non-magnetic qualities, resistance to corrosion and, above all, no expansion or contraction, or any desired expansion or contraction, with change of temperature, is important.”[67]
[67] Report of Royal Ontario Nickel Commission, 1917, p. 301.
Non-ferrous nickel alloys have found extensive uses, and probably about 20 per cent. of the world’s production of nickel goes into them. By far the most important are those formed from nickel and copper. One, generally known as “cupro-nickel,” contains approximately 80 per cent. copper and 20 per cent. nickel and is used largely for bullet jackets and other munition purposes. Another, which has become well known under the trade name “Monel metal,” contains 29 per cent. copper, 67 per cent. nickel, about 2.5 per cent. iron, and a small amount of manganese. It is manufactured direct from the Sudbury matte. Monel metal is used chiefly where a strong non-corroding metal is needed, as, notably, in ship propellers.
It is estimated that about 2 per cent. of the nickel production is used for electro-plating. To a large extent nickel plating prevents corrosion of the metal plated.
Nickel is also used for storage batteries; for coinage; as a catalyser in the hardening of oils or fats (solid fats being used for soap making); for cooking utensils; and as a pigment for coloring ceramic ware. It is doubtful whether these last-named uses would take more than 3 per cent. of the world’s nickel production.
Copper gives to steel properties somewhat similar to those given by nickel, notably increasing the tensile strength. Silicon also imparts similar properties to steel, increasing especially the toughness and tensile strength. A considerable proportion of chromium makes steel highly non-corroding. There is, however, nothing known that will take the place of nickel in special steels having a zero or a predetermined coefficient of expansion, such as “invar” or “platinite.”
Nickel possesses extraordinary power in giving its white color to alloys of copper; hence its use in coinage. The other white metals that might be used in its place are less plentiful and more expensive. There is no other abundant metal or alloy having the good color, great strength and resistance to corrosion possessed by Monel metal and like alloys of nickel and copper.
Nickel salts are used as substitutes for metals of the platinum group as catalysts in hardening oils and fats.
CHANGES IN PRACTICE
Production of nickel on a fairly large scale did not begin until the mines of New Caledonia were opened in 1875. To handle these ores, smelters and refineries were built in England and continental Europe. As the ores are of the silicate type and free from copper, they were easily treated by common processes of smelting with fluxes to get rid of the gangue and then heating with charcoal for reduction to a metallic condition. A pure metal was obtained which found a good market.
Production of nickel-copper ores in the Sudbury district began in 1887. On account of the copper with the nickel in these ores, new processes of refining had to be worked out and the trade prejudice against the product had to be overcome. This took persistent effort for several years. Only one of the first companies to operate in the Sudbury district has survived to the present time. This is the Canadian Copper Co., the producing subsidiary of the International Nickel Co.
Three new refining processes have been developed to handle nickel-copper ores. The Orford Copper Co. (subsidiary of the International company) uses the salt cake process. This process is one of fusion with sodium sulphide, the copper sulphide concentrating on top and the nickel sulphides at the bottom of the melt. Repeated fusion of the “tops” and “bottoms” effects a good separation.
The Mond company had a process before it had any mines. This process depends upon volatilization of the nickel by passing carbon monoxide over the matte, which has been previously roasted and leached of its copper content. Nickel carbonyl, Ni(CO)₄, is formed and metallic nickel is thrown down by decomposition of this product, so that the nickel obtained is pure.
The Hybinette process, a process depending on electrolysis, was first worked out at the plant of the Orford Copper Co. on Sudbury matte. It was used for low-grade ores at Fredericktown, Mo., and then later for the Norwegian ores at Kristiansand. It is to be used in the new refinery of the British-American Co. in Ontario.
Monel metal is made directly from Sudbury matte with the removal of a little of the copper. It is known as a natural alloy, in contrast to one made by combining the pure metals.
Increased use of nickeliferous iron ore for steel making will decrease the amount of nickel that will have to be added in making such steel. This will probably be overbalanced by the increased use of such steels.
GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
Analyses of igneous rocks indicate that nickel is present in the average igneous rock to the extent of 0.020[68] per cent. Of its occurrence, Clarke says:[69] “Very frequently detected in igneous rocks, probably as a constituent of olivine. * * * The presence of nickel is especially characteristic of magnesian igneous rocks, and it is generally associated in them with chromium.” Regarding copper he says: “Minute traces of this metal are often detected in igneous rocks, although they are rarely determined quantitatively.” It is estimated[70] that copper is present in the average igneous rock to the proportion of about 0.010 per cent., or only about half that of nickel, and that zinc and lead are present in even smaller proportion. Notwithstanding this greater abundance of nickel, the workable deposits of copper, lead, and zinc are much more widespread and production is correspondingly greater. “It can thus be said that nickel is less amenable to concentration by the agencies that tend to produce workable deposits than are the other metals mentioned (copper, lead and zinc).”[71]
[68] F. W. CLARKE, “The Data of Geochemistry,” Bull. 616, U. S. Geological Survey, 1916, p. 27.
[69] Ibid., p. 18.
[70] Report of Royal Ontario Nickel Commission, 1917, p. 95.
[71] Ibid.
One would infer from the above that nickel deposits of consequence would most likely occur in connection with igneous rocks, especially those that are basic. This is indeed true; in fact, the only known nickel deposits of commercial or prospective commercial value occur in association with basic igneous rocks. The nickeliferous metallographic provinces of the world may be said to lie within petrographic provinces. Harker says:[72] “An examination of the rocks belonging to one great period of igneous activity, and of their actual distribution, enables us to distinguish areas of greater or less extent, within which the rocks present a less or greater degree of consanguinity, the law being that more marked specialization goes with narrower localization.” On the basis of this law and the fact noted by Clarke and mentioned above, nickeliferous metallographic provinces may be limited more closely than simply to areas of basic igneous rocks. They may be said to roughly coincide with areas of basic igneous rock characterized by minerals of the olivine group, these minerals having formed as a result of the high magnesium content of the rock magma.
[72] HARKER, ALFRED, “The Natural History of Igneous Rocks,” 1909, p. 89.
Nickel ores occur where there was an unusual segregation of the element in the igneous rock at the time of solidification. In some places further concentration by weathering has been necessary to make an ore of the rock. In still other places, the concentration by weathering has not been sufficient to make the nickel valuable in itself, but has raised the iron content of the rock, and with it the nickel content, to such an extent as to make the ore valuable in the first instance as an iron ore and of additional value because of its nickel content.
Nickel is unique among the less rare metals in that a single district contains a quantity of accessible, workable ore, far ahead of that in all other known deposits of the world combined. This is the Sudbury district of Ontario. The nickel ores there were segregated from an enormous mass of igneous rock intruded under conditions favorable for broad segregation and subsequently so eroded that large ore bodies are accessible.
In those nickel ores and nickeliferous iron ores where weathering has been a necessary agent in concentrating the nickel and iron enough to make them commercially valuable, the original deposits were nickeliferous igneous rocks--that is, they were similar to the rocks associated with the nickel deposits of the sulphide type, but contained much less nickel. The nickel-ore deposits of the New Caledonia region, which rank next in productiveness to those of the Sudbury district, are of this type. The Cuban nickeliferous iron ores best exemplify iron ore deposits of this type.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
The nickeliferous ore deposits of the world may be divided into two main types--the sulphide type, in which weathering has not been of prime importance, and the garnierite or lateritic type, in which weathering has altered and concentrated the nickel as well as the chromium and iron of the original rock. In addition, nickel occurs in some places with ores of precious and semi-precious metals in veins. Nickel may be recovered from such ores as a by-product, but the ores are never mined primarily for their nickel content. The brief descriptions of the known deposits, grouped according to type, which follow, have been taken from the descriptions of the world’s nickel deposits in the report of the Royal Ontario Nickel Commission. A few direct quotations from the text of the report are given.
=Deposits of the Sulphide Type.=--The Sudbury district is situated in southeastern Ontario, Canada. In its broader outlines the geology of this district is relatively simple. An immense mass of nickeliferous rock was intruded as a “laccolithic sheet” or sill along an unconformable plane of contact between flat-lying sediments and an underlying complex of ancient rocks. During the intrusion and cooling, or perhaps soon thereafter, the underlying rocks of the central part of the laccolith, covering the reservoirs from which the magma came, subsided. Long periods of erosion then planed down the region until all that is left of the sill occupies a synclinal basin nearly 40 miles long and 10 to 15 miles wide. All of the rocks involved are of pre-Cambrian age.
The laccolithic sheet is approximately 10,000 feet thick. It differentiated on cooling into two kinds of rock--micropegmatite, a rock of the granite group, now forming the upper part of the sill, and norite, a gabbro rock, the lower part. The gradation between these two rocks is rather abrupt. At the bottom of the sill, in some places lying between the norite and the underlying rock and at other places entirely within the underlying rock, are bodies of ore consisting of pyrrhotite, pentlandite and chalcopyrite. These are segregated products of the norite, which in some places solidified at the base of the sill and in others were intruded as dikes in the underlying rocks or in previously solidified portions of the norite. They constitute commercial ore bodies where the sulphides form a preponderant part of the rock.
The ore bodies are classified as “marginal” and “offset.” The marginal deposits occur along the contact of the norite with the underlying rock. Frequently they lie entirely within the rocks adjacent to the norite. The offset deposits occur where faults cut across the limbs of the fold, forming zones of weakness into which ore or mineralized norite was intruded.
The nickel-bearing mineral is pentlandite; the copper-bearing, chalcopyrite. The other sulphide, pyrrhotite, is a sulphide of iron. The ores mined to date average roughly 3.5 per cent. nickel and 2 per cent. copper.
From the opening of the district in 1887 to the end of 1916 nearly ten and one-half million tons of Sudbury ore had been mined and smelted; and, from this, about 285,000 tons of nickel had been produced. It is estimated that there are probably fully 100,000,000 tons of ore reserves. Over a million and a half tons of ore were mined and smelted in 1916.
The Alexo Mine is situated 150 miles due north of Sudbury. The ore occurs at the contact of a large mass of peridotite (now altered to serpentine), with a pillow-lava which the peridotite intruded. The ore consists of sulphide minerals segregated from the intrusive mass. It is of two types, one, a massive, pure sulphide occupying cracks in dike-like relationship, the other, disseminated sulphide in peridotite adjacent to the sulphide ore masses. The ore deposit has a proven length of 700 feet, has been opened to a depth of 120 feet, and drilling has shown ore to extend to a depth of 240 feet. The average width may be taken as approximately 10 feet. By the end of 1916, ore had been raised to the extent of 34,650 tons and more than that amount had been developed. About 12,000 tons of ore were shipped in 1915, averaging about 4.9 per cent. nickel and 0.6 per cent. copper. Several hundred thousand tons are probably available in this deposit.
The nickel ore deposits of Norway are similar mineralogically to those of Sudbury. The deposits are small, their metal content is low, and compared to the Sudbury and New Caledonia deposits they are of little consequence. Up to 1909 there had been mined and smelted in Norway about 400,000 tons of nickel ore. The hand-sorted ore carried 1.4 to 1.7 per cent. of nickel.
Deposits like those of Norway have been found in Sweden, but they have not been worked in recent years. There is evidently a nickeliferous metallographic province in the Scandinavian countries and important ore deposits may yet be found there.
In the United States, near Gap, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a deposit of nickel ore of the sulphide type, which occurs as a segregation from a 300-ft. dike of amphibolite. It was worked spasmodically for copper throughout the 18th century. Nickel was discovered in the ore in 1852 and 4,000,000 pounds of nickel are estimated to have been produced up to 1882. The advent of New Caledonia and Sudbury ores caused the closing of the mine. The ore as mined carried 1 to 3 per cent. nickel and about one-third as much copper.
Near Julian, San Diego County, California, is a sulphide nickel deposit that has never been commercially productive. Assays show the ore to contain nearly 3 per cent. nickel or more.
A small deposit in Tasmania has produced a few thousand tons of rich ore. Diamond drilling has shown that little ore remains.
Nickel-copper sulphides have been found in connection with a large intrusive of basic igneous rock in the Insizwa Range, South Africa. No payable ore has been found.
Nickel sulphide deposits of unknown importance occur in India and in Southwestern China. Small deposits which were worked when nickel was scarce occur in Italy, Scotland, Germany and Austria.
=Deposits of the Garnierite and Lateritic Types.=--About one-third of the surface of the island of New Caledonia is occupied by serpentine, this being the weathered product of basic igneous rock. “The ore, noumeaite or garnierite, occurs as a hydrated silicate of nickel and magnesia and may best be described as an alteration product of the serpentine in which the magnesia and iron have been replaced by nickel. * * * The workable deposits always occur on the saddle of spurs from the main mountain ridge, at elevations of 400 to 2,500 feet, the latter elevation being the more common. * * * The replacement of the serpentine by nickel follows the joints and fractures in the serpentine and the undecomposed blocks and boulders of serpentine are as a rule covered by a shell of ore which has to be picked off.” The ores are hand picked to bring them up to a grade profitable to treat. In the past it has not been considered economical to smelt ore of lower grade than 4.5 per cent. nickel nor to ship ore much below 6.5 per cent.
The ore bodies usually contain under 250,000 tons of ore. The largest mine yet worked produced less than 600,000 metric tons (2,204 lb.) of ore. Probably there still remains as much undeveloped ore as has been mined in the forty years of production,--equivalent to 160,000 tons of nickel. This would be equal to about four years’ output of the Sudbury district at the 1916 rate of production. “There are large bodies of lower-grade ores which it has not yet been found feasible to treat.”
Three large blanket deposits of nickeliferous iron ore occur on elevated plateaus in Cuba. These are typical lateritic (residual) deposits. The average depth of the ore is 15 feet and the combined tonnage of the three deposits is placed at one and one-half to three billion tons. The nickel content ranges from about 0.6 per cent. to 2.1 per cent. and shows progressive enrichment from the top downward. Chromium is also present and shows similar enrichment. The presence of nickel and chromium in the iron ores greatly enhances their value for making special steels.
Iron ore on the island of Seboekoe, lying off the southeast coast of Borneo, contains appreciable amounts of nickel and chromium. At least 300,000,000 tons of ore are contained in the deposit, which is a porous limonite, about 15 feet thick, overlying serpentine.
In the United States, nickel deposits of the garnierite type occur in North Carolina and Oregon. Attempts to mine these ores have never been successful.
Small nickel deposits of the garnierite type occur in Egypt, Germany (Prussian Silesia), Greece, Madagascar, Russia and Spain. Nickeliferous iron ores occur in Greece, and it is thought that chromiferous iron ores on Mindao Island, in the Philippines, may, on further exploration, prove to be nickeliferous.
=Nickel in Veins.=--Nickel occurs with other metals, precious or semi-precious, in some vein deposits and is recovered as a by-product in the treatment of ores from them. It is notably present in the deposits at Cobalt, Ontario, and has been found in vein deposits in the United States, France, Germany, Austria, Mexico and South America. Several hundred tons are recovered annually in the refining of copper produced in the United States.
Related to the vein deposit type of nickel-bearing ore are the galena deposits disseminated through dolomite in southeastern Missouri. Iron, copper, nickel, and cobalt sulphides occur with the galena. Years ago nickel was recovered electrolytically from matte from these ores.
DEVELOPMENTS AND CHANGES IN KNOWN GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
In 1900 New Caledonia supplied 65 per cent. of the world’s production and Ontario 35 per cent. Since then the world’s production has increased six-fold, and Ontario, by the end of 1916, was producing 80 per cent. of the whole. This shows the trend of the industry. Recent discoveries of ore in the Sudbury district and construction of new smelters and refineries in Ontario to treat the ores indicate an increasing dominance of the industry by that district. New Caledonia has not the large ore bodies and is too far away to compete favorably with Ontario, though work will continue there.
Statistics of production and ore reserves in Ontario and New Caledonia are shown graphically in figures 7 and 8.
Isolated nickel ore bodies of the sulphide type--that is, segregations from basic igneous rocks, as at Sudbury--have been found in a number of widely separated places. There is a distinct probability that others exist and may be discovered. Such undiscovered deposits might even contain more accessible ore, in the aggregate, than the total of the mined and unmined ores of the Sudbury district, but in the light of present knowledge this seems a remote possibility.
Other deposits of the New Caledonian and Cuban types will probably be discovered, but it is doubtful if as large deposits of those types remain to be found. In these the nickel has remained in the material left as residuum from the partial or complete weathering by solution of the original nickeliferous rock. This material lies at the surface and covers relatively broad areas. Bodies of it are therefore not usually difficult of discovery. They seem to be found most abundantly in warm latitudes, where solution weathering has most easily gone on under conditions favorable for preservation of the residuum.
The present known nickel and nickeliferous iron-ore deposits indicate roughly the locations of perhaps all or nearly all of the nickeliferous metallographic provinces of the world. It is in these provinces that new deposits are most likely to be found. The wide-spread distribution of these provinces is indicated by the following statement in the Report of the Ontario Nickel Commission:
While competition is not to be feared (that is, for Ontario), it would be futile to try to shut off the supply of nickel from almost any of the great nations. * * * Nearly every important country has supplies of nickel ore which can be worked if the demand is great, thus ensuring a high price.
It is thought probable that the nickeliferous metallographic province of eastern Canada, which includes the Sudbury district, contains the greatest unknown nickel deposits, just as it contains the greatest known one, and this for three reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that the great nickel-ore bodies of the Sudbury district, the isolated Alexo ore body, 150 miles north of the district, and the appreciable content of nickel in the veins of the Cobalt and other districts near by, indicate an unusually large nickel content in the original magma from which the basic igneous rocks were derived. The second reason is that the mantle of glacial drift effectively conceals large areas of underlying rock and prevents easy discovery. The third is that the wild and unsettled nature of the country inhibits the human activities whereby accidental or other discoveries would be made.
POLITICAL CONTROL
The Sudbury nickel deposits and the Alexo ore body in eastern Ontario are under the political control of the British Empire; the New Caledonian nickel deposits are controlled politically by France, New Caledonia being a French colony; and the nickel deposits of Norway and Cuba are under the political control of those governments. The other deposits of the world, as has been noted, are commercially unimportant.
COMMERCIAL CONTROL
Ownership of mines and undeveloped ore bodies in the Sudbury district is divided between British and American interests. There are two companies producing ore at the present time and a third is expected to begin producing soon.
The first large company in the field was the Canadian Copper Co. This is a subsidiary of the International Nickel Co., over 90 per cent. of the stock of which is held in the United States. The Canadian Copper Co. owns the following mines: Copper Cliff, Evans, Stobie, Crean Hill, Vermilion, Creighton, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6. Four of these were being worked in 1917--the Crean Hill, Vermilion, Creighton and No. 2. In December, 1916, the president of the Canadian Copper Co. gave the following estimates of reserves of payable ore in three properties of that company: 10,000,000 tons in the Creighton; 2,000,000 tons in Crean Hill; and 45,000,000 tons in No. 3.
The Mond Nickel Co. is controlled by British interests. It owns the following mines: Garson, Worthington, Levack, Victoria and Kirkwood. The Levack has proven reserves of good ore amounting to 4,500,000 tons. The reserves of the other mines are not given.
The British-America Nickel Corporation, Ltd., has $20,000,000 of common stock, of which $14,500,000 is held by the British government in the name of Alan Anderson, trustee. By the end of 1916, this company had 11,000,000 tons of workable ore blocked out. Its mines are the Murray, Gertrude, Elsie, Blue Lake and Frood Extension. The reserves of the Murray alone are put at 9,000,000 tons.
In the southeastern part of the district an ore body 7,500 feet long, 10 to 120 feet thick, and extending to a depth of 1,020 feet in one place at least, has been found recently in diamond drilling operations by the E. J. Longyear Co., of Minneapolis. This company and its associates, all American, control the ore body. The ore tonnage of this deposit is estimated at 6,000,000 tons above the 500-ft. level. A few drill holes have gone to greater depths and found ore. It is not possible to estimate the reserves of this deposit below the 500-ft. depth.
The Alexo Mining Co. Ltd., which is mining the Alexo ore deposit north of the Sudbury district, is a Canadian concern. An estimate of the quantity of ore in this deposit is not available, but the deposit is small compared to that of the Sudbury district. The total may be several hundred thousand tons.
The largest and most important owners of nickel-holding lands in New Caledonia, in relative order of the importance of their holdings, are: (1) La Société le Nickel, a company which has been mining in the island for many years. (2) The International Nickel Co., represented in New Caledonia by its two subsidiary companies, The Nickel Corporation and La Société Minière Caledonienne. The International does not mine in the island, but some of its lands are worked on lease by persons associated with La Société le Nickel. (3) Les Hauts-Fourneaux de Noumea.[73]
[73] Report of Ontario Nickel Commission, 1917, p. 253.
La Société le Nickel was under control of the Rothschilds of France at the time of the discovery of the Sudbury deposits. Mr. F. E. Merry, an English metallurgist, in testifying to the Ontario Nickel Commission, reported that Germans were in control of the company at the outbreak of the war. The German firm of Krupp had also acquired some nickel property in New Caledonia.
The International Nickel Co., the second largest holder of New Caledonian nickel lands, is the same American firm which owns the Canadian Copper Co.
Les Hauts-Fourneaux de Noumea is owned, at least since the outbreak of the war, by French interests.
According to Mr. Merry, the nickel mines and smelters of Norway were also mainly in control of the same German group that had gotten control of Le Nickel. It worked under the name “Metallgesellschaft.” One mine and smelter reopened recently were under English control.
The nickeliferous iron ores of Cuba are owned entirely by American companies, principally by steel manufacturing companies, notably the Bethlehem Steel Co.
All three companies producing or about to produce nickel in the Sudbury district own their own smelting and refining plants. The International has been smelting its ore in Canada and refining it in the United States. It has a new refinery at Port Colborne, Ontario. The Mond Nickel Co. which smelts in Canada and refines in England, has started a refinery in Canada. The British-American Nickel Corporation has built both a smelter and a refinery in Canada.
The United States Nickel Co. operates a refinery at New Brunswick, New Jersey. Les Hauts-Fourneaux de Noumea and this company belong to the same interests. They have a smelter at Noumea, New Caledonia; also a refinery at Havre, France.
La Société le Nickel has a smelter at Thio, New Caledonia, and refineries at Havre, France, and Erdington and Kirkintilloch, British Isles.
No one refining process dominates the nickel industry of the world. The two companies producing nickel from Sudbury ores are using entirely different refining processes, which they individually control; and the British-America concern, soon to begin producing, will use a third process, the Hybinette, an electrolytic process on which it has exclusive rights for North America. The Orford Copper Co., subsidiary of the International, uses what is known as the “salt-cake” process, but it also produces some nickel electrolytically.
The process of the United States Nickel Co. at New Brunswick, New Jersey, being one of fluxing and reducing from matte produced at the Noumea smelter, is not adaptable to copper-bearing sulphide ores.
The ores produced in Norway are smelted and refined in Norway by the Hybinette process.
Obviously the nickel resources of the world are controlled by a few companies. The chief one is the International Nickel Co., which has the largest holdings at Sudbury, and the second largest holdings in New Caledonia. The Mond and the British-America are the next most important, and La Société le Nickel is fourth in importance. E. J. Longyear Co. and associates do not aspire to become producers of nickel and are in the market to sell their properties. For a new concern to succeed it would have to develop a refining process of its own. The alternative would be for it to sell out to or merge itself with a firm that controls a refining process. There are no custom smelters or refineries in America. The Mond company buys the Alexo ore because its high magnesium content makes it a good fluxing material in smelting Sudbury ores.
POSITION OF THE LEADING COMMERCIAL NATIONS
=United States.=--Though the United States has insignificant deposits of nickel ore and therefore exerts little or no political control over nickel mining, American capital plays an important if not the leading rôle in the industry. Of the four companies holding the deposits of the Sudbury district two are American, and these two possess what are doubtless the largest reserves there. One of these, the International Nickel Co., has the next to the largest holdings in New Caledonia.
=Great Britain.=--Of all nations Great Britain is in the strongest position politically with respect to the nickel industry, because of the Sudbury district being in Canada. It has used this control in an endeavor to localize the business of refining Ontario nickel ores in Canada, with the result that the International Nickel Co. is to transfer its refining operations from New Jersey to its new refinery in Ontario.
Commercially, British capital controls the two other companies having holdings at Sudbury. In one of these,--the British-America Nickel Corporation,--the government itself has a controlling interest.
The policy of the British government with relation to the Sudbury nickel ores, which give the British an overwhelmingly dominant political control over the world’s nickel, is highly significant as showing that the government is aware of the necessity for commercial as well as political control, in order to reap all the commercial and strategic advantages of its good fortune. During the war, and before the United States entered, great feeling was roused in Canada and England by the German submarine, Deutschland, loading at New York a cargo that consisted partly of metallic nickel, it being assumed that this was originally Canadian nickel. The direct participation of the British government in the Sudbury industry in such a way as to make the government practically the dominant factor, and the transfer of the refinery operations of the American-owned International Nickel Co. from New Jersey to Ontario, mark a vigorous and aggressive nationalistic policy which has attained its object without much delay.
=France.=--France owns the island of New Caledonia and has political control of the nickel deposits there. Two of the three principal companies holding New Caledonian ore deposits are presumably held by French interests. The larger one, La Société le Nickel, was for a long time controlled by the Rothschilds of France. It was reported later to have gotten into German hands.
=Germany.=--Germany exercises political control over no important nickel deposits. Before the war the German firm of Krupp had obtained some New Caledonian nickel properties. A German group, the Metallgesellschaft, is reported to have had control of La Société le Nickel at the outbreak of the war, and also the mines and smelters of Norway.
VII. TUNGSTEN
BY FRANK L. HESS
USES OF TUNGSTEN[74]
[74] Unless otherwise noted, the short ton of 2,000 pounds is used throughout this chapter and “tungsten ore” means materials carrying 60 per cent. WO₃.
The essential uses of tungsten are as an alloy in high-speed tool steel, for the making of filaments for incandescent lamps, for targets and cathodes of Roentgen (“X”) ray tubes, and for electric contacts for explosion engines or wherever an intermittent electric contact is needed. Other uses are in saw and some other steels, as a constituent of stellite, in a tungsten-iron alloy for valves in automobile and airplane engines, for kenotrons and similar instruments, in a manganese-chromium-tungsten-iron alloy for wire-drawing dies, in wire cloth, luminescent screens for Roentgen (“X”) rays, mordants and minor chemicals.
=Substitutes.=--The use of tungsten in high-speed steels is as standard as the use of yeast in bread, and, though assiduously sought, no substitute is known that satisfactorily takes its place. According to report, in England and France molybdenum has been used to replace about half of the tungsten in some high-speed tool steels, but this is seemingly not a preferred method, being used only when the obtaining of tungsten is difficult. In the United States the practice has had few sponsors. The following quotation from the Mining Journal (London) for May 25, 1918, p. 318, shows that this sentiment is not unknown abroad:
The manufacture of ferromolybdenum is stated to have been commenced in Sweden, where the lack of ferrotungsten has forced the employment of this substitute.
During 1917, 104 (metric?) tons of molybdenite was shipped from Norway to Germany, where it probably was used as in Sweden. Henry E. Wood reported finding molybdenum in the steel of a German helmet. When tungsten was at the excessively high price of early 1916, many experiments were made to find a substitute, but apparently without full success, although lately several substitute steels containing cobalt and chromium and especially intended for cast milling-cutters and other multiple-edged tools have been placed on the market and a cobalt-chromium-molybdenum steel and a uranium steel have been offered for lathe tools. Stellite, the cobalt-chromium-tungsten alloy, in which there is only one-third to one-half as much tungsten as is used in high-speed steel, has grown in favor, and cooperite, a nickel-zirconium alloy, is also a competitor, but the trade in the combined list has made no appreciable impression on the demand for tungsten steels.
A change in the manner of using tungsten steel, by which a thin plate of high-speed steel is cemented to a more ordinary steel bar so as to form the cutting edge of a lathe tool, has made the demand for tungsten less than it would have been had the old practice been followed of making the whole tool of high-speed steel.
CHANGES IN PRACTICE
No startling changes of practice in the metallurgy of tungsten are known to have taken place, but there has been a steady betterment of the art, improvement in the quality of ferrotungsten, a shifting in localities of reduction, and a considerable change in the manner of use. The wasteful, lazy demand for ores of high concentration and of great purity common before the war has given way before more enlightened and intelligent practice, until firms both in this country and in England make a specialty of using low-grade or impure ores, though seemingly much more advance has been made here than abroad. One firm, the Chemical Products Co. (Washington, D. C.) was organized specifically to buy ores carrying less than the 60 per cent. tungsten trioxide (WO₃) demanded by other American firms, and ores containing sulphur, copper, arsenic, bismuth, tin, antimony, phosphorus, or other impurities to which most users objected. Two firms, the Black Metal Reduction Co., and the Tungsten Products Co., both of Boulder, Colorado, were organized to handle materials such as tailings carrying as little as 1 per cent. tungsten trioxide, and they said that they were able to pay for gold and silver in the ore.
Several firms make tungsten trioxide or tungstic acid (H₂WO₄) for ferrotungsten makers. Firms have also made artificial scheelite (CaWO₄) for the same trade, using off-color ores in the process. Powdered ferrotungsten made by chemically precipitating an iron tungsten salt from solution and reducing it to a metallic powder carrying 4 to 11 per cent. iron has been produced by several firms and seems to have started a demand for powdered ferrotungsten, so that firms are now finely grinding the massive ferrotungsten. Claims for better furnace practice which greatly cuts down the consumption of current and makes a saving of 90 to 96 per cent. instead of the usual 80 per cent. are also made. Several firms are making ferrotungsten powder and tungsten powder in iron tubes or other iron containers instead of in the graphite crucibles used before the war.
In the milling of tungsten ores, the tendency in this country is to get away from the uneconomic method of making concentrates very high in tungsten trioxide (carrying more than 60 per cent. WO₃). Few operators really know what the heads run, and the determination of losses is mere guesswork. Some of the most careful operators in the Boulder field before closing down at the beginning of 1919 were making a high-grade product carrying nearer 50 per cent. than 60 per cent. tungsten trioxide, and a lower grade product carrying about 20 per cent. tungsten trioxide, not attempting to raise its tenor. This practice cuts down the losses largely. When the great shortage of tungsten ore came in 1916, users were compelled to take lower grade concentrates, and some improved their metallurgy accordingly. This change has made the sale of 50 per cent. concentrates easier. Even in England, 60 to 65 per cent. ores were accepted where formerly a content of 67.5 per cent. or 70 per cent. WO₃ was demanded.
Formerly scheelite sold 50 cents per unit below other tungsten minerals, even though freer from bothersome impurities, but with the graduation from rule-of-thumb methods to more thoughtful, careful and scientific practice, it came to command a premium. Huebnerite seems to be still sold with and as “wolfram” in England, but in this country it must be sold according to its composition, for to most metallurgists the manganese is undesirable, though at least one firm now makes ferrotungsten from huebnerite without prejudice or difficulty. This growth in knowledge and technique has caused the price of the tungsten minerals to rank about as follows in the order named: Scheelite, ferberite, wolframite and huebnerite. This applies to tungsten used in the manufacture of tungsten and ferrotungsten for steel making. Scheelite is not wanted in this country for making filaments.
Before the war the United States imported considerable quantities of German ferrotungsten, but metallurgists claim that the ferrotungsten now made in this country is superior to any from Germany. For the present, of course, the German export trade is dead. England, formerly a small producer, is now making large quantities of ferrotungsten and tungsten powder at a number of plants. One of the producers, the High Speed Steel Alloys, Ltd., Widnes, near Liverpool, “is under government assistance and is owned by 31 of the leading consumers of Sheffield.”[75] The article quoted stated that the output was at the rate of 500 tons of tungsten per annum. The Thermo-Electric Ore Reduction Corporation,[76] Luton, was at the same time producing 140 tons of tungsten per month. The ferro produced carried 80 per cent. and the powder 98 per cent. of metallic tungsten. Only one company in the United States was producing as much as 60 tons of tungsten per month during the same war period. The Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Corporation owned mines from which it expected to produce each year 4,000 long tons of concentrates carrying 65 per cent. tungstic oxide. There are at least seven other manufacturers of tungsten or ferrotungsten in England.
[75] Mining Journal, London. “High Speed Steel Alloys, Ltd., Visit of Inspection to the Works,” vol. 115, Nov. 25, 1916, p. 779.
JULIUS L. F. VOGEL has since written an article (Min. Jour., London, vol. 20, p. 16, Jan., 1919) in which he says that government aid, though proffered, was not accepted. This statement confirms the government policy.
[76] Mining Journal. “Thermo-Electric Ore Reduction Corporation, Ltd., Visit to the Luton Works,” vol. 115, p. 797, Dec. 2, 1916.
France had a number of ferrotungsten plants before the war, and these are thought to be still in operation.
At the beginning of the war about half of the tungsten used in the United States was introduced into steel in the form of ferrotungsten and about half in the form of tungsten powder. This practice has changed, so that now more than three-fourths of the tungsten used is introduced as ferrotungsten, largely, it seems, because of the ferro being now manufactured in purer form and partly because tungsten powder could not be obtained for a while. At one time tungsten ores were put in the charge and the tungsten alloyed directly with the steel; in fact, tungsten steels were first made in this way, although the process was patented in this country as new. The practice seems to have been dropped because of the introduction into the steel of impurities that may be eliminated when tungsten or ferrotungsten is made first.
In the making of tungsten steels a considerable change has taken place through the increased use of the electric furnace. One considerable producer, the Latrobe Electric Steel Co., makes all of its high-speed tool steel in this way. The Vanadium Alloys Steel Co., one of the larger producers, makes a large part of its steel in the electric furnace, and the Crucible Steel Co. and some other steel companies are understood to make a part or all of their steels thus.
The removal of tin, copper and other impurities from ferrotungsten by grinding and chemical treatment has made possible the use of impure ores in the production of high-grade ferrotungsten in the electric furnace.
GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
Tungsten, even more than tin, is found almost exclusively with granitic rocks. In a few places tungsten ores are found in volcanic, sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, but as is postulated with certain tin deposits, many of these deposits may be explained on the supposition that they are not far vertically above underlying granite.
Among the deposits themselves there is a considerable variety of types, and they may be classed as follows: Segregation deposits, pegmatite dikes, veins, replacement deposits, contact metamorphic deposits and placers.
Segregation deposits are few and of little importance and constitute those deposits in which wolframite is segregated in granite, like biotite or hornblende. A closely related type is the occurrence of tungsten minerals in aplitic granite, and this grades almost insensibly into the second type, the pegmatites.
The pegmatites are also of comparatively small importance, but do yield certain quantities of tungsten minerals. The pegmatites also grade into the next type, the veins, which have heretofore furnished the greater part of the tungsten minerals of the world. Closely connected with the veins are the fourth type, replacement deposits, in which the country rocks alongside the veins, though the veins may be very small, are replaced by various minerals, including those of tungsten. The only known large examples are the wolframite deposits near Lead, South Dakota, which were considerable producers under the high prices of the Great War.
Among the replacement deposits are to be noted also such deposits as those in the Deep Creek Mountains, Utah, in which solutions following cracks in monzonite have replaced the rock with a mass of feldspar, quartz, tourmaline, apatite, scheelite, wolframite (very little), bismuth, copper, and molybdenum minerals, which under other conditions would be unhesitatingly called pegmatite.
Closely related to the replacement deposits are the contact metamorphic deposits, the fifth type. These only recently have begun to be of commercial importance, but promise to be among the greatest, if not the greatest, producers of this country and possibly of other countries. They are of the familiar kind--limestones or limey rocks which have been invaded by granites bringing large quantities of watery or gaseous solutions of silicon, iron, aluminum and magnesium, with less chlorine, fluorine, potash and sulphur, and, in this case, tungsten. In the Great Basin broad areas of limestone, extending from northwestern Utah to the Sierra Nevadas and around their southern extremity, have been thus intruded and metamorphosed. Some large deposits of scheelite have already been exploited in the region and others remain to be worked. Similar deposits occur in Korea, Japan and Tasmania, and probably exist, though as yet undiscovered, in China, the Malay Peninsula and other countries. The tungsten mineral in such deposits is invariably scheelite.
Placers, the sixth type, are formed from all grades of deposits, but their value depends largely on local conditions. They are both residual and fluviatile deposits and have been large producers of tungsten minerals, especially of wolframite. A very large proportion of the Burmese output has been from semi-residual and stream placers, and the Chinese output in 1918, the largest ever made by any country in one year, was almost wholly from placers.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
The distribution of tungsten ores is far from being as wide as the distribution of the granitic rocks, and some regions with large areas of granite have almost no tungsten minerals. Among such regions are the Scandinavian peninsula, large stretches of Canada, the eastern United States, and Brazil.
The world’s known large tungsten fields are grouped along the shores of the Pacific Ocean--not always close to it, but somewhere in the great mountain masses paralleling its margin, and the western shore is much richer than the eastern shore. In 1918, fully 92 per cent. of the world’s tungsten came from the shores of the Pacific, 61 per cent. coming from Asia, Australia, and Oceania, and 31 per cent. from North America and South America. Eastern Asia alone furnished 56 per cent. There is only one considerable tungsten-bearing area not situated close to the Pacific, that of the Iberian Peninsula, mostly in Portugal but partly in Spain. Of the less than 8 per cent. not produced around the Pacific, that area yielded nearly 5 per cent. There are, of course, small deposits in England, Germany and other places near the Atlantic, but together they produce less than 3 per cent. of the world’s tungsten ores. The huge continent of Africa has only negligible known deposits; none of consequence are found on the borders of the Arctic, Antarctic or Indian oceans except along the narrow Malay Peninsula dividing the Indian and Pacific oceans, and only minor deposits are known in Siberia.
Considered as a single metallogenic province, the region making by far the greatest production is in southeastern Asia; it includes the Malay Peninsula, Burma, the Shan States, Siam, Tonkin, and southeastern China. The second largest producing metallogenic province is the Cordilleran, including Bolivia and the adjacent closely related areas of Peru, Argentina and Chile, to which the United States and Mexico would be a close third.[77] Portugal, Spain and Italy form the fourth province, to which are closely related the Cornish-French producing areas. Australia, including Tasmania, is next in importance and is a distinct province, practically all the ores being found in the ranges of the eastern side of the continent. Japan and Korea also form a rather distinct province which may continue into Manchuria. Mexico, as has been indicated, should be included in the same province as the western United States. There are numerous small more or less isolated areas, like Connecticut, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, etc., that are at present of little importance and give no promise of future greatness.
[77] It may be quite justly objected that the idea of a metallogenic province is considerably stretched to include the Boulder and Black Hills deposits with those of the southwestern states and Mexico, but for convenience they are here so grouped--with a frank confession of the license taken.
PRODUCTION BY COUNTRIES
The world’s production of tungsten ores by metallogenic provinces and political areas is shown in the following table:
TABLE 28.--THE WORLD’S PRODUCTION OF TUNGSTEN ORE, 1913 TO 1918, BY METALLOGENIC PROVINCES AND POLITICAL AREAS[78]
In short tons (2,000 pounds) of concentrates containing 60 per cent. WO₃.
-----------------------------+-------+-------+-------+ Province and area | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | -----------------------------+-------+-------+-------+ Africa | | | | South African province: | | | | Rhodesia | 4| ...| ...| Union of South Africa | ...| ...| ...| +-------+-------+-------+ | 4| ...| ...| | | | | Asia | | | | Chino-Malayan province: | | | | Burma | 1,891| 2,605| 2,963| China | ...| ...| ...| Dutch East Indies (Billiton| | | | and Singkep) | 7| 1| 7| Federated Malay States |[80]252|[80]292|[80]326| French Indo-China (Tonkin) |[80]101| 119| 220| Siam | ...| 301| 475| Unfederated Malay States: | | | | Johore[80] | ...| ...| 2| Kedah | 32| 27| 14| Trengganu[80] | 94| 160| 161| | | | | Indian province: | | | | India (excluding Burma) | ...| ...| ...| Japo-Korean province: | | | | Chosen (Korea) | ...| ...| 74| Japan | 272| 215| 411| +-------+-------+-------+ | 2,649| 3,720| 4,653| | | | | Australia | | | | Australian province: | | | | New South Wales |[80]191|[80]220| [80]93| Northern Territory[79] | 217| 159| 366| Queensland | 402| 270| 468| South Australia | ...| ...| ...| Tasmania | 76| 53| 106| Victoria | 1| ...| 16| Western Australia[80] | 1| 1| ...| +-------+-------+-------+ | 888| 703| 1,049| | | | | Europe | | | | Erzgebirgan province: | | | | Austria | 57| 62| [82]75| Germany |[80]318|[82]100|[82]150| Franco-Cornish province: | | | | England | 204| 229| 370| France | 301|[82]200|[82]200| Iberian province: | | | | Italy | ...| ...| ...| Portugal | 1,241| 735| 1,029| Spain | 186| 149| 208| Russian province: | | | | Russia | ...| ...| ...| Scandinavian province: | | | | Norway | 3| 4| ...| +-------+-------+-------+ | 2,310| 1,479| 2,032| | | | | North America | | | | American province: | | | | Alaska | ...| ...| ([83])| United States | 1,537| 990| 2,332| Canadian province: | | | | Southeastern Canada | ...| ...| ...| Southwestern province: | | | | Mexico | ...| ...| ...| +-------+-------+-------+ | 1,537| 990| 2,332| | | | | Oceania | | | | Oceanic province: | | | | New Zealand[80] | 248| 228| 217| | | | | South America | | | | Brazilian province: | | | | Brazil | ...| ...| ...| Cordilleran province: | | | | Argentina[80] | 679| 499| 201| Bolivia[80] | 339| 330| 947| Chile | ...| ...| 10| Peru | 357| 235| 455| +-------+-------+-------+ | 1,375| 1,064| 1,613| +-------+-------+-------+ Total | 9,011| 8,184| 11,896| -----------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
-----------------------------+-------+------------+---------- Province and area | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 -----------------------------+-------+------------+---------- Africa | | | South African province: | | | Rhodesia | 2| 12| 37 Union of South Africa | 1| 9| 19 +-------+------------+---------- | 3| 21| 56 | | | Asia | | | Chino-Malayan province: | | | Burma | 4,166| 5,018| 4,919 China |[79]120|[79,80]1,500|[80]11,662 Dutch East Indies (Billiton| | | and Singkep) | 52| [81]61| [81]61 Federated Malay States | 578| 794| 398 French Indo-China (Tonkin) | 183| 422| [82]450 Siam | 584| 800| [82]800 Unfederated Malay States: | | | Johore[80] | 25| 2| 1 Kedah | 19| 139| 582 Trengganu[80] | 303| 225| 691 | | | Indian province: | | | India (excluding Burma) | 47| 69| 45 Japo-Korean province: | | | Chosen (Korea) | 613| 992| [82]1,102 Japan | 770| 808| [79]651 +-------+------------+---------- | 7,460| 10,830| 21,362 | | | Australia | | | Australian province: | | | New South Wales |[80]296| [80]274| [79]325 Northern Territory[79] | 401| 427| 614 Queensland | 415| 406| 298 South Australia | 1| ...| ... Tasmania | 119| 270| 416 Victoria | 1| 25| 4 Western Australia[80] | 4| 1| 5 +-------+------------+---------- | 1,237| 1,403| 1,662 | | | Europe | | | Erzgebirgan province: | | | Austria |[82]150| [82]150| [82]150 Germany |[82]351| [82]200| [82]200 Franco-Cornish province: | | | England | 441| 270| 338 France |[81]182| [81]182| [81]182 Iberian province: | | | Italy | 9| 1| ... Portugal | 1,563| 1,742| [82]1,300 Spain | 468| 491| 4,741 Russian province: | | | Russia | 36| [79]108| [82]150 Scandinavian province: | | | Norway | 1| [82]10| [82]10 +-------+------------+---------- | 3,201| 3,154| 7,071 | | | North America | | | American province: | | | Alaska | 47| 32| 12 United States | 5,876| 6,112| 5,056 Canadian province: | | | Southeastern Canada | ...| ...| 13 Southwestern province: | | | Mexico | 13| 207| 165 +-------+------------+---------- | 5,936| 6,351| 5,246 | | | Oceania | | | Oceanic province: | | | New Zealand[80] | 298| 181| 190 | | | South America | | | Brazilian province: | | | Brazil | [80]7| ...| ... Cordilleran province: | | | Argentina[80] | 963| 1,251| 724 Bolivia[80] | 3,624| 4,646| 4,082 Chile | 2| ...| ... Peru | 587| 471| 295 +-------+------------+---------- | 5,183| 6,368| 5,101 +-------+------------+---------- Total | 23,318| 28,308| 40,688 -----------------------------+-------+------------+----------
[78] Figures unaccompanied by footnote references are taken from official sources or other authentic publications. In all cases the original quantities have been reduced to their equivalent in concentrates containing 60 per cent. WO₃.
[79] Figures partly official and partly estimated by the United States Geological Survey.
[80] Exports.
[81] Figures estimated by the Allies when it was proposed to allocate the tungsten ores of the world among themselves.
[82] Figures estimated by the United States Geological Survey.
[83] Less than half a ton.
DEVELOPMENTS AND CHANGES IN KNOWN GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION IN THE NEAR FUTURE
=Asia.=--The increase of output from eastern Asia has been marvelous. In 1913 it amounted to 2,497 tons and in 1918, as already stated, to 20,228 tons--more than 56 per cent. of the world’s production. As elsewhere, production must decrease until the accumulated stocks in the reducing centers are used, then production will again proceed. The alluvial deposits of China are by no means exhausted, the veins are scarcely touched, the tungsten-bearing area is large and only partly prospected, and such prospecting as has been done has been almost wholly for placers; labor is cheap, and a large future output is sure. More liberal ideas of trade and government are slowly taking root in China and ultimately educated Chinese or trained foreigners will work the deposits; the output for a long time will be large, though it may never again be as large as it was in 1918.
So far as can be learned, the easily worked placers and the upper parts of the veins in Burma are becoming exhausted rather rapidly,[84] and recourse must therefore be had more and more to the mining of those parts of the veins below water level and in harder rock, and this will probably mean a diminution rather than an increase in output. Siam seemingly should give an increased production, as the mines are comparatively new, and there still should be opportunity for discoveries. The Federated Malay States and the unfederated states (Johore, Kedah and Trengganu) should produce at least as much in the immediate future as in the past--given the demand and an equal price.
[84] Burma Chamber of Commerce and Tavoy Chamber of Mines, “Memorial to Sir George Barnes,” Mining Jour., London, vol. 121, 1918, May 4, p. 261.
=Australasia.=--Like other British possessions, Australia labored under the handicap of a comparatively low fixed price for tungsten ores during the war. This price, at first 55 shillings per long ton unit c.i.f. London, was later raised to 60 shillings. During the earlier part of the war the price paid in Australia averaged less than one-half the price paid in the United States, and only a little more than half that paid in regions other than the British provinces. In consequence the Australian tungsten production did not increase during the war as it might have done had prices been higher. The cream of the known deposits is gone except in Tasmania, where contact metamorphic deposits on King Island have quadrupled the Tasmanian output. The tungsten minerals mined in Australia are largely wolframite with smaller quantities of huebnerite and scheelite. The huebnerite seems to be rarely recognized as such in the British market, but is all sold as wolframite. Except for the contact metamorphic deposits on King Island, Tasmania, the deposits worked are mostly veins, with some pegmatites.
In New Zealand, the production is wholly scheelite; it increased considerably during the war until the last year--1918--when, apparently from a lack of efficient labor, it fell to the lowest point since 1909. The probabilities are that there will be a stoppage of output for the present.
=South America.=--In Bolivia the increase of production has been great. The deposits seem to be wholly veins and derived placers. The veins are closely connected with the tin deposits, and in many veins tin and tungsten are associated, but many tungsten deposits contain little or no tin. The tungsten minerals mined are ferberite, wolframite, scheelite and some huebnerite. In some veins the minerals are mixed and in others wholly separate. The mines are in and on both sides of the eastern Cordillera of the Andes through a distance of nearly 400 miles from a point near Puerta Acosta, on the northwest, to Chorolque, on the southeast. Mining costs during the war rose greatly in sympathy with the rise in other parts of the world. Wages did not rise to great heights, but the cost of materials advanced decidedly. Transportation conditions are always bad in most of Bolivia, and heavily increase expenses. Because of circumstances the output is extremely sensitive to a decrease in demand or prices, and hence it fell quickly after the armistice, but should high prices come again, it will probably again increase quickly. Some modern plants were placed at mines before or just as the armistice was signed, and when world stocks of tungsten are used and when there is again a demand, some ore will be produced even at less than $10 a unit, though the average cost seems to be about $12 a unit, at the mine.[85]
[85] HAZELTINE, ROSS, United States consul, La Paz. Report dated May 14, 1919.
The output of Peru, as now produced, seems to depend upon high prices and with such prices could probably remain at the level of 1916 for several years. The Huaura deposits are reported to be large, though of low grade, and may under proper management yield much ore even at lower prices. They were under the control of German firms during the war and probably still are.
=North America.=--Until 1911 the United States was the leading tungsten-producing country, but in that year it was passed by Burma, which kept the lead until 1916, when the United States again became the principal miner of tungsten ore. In 1918 China entered the excessively high-priced market with an output that exceeded by nearly 1,000 tons the world’s production of any year before 1915. North America increased its output from 1,549 tons in 1913 to 6,512 tons in 1917, but dropped back nearly 1,000 tons (to 5,406 tons) in 1918. In the United States the decrease of production was due almost wholly to the fall in price, and only partly to exhaustion of deposits. In the Boulder, Colo., tungsten field some of its best ore bodies are worked out and the cost of production has risen greatly owing to the impoverishment of others, and the same thing is true in some other places, but it seems possible that in the country as a whole the production can be made about equal to what it has been before, provided prices are equally high, through the discovery of the contact-metamorphic deposits of the Great Basin.
In Mexico the tungsten deposits are seemingly a continuation of those of southern Arizona. So far as known, all the Mexican deposits carry scheelite, in places partly replaced by cuprotungstite. The known worked deposits in the Sahuaripa district of Sonora are described as veins containing scheelite with copper minerals and a pegmatite dike in which are large masses of scheelite and molybdenite.
=Europe.=--European production increased about 50 per cent. between 1913 and 1918, mostly in Portugal, and the output of tungsten ores in Portugal apparently did not reach its maximum. Both placers and veins have been exploited and there seems to be placer material still to be worked as well as veins that are said to be far from exhausted. The official statistics of production given by Portugal during the greater part of the war are declared by engineers conversant with the situation to have been too low, because of ore being smuggled into Spain and on board ships bound for England. On the other hand, in 1918 England and France objected to the shipment of Portuguese ore to the United States, but would not pay equivalent prices. The Portuguese government therefore issued an order preventing the export of tungsten ore except at fixed prices approaching the current American prices. American owners could not work their mines successfully under the British-French embargo, with the result that the output was probably much smaller than in 1917. In spite of the uncertainties the official estimates have been used as far as they are available, for no better figures are at hand.
As to the Spanish output, prophecy is difficult because the data concerning the mines are meager. It seems probable that under similar prices about the same output as in the past may be expected from the English and French deposits. The English output decreased in 1917 and increased only a little in 1918. No accurate data are available from France. The German and Austrian deposits were probably worked so hard during the World War that less is to be expected from them than they have heretofore produced.
=Summary.=--The principal changes in the distribution of production during the next few years would seem to be: Further development in Korea; possible development in Manchuria; development of deposits in southern China and Siam; further development in Bolivia; a tendency in the United States to largely increased production from deposits in the Great Basin; and development of both veins and contact-metamorphic deposits in Mexico. Production will possibly decrease in the Atolia and Boulder fields of the United States; and in Australia, Japan, Germany and Austria.
POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL CONTROL
The actual control of the world’s tungsten deposits differs considerably from that indicated by the production within political areas. Actual control is justly obtained through ordinary competitive buying, ownership by nationals (sometimes by governments) of deposits, and through commercial alliance. Control through ownership of banks and transportation lines may be just or it may be by coercion and commercial brigandage, seizing ports for coaling and repair stations--methods that are merely refinements evolved since the days when “They sought their fortunes as they pleased abroad, the crown annoying them with no inquiry to embarrass their search for Spanish treasure ships, or their trade in pirated linens and silks.”[86]
[86] WILSON, WOODROW. “A History of the American People,” vol. 1, p. 25.
TABLE 29.--ACTUAL CONTROL OF THE WORLD’S TUNGSTEN OUTPUT IN 1917 AND 1918.
IN SHORT TONS OF 2,000 POUNDS
--------------------------+-------------------+-------------------- | 1917 | 1918 --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- | |Percentage| |Percentage |Quantity|of world’s|Quantity|of world’s | | output | | output --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- British: | | | | Possessions | | | | Burma and Shan States | 4,600 | | 4,870 | Federated Malay States| 853 | | 920 | Trengganu | 350 | | 350 | Johore and Kedah | 200 | | 582 | India | 75 | | 46 | Australia | 1,404 | | 1,662 | New Zealand | 241 | | 146 | England | 265 | | 330 | South Africa | 24 | | 37 | +--------+ +--------+ | 8,012 | 28.4 | 8,943 | 24.9 | | | | _Obtained through trade | | | | and political pressure_ | | | | Japan and Korea | | | | (including ores for | | | | France) | 790 | | None | China and Hongkong | | | | (including ores for | | | | France) | 1,105 | | 900 | Siam | 600 | | 600 | Billiton and Singkep | 60 | | 60 | Argentina } (including| | | | Bolivia } ores for | 2,035 | | 950 | Peru } France) | | | | Portugal | 960 | | 800 | Spain (including ores | | | | for France) | 446 | | 425 | +--------+ +--------+ | 5,996 | 21.3 | 3,735 | 10.4 Total ores under | | | | British control | 14,008 | 49.7 | 12,678 | 35.3 | | | | French: | | | | France | 182 | | 180 | Tonkin | 422 | | 450 | Siam | 170 | | 190 | Portugal | 650 | | 440 | Bolivia (See Great | | | | Britain) | ? | | ? | Argentina (See Great | | | | Britain) | ? | | ? | +--------+ +--------+ | 1,424 | 5.3 | 1,260 | 3.5 | | | | German: | | | | Germany | 200 | | 200 | Austria | 150 | | 150 | Norway | ? | | | Portugal | ? | | ? | Spain | ? | | ? | +--------+ +--------+ | 350 | 1.2 | 350 | 1 | | | | American: | | | | Mexico | 340 | | 326 | Peru } | | | | Bolivia } | 4,320 | | 4,680 | Argentina } | | | | Japan and Korea | | | | (including some | | | | Chinese ore) | 1,010 | | 1,650 | China and Hongkong | 395 | | 9,300 | Portugal | 130 | | 60 | Siam | 30 | | 12 | Domestic production | 6,144 | | 5,068 | +--------+ +--------+ | 12,369 | 43.9 |21,150 | 59 | | | | Japanese: (Quantity | | | | smelted only) | | | | China | ? | | 300 }| | | | }| Norwegian: | | | }| Norway | 10 | | 10 }| 1.3 | | | }| Russian: | | | }| Russia | 110 | | 150 }| +--------+ +--------+ Total | 28,178 | |35,832 | --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+----------
Owing to the close relationships between some foreign governments and private firms--as illustrated by the German government’s interest in dye, potash, and shipping firms, and the British government’s participation in nickel mining and ferrotungsten-making companies--it is not practicable to draw a line between governmentally and privately controlled deposits. In countries with weak governments, the deposits owned by British subjects are to all intents and purposes British; but foreign deposits owned by Americans are not necessarily under American control; in fact, instead of helping and encouraging our pioneers in foreign trade we are apt to harass them and destroy their business with drastic tariff laws.
In effect, the preceding table merely shows where the ores of different countries go for treatment; it is, of course, only a generalization, for trade conditions constantly change. For instance, Japanese electric furnaces are beginning to smelt tungsten ores, though at present to the extent of only 10 to 15 tons of contained tungsten per month, but it is conceivable that the output may be increased greatly. Although Japan could control the disposition of its ore, it is given credit for control only of its smelted ores. The exact distribution of ores from Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Portugal and Spain can not be given.
=British Control.=--During the war the British government demanded and obtained all of the tungsten ores produced in its colonies and possessions. This restriction was later lifted as regards to Canada, and a new rule allowed Canada to ship tungsten ores to other Entente nations, but as Canada was not a producer the license granted amounted to nothing except as it eased the feelings of the Canadians. Scheelite deposits had been discovered in Manitoba, however, that for a time seemed to be potential producers. Nominally Siam has remained free from British control because more or less under the zone of influence of the French, but diplomatic pressure seems to have been exercised at Bangkok. The Siamese ores mostly contain some tin and have gone to Singapore for separation; and when once within the British possessions, of course they could not be exported. The English control of Siamese shipments, however, seems as complete as if the ores came from an English province. Mr. Nassuer, of the Siamese American Trading Co., testified before the Tariff Commission at San Francisco, June 28, 1918, that his company wished to ship ore to the United States but the British minister to Siam would give no permit. The company took the matter up with our State Department and finally got permission to ship 10 tons.
In February, 1918, the Chemical Products Co., of Washington, D. C., protested to the Department of State at Washington with reference to British interference with exportation of tungsten ore from Siam to the United States, stating that the company was working under conditions peculiar to itself in that it employed an expensive process developed to handle low-grade ores obtainable at a much lower price than the regular grades on the market; that it entered into an agreement with an American working tungsten mines in Siam for the purchase of his tungsten ore, only to find that through control of port privileges at Singapore and Hongkong the British effectually prohibited it or any other American firm from obtaining the material. Of course, this, like other incidents mentioned, took place under the shadow of a desperate war when strictness was to be expected, but the shipments asked were to an ally from a country not openly under control of Great Britain. Doubtless no such objections would be offered now, but the incidents show the efficiency of these methods of controlling commerce.
In southern China, Hongkong being the port for Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and parts of southern Kiangsi and Hunan, the British for a while exercised control over the export of ores produced in those districts,[87] refusing to allow the reshipment of ores unless they were sent to England.
[87] ANDERSON, GEORGE E.: American Consul General, Hongkong, China. “Tungsten from South China.” Commerce Reports, Nov. 9, 1917, p. 546.
Foreigners, including Americans of course, are not allowed to own mining property in Burma, the Federated and Unfederated Malay States, or Australia, territory producing nearly all the tungsten ores of the British Empire.
In Argentina small tungsten mines are owned by English companies.[88]
[88] SHARP, RALSTON C.: “Wolfram Deposits in the Argentine.” Mining Magazine, London, vol. 18, May, 1918, pp. 230-233.
In Bolivia the English and French governments during the war leased mines directly, and came into direct competition with American business men engaged in buying or producing tungsten ores.
British traders are constantly striving to increase their control of Bolivian tungsten ores. At present the English seemingly have complete control of the financial system of Bolivia, so far as foreign exchange is concerned. An American interested in a tungsten mine in Bolivia has informed the writer that it is almost impossible to do business with English banks, because they insist that if they extend commercial courtesies, even for pay, the recipient must buy only English mining machinery. The buddle, which for dressing tungsten ore is obsolete in other countries, is said to be still used in Bolivian mills under English control. If miners do not wish to deal through English banks, they are compelled to cable money to and from New York at considerable expense. The American banking interests represented in Bolivia seem conservative in advancing money on ore shipments, whereas German and English representatives are said to advance up to 80 per cent. of the market value of ores shipped. Mining corporations controlled by English firms ship to England, and Americans can not compete for the production. Such a firm is Aramayo Francke Mines, Ltd., which produced 2,050 long tons of tin concentrates, 226 tons of wolframite concentrates, and a considerable output of bismuth in the year ending May 31, 1916. Control of the Bolivian mines by the English is not yet dangerous to American interests, except through the banking system, but entire control may be passed to them, to the Germans or the French, through American tariff legislation.
In Portugal, English companies control a number of the mines, and it has been alleged by at least two Americans[89] that the English government, through its representations at Lisbon, for a period of more than two years, prevented title passing to American companies. The Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Corporation, Ltd., seems to be the chief English owner of Portuguese tungsten mines.
[89] Personal communications.
In the Dutch East Indies, the British are understood to control the present wolframite production of about 5 tons a month.
=French Control.=--French control of tungsten deposits is not large. It includes the production of France and of Tonkin, a part of that from Portugal, and a comparatively small interest in Bolivia. During the war, control in Portugal was attempted by England and France. The prices offered by the English and French were much below the market prices at New York, and the Portuguese government stepped in and raised prices to a point somewhat lower than those of the United States, but 20 per cent. higher than the prices offered by England and France.
=Japanese Control.=--Japan has within her own borders a considerable number of tungsten deposits in the southern part of the islands, but all are small. In Korea important deposits have been discovered and actively worked, especially within the last two years. Deposits in Manchuria are said to be controlled by the Japanese; little is known of them, and if they exist they are probably small. Japanese ores have largely come to the United States for several years. As has been said, Japanese firms have erected electric furnaces in which a part of the tungsten ores are reduced, probably the equivalent of 25 to 35 tons per month of concentrates carrying 60 per cent. WO₃.
=American Control.=--The United States controls entirely the tungsten deposits within its own borders and Alaska. Americans operating in Mexico have produced 200 to 300 short tons of scheelite concentrates per year, from deposits in the Sahuaripa district, Sonora. Wolframite is said to have been shipped from Sinaloa to the United States, but its real origin is unknown. Contact metamorphic deposits about 60 miles southwest of Nacozari carry 0.7 per cent. WO₃ and 1 to 2 per cent. copper. They are owned by Americans but are not now productive.
In Bolivia, Americans own some of the more important tungsten mines. The American firms known to own tungsten properties there are W. R. Grace & Co., local address, La Paz; Stewart, Wilson & Hepburn, Oruro; Easley Inslee, La Paz; and C. Dillon, Oruro. Their total output is estimated to amount to about 1,600 tons, out of a total output of more than 4,000 tons for the country.
In southern China, American firms have largely developed the tungsten trade, so that through this source the United States (or rather American capital) controls, unless hindered, a yearly output of perhaps 9,000 short tons of tungsten concentrates.
In Siam one or two United States companies have attempted to produce tungsten, but English influence during the war made difficult the shipment of even small lots of ores to this country.
Because it offered higher prices than other countries, and because the more direct and shorter trade route made trade with this country advantageous to the Japanese, the United States largely controlled the Japanese output of tungsten ore in 1918. This trade probably has been somewhat curtailed and will be further diminished through the erection of electric furnaces in Japan. The table following shows the tungsten ores imported for consumption into the United States in 1918, but gives a poor idea of the ores shipped from the countries of origin; Chinese ores lag three months and South American ores about two months. The table gives only the ores actually received during the year. Table 29 shows more nearly the ores shipped to the United States during the year.
Chinese ores are treated as averaging 67.5 per cent. WO₃ and other ores 65 per cent. WO₃.
TABLE 30.--TUNGSTEN-BEARING ORES IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED STATES IN 1918, BY COUNTRIES AS LISTED AT PORTS OF ENTRY, AND BY PROBABLE COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN
-------------------------------++------------------------------------ || Probable origin and equivalent As listed at ports || in 60 per cent. WO₃ ------------+------+-----------++-----------------+------+----------- | Quan-| || | Quan-| | tity,| || | tity,| | short| || | short| Country | tons | Value ||Country | tons | Value ------------+------+-----------++-----------------+------+----------- Argentina | 536|$ 730,722||South America, | | Bolivia | 88| 122,357||including: | | | | ||Argentina | | | | ||Bolivia | | Canada | 56| 115,863||Chile | | | | ||Colombia | | Chile | 1,251| 1,209,864||Costa Rica | | | | ||Ecuador | | China | 2,384| 2,068,636||Panama | | | | ||Peru | | Colombia | 56| 65,124||Salvador | 4,181|$ 3,746,299 Costa Rica | 18| 19,081|| | | Ecuador | 6| 9,979||China, including:| | | | ||Hongkong, | | France | 29| 3,400||“Other British | | | | ||East Indies;” | | Hongkong | 3,595| 3,511,046||also Canada | 6,811| 5,708,616 | | || | | Japan | 1,361| 1,700,332||Japan | 1,474| 1,700,332 | | || | | Mexico | 264| 224,247||Mexico | 286| 224,247 | | || | | “Other | | ||Portugal, | | British | | ||including: | | East Indies”| 19| 13,071||France | 61| 21,160 | | || | | Panama | 37| 40,614|| | | | | || | | Peru | 1,827| 1,488,516||Siam | 12| 8,583 | | || | | Portugal | 27| 17,760|| | | | | || | | Salvador | 40| 60,042||Unaccounted for | 157| 142,981 | | || | | Siam | 11| 8,583|| | | | | || | | Unaccounted | | || | | for | 145| 142,981|| | | +------+-----------++ +------+----------- |11,750|$11,552,218|| |12,882|$11,552,218 ------------+------+-----------++-----------------+------+-----------
Unhindered by other governments, this country would have imported even larger quantities of ore, because of its paying higher prices and being more liberal regarding impurities.
The table shows that the United States imported 36 per cent. of the tungsten output of the world; this amount added to the domestic output makes a total of 17,921 tons, or 50 per cent. of the world’s production. Owing to the lag in shipments from South America and China the South American ores received in January and February were from the output of 1917, as were the Chinese ores arriving up to the end of March. Subtracting the ores arriving from the two regions during the first two and three months, respectively, of 1918, and adding the ores arriving during a like period in 1919, make the quantity of ore controlled by the United States in 1918 (as shown on page 153) equivalent to 21,131 tons of concentrates carrying 60 percent. WO₃, or 59 per cent. of the world’s production. These ores were all controlled through the private initiative of American firms who offered better prices and better terms than could be obtained abroad. Probably a larger proportion could be handled in the future, should interference not come from within our own borders. It is now proposed to put a tariff of $10 a unit on tungsten ores without regard to purity or quality, with a correspondingly high tariff of $1 a pound, plus the 15 per cent. ad valorem duties now in force, on metal in any form--element, alloy or salt; and such a bill has passed the House of Representatives. Its advocates believe that the price, now about $7 a unit in New York, will be raised to $17 a unit.
Hereafter the quantities of tungsten ore handled will be much smaller than during 1916, 1917 and 1918; and will be confined to peace-time needs unless some unforeseen war arises. England, according to government estimates about January, 1920, had two years’ supply, and France is probably as well supplied. The United States probably had on hand an equivalent of quite 8,000 tons of ore carrying 60 per cent. WO₃. Makers of tool steel figured on a consumption of 7,500 tons during 1919, but because of the lack of market for ore this was much too high; and probably 4,000 tons is large enough, so that there will likely be little market for new supplies for nearly two years, except as ore may be bought speculatively. During this time, mines everywhere must remain idle until a demand again arises, except for those mines required to furnish tungsten for Germany, Austria and Russia and the small quantity required by Sweden, Norway and Italy. If industries in Germany, Austria and Russia recover so that they can buy and use tungsten, Germany will have regained in the ores that will be eagerly offered by producing nations needing a market, a part of the trade she has lost. Traders of England, France and the United States will be glad to sell tungsten and ferrotungsten, but Germany will undoubtedly reach out for raw material in order that she may make as much use as possible of her abundant unemployed labor. Should a tariff law like that now proposed be passed, the United States will have cut off its foreign supplies and will have ended its control of any considerable part of them. However, should a high price be maintained, artificially or otherwise, the development of other alloy steels for use in multiple-edged tools may have reached a point where not so much tungsten will be needed.
=German Control.=--Germany had no considerable tungsten deposits at home, and none in the foreign territory she held, but in 1913 her control through business alliances covered about two-thirds of the world’s output of tungsten ore. In that year, according to the German official figures, 5,295 short tons of tungsten ores were imported. Most of this probably carried 65 per cent. or more WO₃, equivalent to, say, 5,736 tons of concentrates carrying 60 per cent. WO₃. Adding the 106 tons of Saxon concentrates produced in that year shows that Germany treated a total of approximately 5,840 tons out of a world’s output of 8,864 tons, or about 66 per cent. of the total. The United States in the same year produced 1,537 tons and imported 449 tons of unknown content, but the whole was probably equivalent to more than 2,000 tons of ore carrying 60 per cent. WO₃, leaving only about 1,000 tons for other countries, most of which seems to have been treated in France. This trade Germany lost when with Austria she started the World War. With the cutting off of all shipments by ocean to Germany, most of the foreign ores were denied her, but undoubtedly small quantities leaked in through Sweden and Norway for some time after the war began. The small output of Austria was always available, and it is said that a considerable quantity of ore was smuggled across the border of Portugal into Spain, thence by water to the western frontier of Italy, into Switzerland, and from there shipped direct to Germany. A considerable part of the Spanish production is said to have reached Germany in this way also, and the “crippled” submarines that ran into Spanish ports are reported to have carried out cargoes of tungsten for Germany. From available data it is impossible to confirm or to disprove these reports, and, in giving them, their doubtfulness is fully recognized, but such possibilities must be acknowledged.
In the Allied countries and the United States, the German interests were taken over by the governments, but in South America the German firms still hold some control of tungsten-bearing properties. In Bolivia four German firms are said to have an output of about 600 metric tons of ore a year. In Peru what is said to be the larger part of the tungsten deposits has been controlled by firms thought to be German, E. y W. Hardt and Carlos W. Weiss y Cia. In Argentina the Hansa Mining Co., a German concern, is the principal producer. Its output is said to be about 500 tons of concentrates a year, but even this output is said to have come to the United States during the war. If the United States is placed under a prohibitive tariff, Germany may easily recover a large part of her control of the world’s tungsten trade.
PRODUCTION PLANTS AND PROCESSES
The spread of knowledge, particularly that regarding electric furnaces, makes the control of the tungsten trade through secret processes or superior skill extremely difficult, and so far as the United States, Great Britain and France are concerned, gives little advantage to any one. Japan is perhaps somewhat less advantageously placed. Smelting plants are so easily, quickly and cheaply erected that they do not offer any great chance for monopoly. Cheap power, high technical skill and knowledge, originality and boldness in experiment, excellence of organization, generous dealing with producers, an honest product honestly sold, good transportation facilities, and broad sane laws are the elements that will give control. The United States may have this control through reasonable effort, but selfish laws may still more easily wreck control of the larger part of the world’s trade, reduce our tungsten business to a provincial scope, and make the product high priced for all time.
WHAT CONTROL MEANS IN THE UNITED STATES
In years of good business before the World War, the United States used an equivalent of 3,000 to 4,000 short tons of concentrates, carrying 60 per cent. WO₃ per annum. When the war began there was a lull while the attacked countries caught their breath and prepared for a long struggle. After plans had been made, and the manufacture of munitions had begun on a grand scale, the demand for tungsten rose enormously. All kinds of ores were taken at fabulous prices. Ores carrying tin, phosphorus, sulphur and bismuth, that before would not have been considered by steel makers, were taken with avidity, and there was a great scramble for deposits. In October, 1918, the United States was using tungsten ores at the rate of 20,000 tons per annum. Meanwhile prospecting had uncovered so many new deposits and they were so actively exploited that great stocks of ores were accumulated in the Entente countries. On the other hand, in this country many of the known deposits showed signs of impoverishment, a number after being worked profitably for a short time became wholly inoperative, and it is likely that some of the deposits that have seemed to be the richest will never again produce largely. Among the new discoveries were the contact metamorphic deposits of the Great Basin, in California, Nevada and northeastern Utah. They were partly developed, and several promise well, but the irregularity of contact metamorphic ore deposits is notorious.
In 1916 with prices ranging from $15 to $93.50 per unit, the United States produced 5,969 tons of concentrates; in 1917 while still under the impetus of the 1916 boom, with prices ranging around $25 per unit, 6,144 tons; and in 1918, with prices still averaging about $25 per unit, 5,041 tons, although little was produced in December. Under a price of $17 per unit, which tariff advocates think can be reached by means of a tariff of $10 per unit, it seems improbable that the United States can depend on a production of more than 3,000 tons per annum for the next three years. There are, of course, possibilities of a larger production and there are equal possibilities of a smaller. Should another great war take place, an event that is not beyond the range of imagination, the United States would probably begin by using tungsten at the rate of 20,000 tons of concentrates per annum. Unless the price were even more extravagant than the highest price in 1916, $93.50 per unit, the United States could not produce half of its needed concentrates, and the time required to reach even that output would be far too long for safety. Of course, such a production would be much better than none, but the United States should, for safety, have within reach at least a year’s supply.
The Pacific, around the borders of which are the largest tungsten deposits, is by many looked upon as the next large theatre of war, and however vitally they were needed, the obtaining of supplies of tungsten ores might become impossible though the blocking of trade routes. It would, therefore, seem vastly better that, instead of putting a premium on the quick depletion of our own supplies, which are already too meager, we should use the rich low-priced ores now being mined in the Orient. These cheap ores we may have in trade for the asking, and it would be one of the best forms of national life insurance for the government to store 10,000 tons of these ores while they may be had.
The argument is often made that by putting a high tariff on tungsten ores we would have our own deposits so developed that quick production could be made when needed; also that with the need we would find more ores. Both arguments are specious. What is meant is not development but removal. No one will open a tungsten mine to let the ores stand against the country’s day of need. The finding of new ores is a probability, but the quantity is wholly a question. Few tungsten mines of the United States can be profitably worked at the present price of about $7 per unit, and the mines are now closed. The number of persons dependent on the mining of American tungsten ores is small, probably less than 900 in peace times. At present most tungsten miners have already obtained other employment, and practically all could obtain employment fully as profitably in other mines, many of which are short handed, so that no great hardship would be worked. As a matter of national economy, the United States can not afford to throw away its chance to buy cheap tungsten ores while they are available. Aside from the question of insurance and even of existence during another war, not to buy South American ores is to throw away South American trade. In a degree this is also true of Chinese and Japanese ores.
The metallurgy of tungsten, like that of other metals, is being improved constantly, and should our ores remain in the ground for a time they will be of greater absolute value when mined, for there will be less waste in conversion. If our ores are mined now under an artificially high price, we will always pay a high price for tungsten ores, for when ours are used the ores in other countries will have diminished in quantity and increased in cost; prices would be higher and we would have to buy at the advanced rate. On the other hand, by holding our markets open to cheap ores from any quarter, we will stand on an equal footing with other countries and will always have a reserve of high-priced ores available in an emergency.
There is but one crop of ore. Deliberately to turn over all the cheap tungsten ores of the world to our competitors, allowing them this advantage in making high-speed steels with which to compete in foreign trade with our steels and with all products on and in which they are used; to put a premium on the early depletion of our own deposits of this indispensable metal; and to compel our use always of high-priced ores--these would be economic crimes.
VIII. VANADIUM
BY R. B. MOORE
USES OF VANADIUM
The main use of vanadium is in steel. It is used where great toughness and torsional strength are required, as in automobile parts, gears, piston rods, tubes, boiler plates, transmission shafts, bolts, gun barrels, gun shields and forgings of any kind which have to withstand heavy wear and tear. The vanadium content of such steels varies from 0.1 to 0.4 per cent. Vanadium is occasionally used in certain tungsten alloys for making high-speed tool steel, the introduction of a small proportion of vanadium decidedly reducing the proportion of tungsten required to give such alloys the desired hardness and toughness.
Arnold has given some illustrations of the effect of vanadium on steels of different types:
One plain carbon steel containing about 1 per cent. of carbon had a yield point of 35 tons per square inch, a maximum stress of 60 tons per square inch, an elongation of 10 per cent. on 2 inches, and a reduction of area of 10 per cent. The addition to this steel of about 0.6 per cent. of vanadium raised the yield point from 35 to 65 tons, the maximum stress from 60 to 86 tons per square inch, still leaving an elongation of 7 per cent. and a reduction of area of 8 per cent.
A steel containing 0.25 per cent. of carbon and 3.3 per cent. of nickel gave a yield point of 33 tons, a maximum stress of 42 tons per square inch, an elongation of 26 per cent. on 2 inches, and a reduction of area of 53 per cent. A practically identical steel, containing in addition about 0.25 per cent. of vanadium, gave a yield point of 50 tons instead of 33, and a maximum stress of 68 instead of 42 tons per square inch. The elongation was 17 per cent. on 2 inches and the reduction of area 36 per cent.
A steel containing 0.25 per cent. of carbon and about 1 per cent. of chromium registered a yield point of 27 tons and a maximum stress of 41 tons per square inch, with an elongation of 36 per cent. on 2 inches and a reduction of area of 55 per cent. The addition of 0.25 per cent. of vanadium raised the yield point from 27 to 40 and the maximum stress from 41 to 55 tons per square inch. The elongation was lowered from 36 to 26 per cent., and the reduction of area from 55 to 53 per cent.
Vanadium, therefore, differs from tungsten in having an extremely beneficial effect, not only on tool but also on structural steel. Arnold has shown that vanadium seemingly does not form a double carbide with iron, but gradually takes the carbon from the carbide of iron until, if about 5 per cent. of vanadium is present, Fe₃C can not exist, and only a vanadium carbide, V₄C₃, containing 15 per cent. of carbon, is present; and this constituent is constant, at least in tool steels containing 5 to 14 per cent. of vanadium. The micrographic analysis of such alloys has resulted in the discovery of three new constituents, namely, vanadium pearlite, vanadium hardenite, and vanadium cementite.
Chromium-vanadium steels are the latest development in structural alloy steels that have gained an extensive market. Almost all these steels are made in the open-hearth furnace; the chromium and vanadium alloys being added shortly before casting. In their physical properties these steels are much like chrome-nickel steels, but they have a greater contraction of area for a given elastic limit than the latter. The greater part of the chrome-vanadium steels made goes into automobiles. Some manufacturers prefer such steels because of their greater freedom from surface imperfections, notably seams, which steels containing nickel are prone to have if the ingots are at all unsound. These steels are almost always used in the heat-treated condition, but even in automobiles some frames, forgings and shafts are made of the steel in its natural state.
Some chrome-vanadium steel is said to be used in armor plate of medium thickness, which is not face-hardened but has high resistance imparted by heat treatment.
Vanadium is also used to some extent in making bronzes, in medicine and in dyeing.
=Substitutes.=--Several substitutes, chiefly titanium and molybdenum, have been claimed to give the properties of vanadium in steel. Both of those metals give to steel some of the properties that are usually associated with vanadium, but neither one takes the place of vanadium entirely.
CHANGES IN PRACTICE
The Primos Chemical Co. (see later) has its own patented method for treating roscoelite, the ore found at Newmire, Colorado. This method consists in roasting the ore with salt containing a little pyrite, and is a method that is applicable to some extent to most vanadium ores that do not carry lead. The American Vanadium Co. has a secret process for the treatment of its Peruvian ores. This method has not been published. The treatment of vanadinite, cuprodescloizite and carnotite ores has been studied by the U. S. Bureau of Mines, at Golden, Colorado. Whatever change in practice takes place is likely to be mainly in the concentration of vanadinite and in the treatment of this mineral and cuprodescloizite.
GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
=Peruvian Deposits.=--The largest deposits of vanadium in the world, and the most important, were until recently controlled by the American Vanadium Co. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which in 1919 was absorbed by the Vanadium Products Corporation, allied to the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. These deposits are at Minasragra, Peru, 20 miles from Cerro de Pasco. The area lies along the western limit of a broad anticline in Juratrias and Cretaceous rocks. A section shows the series in this locality to be composed of green shales, thin beds of limestone, and red shales. Vanadium is found only in the red shales. The deposit proper appears to be a lens-shaped mass, 28 feet wide and 350 feet long. The ore contains several minerals. The mineral that constitutes the large portion of the deposit is called “quisqueite”; it is a black carbonaceous substance containing sulphur. There is also a lesser quantity of a coke-like material. Neither of these contains vanadium. The vanadium is mostly at the southern end of the ore body, and to a depth of 20 feet is largely in the form of red calcium vanadate, which is brighter colored then the calcium vanadate in Colorado and Utah, and carries as much as 50 per cent. vanadium oxide. It occurs in small pockets and fills the cracks and fissures in a fine shale. Below this shale is the “mother lode,” which is 9 to 30 feet thick, extends along the greater length of the deposit, and carries as high as 10 per cent. vanadium oxide and nearly as much sulphur. On the east and south sides, below the “mother lode,” is a hard blue-black vanadium shale, carrying as much as 13 per cent. vanadium oxide and 4 to 5 per cent. sulphur. Patronite, the main vanadium mineral, is greenish black and contains 19 to 24.8 per cent. vanadium oxide and in places 50 to 55 per cent. of combined sulphur. The patronite originally almost reached the surface and is most abundant in the north half of the lens. The whole ore body is almost completely inclosed by porphyry dikes and contains two or three intrusions. These deposits are controlled by the American Vanadium Co., and its successor, the Vanadium Products Corporation, through a concession from the Peruvian government. They are large, but are by no means inexhaustible, and as they are entirely local they are not likely to be duplicated. No similar deposits are known, either in Peru or in any other part of the world.
In 1917 the American Vanadium Co. treated 5,236 gross tons of ore, from which it extracted 2,122,005 pounds of vanadic acid. From this vanadic acid the company manufactured 4,925,014 pounds of ferrovanadium. The company did not buy any ore in this country, but relied entirely upon its Peruvian production.
=Other Foreign Deposits.=--The deposits in Peru are the only deposits of any commercial importance outside of the United States. Vanadium is found in South Australia, associated with carnotite and other uranium minerals. Small quantities of vanadic oxide are obtained as a by-product in the treatment of these ores.
Vanadium is also associated with uranium minerals in the Andijan district, Central Asiatic Russia. The vanadium is usually found as turanite, or copper vanadate; ferganite, an ortho-vanadate of uranium; and as several other new minerals. The amount of ore seems to be reasonably large, and this district may ultimately become a source of both uranium and vanadium.
The lead ores of Mexico contain some vanadium, the best known deposits being in the northeastern part of the State of Chihuahua. Other deposits are reported in Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, and Hidalgo.
=Deposits in the United States.=--The principal vanadium deposits of the United States occur in a metallographic province covering southern and southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and parts of Arizona and New Mexico. Uranium and radium characterize the same province.
Probably the largest deposits of vanadium yet discovered in the United States are in southwestern Colorado in San Miguel County. These deposits were visited by Ransome and Spencer in 1899 and their description, together with notes on the chemical analyses and composition of roscoelite by Hillebrand, was published in 1900. Fleck and French have also described the deposits. Fleck and Haldane later published additional descriptions, with notes on mining operations. Hess, in 1912, published an excellent description of these deposits with notes on the possible origin, etc.
According to Cross and Purington, the country rock is composed of Jurassic and Triassic sediments, divisible into three formations, the Dolores below, La Plata above and McElmo above La Plata. The latter is composed of two heavy beds of light-colored sandstone, separated by a thin bed of limestone. The vanadium-bearing rock is the lower sandstone. It is a light to dull green, and fine-grained. Occasionally splotches of carnotite are found in the cracks and fissures, but the uranium content is too small to be worth saving.
According to Hillebrand, the green vanadium mineral to which the sandstone owes its color is not a chlorite, but is closely related to the mica, roscoelite. The ore mined has an average content of 1¹⁄₂ per cent. V₂O₅. These low-grade roscoelite deposits can be mined at a profit, because they are large and easily worked.
Undoubtedly these deposits have been feeling the effects of the rather large production of the last few years, and the average grade of the ore is now probably at least half of a per cent. lower in V₂O₅ than it was a few years ago. There is still considerable ore untouched that will average 1 per cent., or a little less. The British government for several years, according to reports, has been interested in obtaining control of vanadium deposits.
The Primos Chemical Co., with works at Newmire, Colorado, and Primos, Pennsylvania, is mining these deposits, and in 1917 made this production:
Treated 60,907,000 pounds of ore; from this was produced 496,731 pounds of vanadium in the form of iron vanadate running about 34 per cent. metallic vanadium. From this was produced 417,770 pounds of contained vanadium in the form of regular 40 per cent. ferrovanadium. In 1918, up to and including July, this company mined 17,449,000 pounds of ore, from which was produced 149,343 pounds of contained vanadium in the form of vanadate of iron and 133,666 pounds of contained vanadium made in the form of 40 per cent. ferrovanadium.
In 1919 the Primos Chemical Co., was absorbed by the newly organized Vanadium Products Corporation.
Vanadium ore has been discovered in Huerfano County, Colorado, near the Sangre de Cristo Range. The vein is said to be well defined and 1 to 4 feet in width. A number of assays show 2 to 7 per cent. V₂O₅ content, and others 2 to 4 per cent. copper. The ore is heavy, black and banded; it contains small quantities of uranium oxide, but should be classed as a vanadium, rather than a uranium mineral. There has been no commercial production up to date.
In Eagle County, 7 miles southeast of the town of Eagle, a silver ore has been found that carries vanadium. This was located mostly in the Lady Bell mine. The ore, a dark-greenish sandstone similar in appearance to the darker types of roscoelite ore found in San Miguel County, assayed from 25 to 1,000 ounces of silver to the ton. The mine has been largely worked out for silver, the vanadium being lost during the smelting process. There is still, however, an appreciable amount of vanadium ore left, as the low-grade silver ore was not mined or treated.
A considerable amount of vanadium is obtained as a by-product from the treatment of carnotite (uranium and radium) ore. It is difficult to say just what the yield from this ore is, but it is probable that it averages about 200,000 pounds of vanadic oxide per annum. This is produced by five or six operating radium companies. These deposits are found in southwestern Colorado, around the Paradox Valley, and in southeastern Utah, extending as far as the San Rafael Swell, southwest of Green River, Utah.
There is considerable ore running one-half to 1 per cent. uranium oxide which carries from 4 to 10 per cent. vanadic oxide. In the past this ore has not been mined, because the extraction of radium from it would not pay. With a strong demand and a high price for vanadium, at least the higher grades of this ore could be mined at a profit. There is considerable of such ore at certain localities north of the Paradox Valley; unfortunately, these deposits are somewhat scattered and some would involve not only long wagon hauls, but also transportation by burro to wagon roads. Only the higher-grade ore could be handled in this way at a profit, and the difficulty is to get enough to justify building a treatment plant.
The writer has been told that there are deposits of this same type of ore at Temple Mountain, 40 miles south of Green River, Utah.
A small vanadinite deposit, containing traces of wulfenite, has been found near Klinefelter Station, on the main line of the Santa Fe Railroad, near the eastern border of San Bernardino County, California. The ore is largely calcite and is low grade, averaging probably from 1 to 2 per cent. vanadic oxide.
A deposit of vanadinite in Sierra County, New Mexico, on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, was mined for a short period in 1912 and 1913. Besides vanadium, the veins contain galenite, copper carbonates, barite, fluorite and other minerals. The ore was treated at a mill close to the mine, but the whole undertaking was unsuccessful, probably because the ore was so low grade, and because of metallurgical difficulties. There are a number of other deposits of vanadinite in New Mexico, but none of them have been commercially developed in any way.
Vanadinite is found in a considerable number of places in Arizona, frequently associated with wulfenite, or lead molybdate. Indeed, one of the difficulties of producing both vanadium and molybdenum from vanadinite and wulfenite is the fact that the two minerals are frequently so closely associated that, because of the slight difference in specific gravity, it is not easy to separate them by mechanical methods. At the Mammoth mine, in Arizona, the upper levels are richer in vanadinite than in wulfenite, but at the lower levels, the reverse is true. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of vanadinite could be produced from this mine and others in the vicinity, but it is doubtful whether it could be done at a profit, even at a high price for vanadium.
The United States Vanadium Co. has a mine 4 miles from Ray Junction, Arizona, and at the mine a small mill to concentrate the ore, which is low grade, and produces vanadium from the concentrates. The amount of ore that can be obtained from this mine is somewhat doubtful. This is the trouble with vanadinite as a whole; it exists over a wide territory, but the deposits are all low grade and apparently are not extensive in any one locality.
One of the most promising deposits, as regards increased production of vanadium, is at the Shattuck mine, Bisbee, Arizona, where a large vug, or cavity, is lined with a vanadium mineral, probably cuprodescloizite. The ore carries about 8 to 10 per cent. vanadic oxide, in addition to copper and lead. This seems to be one of the best opportunities for an increased production of vanadium in this country. The Golden, Colo., station of the United States Bureau of Mines made a metallurgical study of the treatment of this ore.
The distribution of the vanadium deposits of the world is shown in Plate V.
POSITION OF LEADING COMMERCIAL NATIONS
The United States is peculiarly fortunate as regards vanadium products, for it is practically the only producer of vanadium in the world, the Peruvian deposits being under the control of an American company. Therefore, England, France, Germany, Japan and other nations are forced to buy of American companies.
DEVELOPMENTS AND CHANGES IN KNOWN GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION IN THE NEAR FUTURE
The larger part of the vanadium that has been used in this country has come from the mines of the American Vanadium Co. in Peru, but the Primos Chemical Co. produced an amount of vanadium from its claims at Newmire, San Miguel County, Colorado, that at least tended to give some real competition to the American Vanadium Co. As already stated, these claims are not nearly as rich or productive as they were, but they are probably good for several years more. The ore from Peru can be counted on probably for several years at something like the present output. The same statement applies to carnotite ore, and it is likely that the production of vanadium from carnotite may increase to some extent, as the demand for radium is strong, and there may be a consequent increase in the treatment of lower-grade carnotite. As this low-grade material usually carries more vanadium, the production of vanadium from this source may increase.
Vanadinite may prove to be a source of vanadium, although it is doubtful whether any large quantity can be produced from this mineral. As already stated, cuprodescloizite is probably the best source for an immediate increase in production.
As regards foreign countries other than Peru, Russia is the only one likely to produce any appreciable amount of vanadium ores, and undoubtedly no such production will be obtained until industrial conditions are more settled.
POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL CONTROL
The American Vanadium Co. holds its mines in Peru through a concession from the Peruvian government. Thus at least two-thirds of the vanadium production of the world is practically in the hands of the Peruvian government, although the company operating is American.
Formerly the American Vanadium Co. was the only producer of vanadium products and ferrovanadium in the world. The price of vanadium was then somewhere around $5.00 per pound for the metallic vanadium content of the ferrovanadium. Later the Primos Chemical Co. came into the field, and the American Vanadium Co. cut the price. On account of the large deposits of ore that the Primos Chemical Co. had in Colorado, the result was simply a lowering of the price of ferrovanadium. Undoubtedly, if it were not for this competition the price of vanadium during that period would have been higher than it was, and if it were not for the Primos Chemical Co., the American Vanadium Co. would have had practically a monopoly of the whole vanadium production, as the output from carnotite was not large enough to affect the market seriously. As it was, these two companies controlled more than 90 per cent. of the ore supply, and thus the recent change of ownership to the Vanadium Products Corporation will enable the latter to fix the price, as well as to regulate the consumption and thus prolong the availability of a useful metal which otherwise would be likely to soon become exhausted. The principal vanadium deposits of Chihuahua, Mexico, are controlled by the Madero estate (Mexican).
This dominance of control of sources of supply has made control through ownership of reduction plants, patents and secret processes of less importance.
IX. ANTIMONY
BY H. G. FERGUSON AND D. A. HALL
USES OF ANTIMONY
The following summary of the uses of antimony is taken from Mineral Resources of United States, 1918.[90]
[90] BASTIN, E. S.: “Antimony in 1918,” Mineral Resources of the United States, 1918. U. S. Geol. Survey, 1919.
Peace uses.--Metallic antimony unalloyed has few industrial uses. In the form of fine powder, known as “iron black,” it is used for producing the appearance of polished steel on articles made of papier-maché or pottery. For these purposes it is precipitated by the action of metallic zinc in an acid solution of antimony salts. Antimony alloys readily with most heavy metals and the alloy is harder than the two pure metals. Most of these alloys possess the property of slight expansion on solidifying. Type metal is an alloy of antimony, lead, and tin; babbitt, anti-friction, or bearing metal is usually an alloy of antimony, tin, and copper. Britannia metal, also known as “white metal,” is an alloy of antimony, tin, and copper, with some zinc, and, rarely, small quantities of other metals. It is used in making cheap domestic tableware, teapots, and spoons. Antimony alloys find minor utilization in battery plates, toys, cable coverings, and siphon tops. Lead-antimony alloy or hard lead is used in making acid-resisting valves.
White antimony oxide, mainly the tetraoxide (Sb₂O₄), is used for making opaque white enamel and other sanitary ware. In this use antimony oxides compete with tin oxide. Antimony oxide, mainly trioxide, is used as a coloring agent in the manufacture of glass, as it is more readily fusible than tetraoxide and does not impart opacity to the glass. Antimony oxides are further used as paint pigments.
The red sulphides of antimony are used in vulcanizing and coloring red rubber and also as paint pigments. The natural antimony trisulphide, stibnite, enters into the composition of safety matches or of the compound that is put on the match box.
Antimonate of lead containing an excess of lead oxide, known as “Naples yellow,” is used in oil paints and in the glass and ceramic industries. The antimony salt, tartar emetic (double tartrate of antimony and potassium), and antimony fluoride are employed as mordants in dyeing. Tartar emetic and antimony trioxide are employed medicinally.
War uses.--Antimonial lead carrying 12 to 13 per cent. of antimony is employed in the manufacture of shrapnel bullets. Smaller quantities of liquated antimony sulphide are used in the primers of shells. For this last purpose it is claimed the material must carry less than 2 per cent. of impurities insoluble in hydrochloric acid. Antimony sulphide as a powder is used in the charge of some shells to produce on explosion a white smoke which is of service in range finding.
During the war Germany used antimony to some extent as a substitute for more important metals in the manufacture of currency, but shortage of antimony itself did not allow this use to become important.
GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
The geological distribution of commercial antimony depends, with a few exceptions, upon the distribution of the principal ore mineral, stibnite (antimony sulphide). Cervantite, sernarmontite and valentinite are antimony oxides resulting directly from the decomposition of stibnite near the surface, and with other oxidized products form the chief ores of certain districts. Metallic antimony, also a result of oxidation of the sulphides, is rarely found, and still more rarely is it an ore mineral. Jamesonite, the sulphide of antimony and lead, is of frequent occurrence and is the principal ore of one important deposit in Mexico. Antimony is also recovered from the refining of antimonial lead.
Stibnite occurs in quartz veins and related deposits. Many of the important antimony deposits of the world occur in more or less close genetic relationship with eruptives of Tertiary age. The ore often gives way to pyrite with depth. A few important deposits occur in connection with intrusive rocks formed at considerable depth and are probably of contact metamorphic origin.
Although there is a wide diversity in the forms of the deposits and the nature of enclosing rocks, stibnite shows a distinct tendency to form replacements in limestone. The chief gangue minerals are quartz and calcite. Of other sulphides pyrite is the commonest, but cinnabar, realgar, chalcopyrite, galena, and sphalerite are often present as accessories. A characteristic feature of stibnite deposits is the relative scarcity of other sulphides; and it is equally true that important sulphide deposits of other metals rarely contain stibnite. An exception to the general rule is cinnabar, the sulphide of mercury, which is a characteristic mineral of certain stibnite veins. Likewise stibnite is one of the minerals most frequently associated with cinnabar deposits.
Several of the most important antimony districts owe their production of that metal to the presence of recoverable amounts of gold. This is true of certain French, Hungarian, Australian, and South African deposits.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, AND POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL CONTROL
Although antimony has been produced at times from a great many localities in the world, in only a few countries have deposits been developed to an important extent commercially. Under normal conditions of consumption the potential supply of antimony ore is far in excess of the demand. Consequently only those deposits that can be cheaply worked and are favorably situated with regard to markets, or contain appreciable amounts of other minerals, principally gold, have been extensively exploited.
The antimony-producing countries of the world may be divided into three groups as follows:
1. Chief producing countries in order of importance: China, France and Algeria, and Mexico.
2. Countries in which production is irregular in normal times but in which potential reserves are considerable, and production becomes important at high-price levels: The former Austrian Empire, Bolivia, Australia (Victoria), Burma, South Africa, Italy, Spain, and Asia Minor.
3. Countries in which normal production is small and in which known reserves are probably less important: United States and Alaska, Canada, Peru, Germany, Turkey (Asia Minor), Serbia, Portugal, Borneo, Indo-China, and Japan.
Plate VI shows the geographical distribution of the chief antimony deposits of the world.
The production statistics of the various countries are so little in accord that it is impossible to give more than a rough comparison between the important producers. As nearly as can be estimated the output of antimony ore in 1913, the last year for which even approximately complete statistics are available, amounted to about 20,000 metric tons of recoverable antimony. The consumption is even more difficult to estimate, as customs figures for different countries vary widely. The following table shows the relative importance of the principal producing and consuming countries in terms of percentage of the world’s output in 1913:
TABLE 31.--PERCENTAGE OF ANTIMONY PRODUCED AND CONSUMED
--------------------+----------+----------- |Percentage|Percentage | of | of Country |production|consumption --------------------+----------+----------- Austria-Hungary | 4 | 4 France | 24 | 20 Germany | (small) | 20 Italy | 2 | 2 United Kingdom | 0 | 12 Serbia | 1 | 0 Asia Minor | 1 | 0 Japan | 0 } | 10 China | 51 } | Algiers | 1 | 0 United States | 0 | 32 Mexico | 11 | 0 Australia (Victoria)| 4 | (small) All other | 1 | (small) | --- | --- | 100 | 100 --------------------+----------+-----------
In the following discussion of the world’s antimony resources, political control is largely indicated by the country headings, under which are summarized the essential features of the commercial control of production, by ownership of mines and reduction plants, and by trading interests.
North America.
United States.--Antimony deposits occur in many places in the United States, but during peace times the comparatively high costs of mining in this country do not permit competition with the Chinese and Mexican mines. A small production of antimonial lead from domestic ores was made prior to the war and a small amount of antimony recovered as a by-product of lead refining, but except for this the country was entirely dependent upon imported antimony.
High prices following the outbreak of the war brought a quick response in the production of antimony ores. The mine production of antimony ore in 1915 was about 5,000 short tons containing 2,100 short tons of metal, and in 1916 was 4,500 short tons containing about 1,770 short tons of metal. The lower prices of 1917 were reflected in the decreased output for that year, amounting to 1,060 short tons of ore containing 390 tons of metal. The 1918 production was 190 tons, containing about 50 tons of metal.
The chief producing states in order of importance were Nevada, California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Arkansas. Utah and Arizona yielded insignificant amounts. In Nevada the Sutherland mine, in Humboldt County, was the principal producer. In California, the greater part of the output was from two mines in Inyo and Kern counties operated by the Western Metals Co., of Los Angeles, the ore being shipped to San Pedro, near Los Angeles, for smelting. In Washington the antimony was produced at the property of the Gold Creek Antimony Mining & Smelting Co., in Okanogan County. In Oregon the Jim Dandy mine, near Baker City, was the principal producer. In Arkansas one property in Sevier County yielded a noteworthy output of ore in 1916 and also a small quantity of metallic antimony at a local reduction plant. In Alaska the production was mainly from the Fairbanks district, the ore being shipped to Los Angeles and Seattle for smelting.
The ownership of mines within the United States does not play an important part in the present control of the world’s resources, inasmuch as production under normal conditions is insignificant. It is possible that with the development of new uses for antimony, and a greater demand for that metal, the reserves in this country may become of commercial importance.
About 40 per cent. of the Mexican antimony output is controlled in the United States. An American-owned smelter was built during the war at San Luis Potosi. Ores from mines in this region have also been shipped to the Western Metals Co. at Los Angeles. An American concern, the Antimony Corporation, owns a large deposit of jamesonite, antimony-lead sulphide, in Mexico, which constitutes an important reserve that has not yet been developed. Antimony deposits in northern Mexico were worked by American capital during the war. Prior to the year 1914 only one company in the United States had attempted the smelting of antimony. During the war considerable activity prevailed, however, and several companies undertook the smelting of foreign and domestic ores. China, Bolivia, and Mexico were the principal sources of supply. The success of all these enterprises has been only temporary, as under normal conditions the high cost of production in this country prevents successful competition with Chinese and Japanese metal. American smelting interests exert little control on the antimony of the world at present, and can not be expected to do so in the immediate future. The smelter capacity of the country is estimated at 6,000 to 7,000 tons of metal per annum, all of which is now idle. One company, the Antimony & Compounds Co. of America, is closely connected with a French company, La Lucette.
Canada.--Antimony production in Canada has been extremely irregular. During periods of high prices a considerable output was obtained, the years of maximum production being 1898, with shipments of 1,344 short tons of ore, and 1907, with 2,016 short tons. Mining ceased in 1910 and was not resumed until 1915. In 1915, 1,341 tons of 40 per cent. (metal content) ore were produced; in 1916, 885 tons of 42 per cent. ore; and 361 tons in 1917.
The principal producing district is at West Gore, Nova Scotia, where the ore in addition to its antimony content has a tenor of 2 to 4 ounces of gold per ton. Other regions that have produced antimony ore are New Brunswick (York County), British Columbia, Quebec, and Yukon Territory. In British Columbia (Slocan District) and Yukon Territory (Chieftain Hills) antimonial lead ores are also worked. The Nova Scotia ores, which furnished the bulk of the production, have been exported to England since 1915; the earlier production went to Germany. The small production of refined antimony came chiefly as a by-product of lead refining at the smelter of the Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co., at Trail, B. C.; a small amount of antimony was also smelted from antimony ores by the New Brunswick Metals, Ltd. (formerly the Canadian Antimony Co.) at Lake George, N. B. Canada appears to be in about the same position as the United States with reference to antimony mining. High prices, continued over a long period, will bring out a considerable production, but no output is to be expected at peace-time prices.
Mexico.--Antimony deposits exist in many parts of Mexico and there has been a considerable production for many years. As in other countries, the output increased largely during 1915 and 1916. The production of metallic antimony for 1917 is reported as 2,141 metric tons. In 1914 there were exported to England 1,543 long tons of crude antimony and regulus; there were no exports to England in 1918, but 1,449 short tons of ore and 2,660 of metal were shipped to the United States.
The principal mines are in the Sierra Catorce, in the states of San Luis Potosi and Queretaro. The ores are mixed sulphides and oxides and carry 5 to 50 per cent. antimony.
A smelter with an annual capacity of 6,000 tons of metal was built at Wadley in 1900, and most of the production formerly went to England, but since 1915 has been marketed in the United States. The smelter and most important mines are owned by Cookson’s, of England, through a subsidiary, the Republican Mining & Metal Co. American interests own other properties in the same region, and during the war a smelter was constructed at San Luis Potosi by the International Mining & Metal Co. In western Sonora, near the Gulf of California, there are deposits of oxidized ores that furnished a considerable part of the ore imported into the United States. These are owned by American capital.
A large deposit of lead-antimony ore (jamesonite) at Zimapan, Hidalgo, owned by The Antimony Corporation, an American firm, has not yet reached the producing stage. Other deposits of possible importance are known in the states of Guerrero, Durango, Sonora, Mexico, Baja California, and elsewhere.
Political disturbances during the last few years have prevented an output of antimony commensurate with the probable capacity of the deposits. Production will probably be maintained in the future, even during periods of low prices.
South America.
Bolivia.--The output of Bolivia was negligible before the war, but under the stimulus of high prices large amounts of high-grade ore were produced in 1915 and 1916. This ore was shipped principally to England, until an embargo was placed on Bolivian ore in 1918. The ore is high grade, that shipped averaging over 50 per cent. antimony, but the veins are small and become unproductive at shallow depth. It is possible that the known deposits have been largely exhausted; and although demand as strong as that of 1916 might result in new discoveries of importance, it is not likely that Bolivia can be an important producer when prices are under normal conditions.
Exports of ore amounted to 17,923 metric tons in 1915 (as against 186 in 1914); to 22,748 tons in 1916; and to 18,340 tons in 1917; but in 1918, for reasons given above, shipments dropped to 3,070 tons. From 75 to 90 per cent. of the ore went to England, and most of the remainder to the United States, except for about a thousand tons a year to France.
Peru.--During the antimony boom of 1906-1907 a small amount of antimony was produced in Peru. No further production was made until 1915, when 522 tons of high-grade ore was mined. In 1916 the production rose to 1,876 tons of 60 per cent. ore. The 1917 production was 902 tons. Although deposits are known in many parts of the republic, over 90 per cent. of the production has come from the department of Puno, in southern Peru. Up to the present, profitable mining has been possible only during periods of high prices, but the deposits are said to be extensive, and it is possible that improved transportation facilities would result in some production under normal conditions.
Europe.
Austria-Hungary.--The most important antimony deposits of the old Austrian Empire are those of Hungary and Bohemia. Others of minor importance are in Carniola, in Austria. The Hungarian deposits in 1913 furnished 11,017 tons of ore containing 1,038 tons of metal; for the rest of Austria the output was 1,270 tons of ore, but only 89 tons of metal. The low antimony content of the Hungarian deposits is compensated by the gold content, and these deposits have produced much more regularly than those of the other parts of the empire. So far as known the reserves are fairly large, but production can hardly be expected to increase greatly.
The productive capacity of both the Hungarian and Bohemian deposits is probably enough to supply local needs in normal times, and allow a surplus for export when economic conditions are favorable. Prior to the war, exports of regulus went to Germany and small amounts of ore were exported to France and England. During the war the Central Empires probably depended largely on the Austro-Hungarian deposits for their antimony supplies. All mines were worked by the government. It is known that certain mines that had been abandoned resumed operations.
France.--France is the most important antimony-producing country in Europe and also controls important productive deposits in Algiers and Indo-China.
The French deposits are numerous but for the most part small. The most important of these is La Lucette, in Mayenne, where stibnite associated with auriferous pyrite has been mined for many years. This deposit was considered to be approaching exhaustion, but recent work is reported to have developed new ore bodies. The La Lucette company has recently extended its holdings in other parts of France, has bought properties in Algiers and the Transvaal, and in 1911 leased a smelter at Barcelona for the treatment of ores purchased abroad. The La Lucette company is also to some degree associated with the American firm of Antimony & Compounds Co. of America. Undeveloped deposits are known in Tunis, Morocco, French Guinea, and Madagascar.
French control of foreign supplies is not of great importance. In addition to its holdings in the Transvaal, the La Lucette company purchases some foreign ores. In 1913, 4,440 tons of antimony ore was imported from China, and 205 tons from Turkey. Foreign control of French deposits is limited to a few companies. An Italian company, Minière Fonderie d’Antimonio, owns concessions in France and Corsica, from which the production before the war was about 3,500 tons of ore per year. The great Belgian smelting company, Société de la Vieille Montagne, owns the most productive Algerian deposit--the Hamman N’ Bails mine; and an unimportant Algerian mine was, prior to the war, owned by Beer, Sondheimer & Co., a German firm.
In 1913, France produced 20,872 metric tons of ore carrying about 32 per cent. metal content. The smelter output in 1913 was 6,390 tons of regulus and oxide. France is normally an exporter of metallic antimony, the average annual exports during the period of 1910-1914 amounting to about 2,000 metric tons. The principal purchasers were United States, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Russia. According to recent information, the surplus production of antimony in France is now so large that the industry can hardly continue to exist on a paying basis unless the producers come to an understanding among themselves. It is clear, however, that to be effective, any agreement among French producers must be either backed by a high protective tariff or must be extended to include their principal foreign competitors.
Germany.--In Germany the antimony output is too small to affect appreciably the world’s market, but a few localities have possibilities of production when the price of antimony is sufficiently high. One plant in the Eifel district in 1915 was producing 25 to 30 tons of regulus and 60 to 70 tons of oxide a month. There was, however, a production of antimonial lead from the smelters that may amount to 1,000 tons or more of antimony a year. This is derived in part from German ores, especially the lead-zinc ores, and in part from ores of foreign origin.
Germany’s interest in the antimony market is chiefly that of the smelter and middle man. Average annual imports, 1910-1913, were as follows: Ore, 3,668 tons; metal, 3,398; salts, 668. The exports averaged, ore, 566 tons; metal, 331; salts, 1,226. The principal purchasers of metal were the United States and Russia; and of salts Russia and England.
German interest in foreign deposits was not extensive. The Metallgesellschaft seems to have had some connection with an Italian company, the Minière Fonderie d’Antimonio, owning mines in Italy and France, and Beer, Sondheimer & Co. was recorded as the owner of one Algerian mine.
Great Britain.--Although deposits were formerly worked in Cornwall, Devon, and elsewhere, no antimony has been mined in England since 1892, but before the war England was the chief smelting center of the world, and several brands of British antimony, such as Cookson’s and Hallett’s, had a world-wide reputation. Deposits of considerable importance exist in many of the British possessions.
Cookson & Co., of Newcastle, control mines in the Catorce district, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and operate a smelter, the output from which was shipped to England for further refining until 1915, when the supply was in large part diverted to the United States.
England, through her smelting interests, has played an important part in the antimony trade of the world. Seven smelters in England refine ore and crude metals that come chiefly from China, but also from Mexico, Australia, and Hungary, and, during the war, in large quantities from Bolivia and Spain. The better British brands have been considered more pure than other grades, and before the war virtually monopolized American markets.
British trading interests have exerted important control both in securing raw material for British smelters and in obtaining markets for British metal. Until 1914 the Chinese Eastern Antimony Co., a subsidiary of Cookson & Co., held contracts for the production of the Wah Chang Mining & Smelting Co., the most important antimony producers in China. In 1914, the Wah Chang Co. established an independent selling agency in the United States. During the great demand for antimony in 1915 and 1916, British interests secured the greater proportion of the output of Bolivian mines and completely controlled the industry of that country.
Italy.--Italy is the third important antimony producer of Europe. The principal deposits are those in the southern part of the island of Sardinia. During the war, however, the Tuscan deposits were reopened and there has been also a small production from Sicily. The grade of the ore is low, probably on the average less than 25 per cent., and the production, which was 7,609 tons of ore in 1900, had fallen in 1913 to 1,822 tons. War conditions stimulated the industry, and in 1915, 1916, and 1917 the production averaged over 5,000 tons annually, although the imports of metallic antimony also increased, being as follows: 191 tons in 1914; 825 in 1915; 155 in 1916; and 1,247 in 1917.
The low metallic content of the ore, together with the fact that in the Sardinia deposits the calcite gangue makes recovery more difficult, renders it probable that under peace-time conditions and prices, Italy will not become an important factor in the world’s antimony production.
The chief producing company, Minière Fonderie d’Antimonio, was, prior to the war, closely connected with the German Metallgesellschaft, and the richest Sardinian ore went to Germany for smelting. Besides mines in Italy, this company owned several productive deposits in France.
Portugal.--A small amount of antimony ore, 100 tons in 1912 and 19 tons in 1913, is produced in Portugal. Exports in 1916 exceeded 4,000 tons.
Russia.--Antimony and argentiferous lead-antimony deposits are known in the Urals and were under development in 1912. Antimony deposits also occur in the Amur province and in many localities in Siberia. In 1915, 67 tons of regulus was imported into England from Russia. Possibly, however, this represents an overland shipment of Chinese material.
Serbia.--Serbia contains several antimony deposits of considerable promise. The production, however, has been small. No data are available since 1912. The output of regulus and oxide, which amounted to 4,725 metric tons in 1904, had decreased to 297 metric tons in 1912. The greater part of the product was formerly shipped to the United States. Plants at two of the mines are capable of a considerable output should conditions warrant it. It seems unlikely, however, that the Serbian deposits will play an important part in determining the control of the world’s production.
Spain.--Antimony deposits are known in many localities in Spain. Most of these are irregular and have been repeatedly worked and abandoned. A few, however, offer some promise of a continued output. The annual production has scarcely exceeded 500 metric tons of ore, even under the stimulus of war conditions (516 tons in 1916, and 502 tons in 1917). The smelter production in 1916 was 425 tons. Shortly after the outbreak of the war there were three smelters, the most important being operated by the French company, La Lucette.
Before the war Spain imported annually 800 tons of antimony ore from France, and over 100 tons of salts of antimony was exported annually to Germany.
Asia.
Borneo.--British Borneo was formerly a producer of considerable importance, and much ore was exported between 1859 and 1894, mainly to England. The deposits then remained idle until 1914, when 870 tons of ore was exported; in 1915 the exports amounted to about 360 tons. It is probable that no important output at peace-time prices is to be expected, although the country is largely unexplored. The Borneo company (British) seems to have been the principal if not the only producer.
China.--With all her vast mineral resources China has been able to obtain an important position in the world’s markets with regard to but few metals. Of these antimony is the most striking example, for since 1908 over 50 per cent. of the world’s total antimony production has come from China. In 1913 the output was estimated to be the equivalent of 10,800 tons of metallic antimony, that of the whole world being about 20,000 tons. The Chinese industry being well-established, it was able to respond rapidly to the great demand of the war. Exports increased from 14,361 short tons of regulus and crude antimony, and 4,795 tons of ore, in 1913, to 38,142 tons and 8,667 tons, respectively, in 1917.
Antimony is found over widely scattered areas in the central and southern provinces, but chiefly in the provinces of Hunan, Yunnan, Kweichow and Kwangsi. In Hunan the deposits have been most extensively exploited, probably 90 per cent. of the total production of China coming from the region about Changsha, the center of the smelting industry. Here, in the Hai-Keng-Shan district, in 1915 about 70 companies mined antimony along the outcrop of the deposits. The ore, remarkable for its purity, occurs as pockets and bunches, mainly of stibnite, in a flat bed of dolomitic limestone. Several local smelters produce liquated sulphide, and the output of the district is about 1,000 tons monthly of crude antimony averaging about 70 per cent. metallic antimony. All regulus manufacture is controlled by the Wah Chang Co. In the Panshi district the ore occurs as fissure veins in slates, shales, and quartzites. The output consists of about 400 tons monthly of 30 per cent. ore, all of which is shipped to Wah Chang Co. at Changsha for treatment.
The only district in Yunnan where antimony is dealt with commercially is near Chihtsun on the Tongking-Yunnan Railroad. The Pao Hua Co., connected with the Wah Chang Co., owns a French-constructed plant and produces high-grade regulus.
The Wah Chang Mining & Smelting Co. virtually controls the production of antimony ore, regulus, and crude in the Province of Hunan. This company operates smelters in Changsha and owns low-grade mines. It possesses a complete monopoly, granted by the Peking government, for the manufacture of regulus in Hunan and owns the patent rights in China for the Herrenschmidt furnace, the most successful means of reducing low-grade antimony ores. The mines themselves are mostly native-owned, and worked in a small way.
Prior to the war, exports of Chinese antimony were chiefly in the hands of English, French, and a few German firms. The New Chinese Antimony Co. (also known as the Chinese Eastern Antimony Co.) a subsidiary of Cookson & Co., of England, held a contract for the entire output of the Wah Chang Co. This contract was broken shortly after the war began, although the Wah Chang Co. paid a percentage on all sales to the New Chinese Antimony Co. for a year thereafter. The Wah Chang Trading Co. was organized as a direct selling agency in New York, and has established a large business in this country.
With present high scale of wages for labor, and prices for material, it is difficult to see how this country can compete with China in the production of antimony. Adverse exchange conditions due to the high price of silver have probably nearly doubled the cost of production in China and wages in that country have advanced. In spite of this, however, China can manufacture antimony far more cheaply than is possible in Europe or America; and probably, also, more cheaply than in Japan.
Chinese antimony suffered from lack of advertising before the war, being largely excluded from this country by the British metal, but has now become firmly established in our markets, and its quality has proved equal to the best English grades.
India.--Since the war, small amounts of antimony have been produced in Burma and Mysore. The total Indian ore production was 1,040 tons in 1916 and 130 tons in 1917. The most productive region was the Amherst district of Burma. Here the ore reserves are said to be considerable, but the inaccessibility of the district has made production impossible except at high prices. The production from Mysore was only 26 tons in 1916.
Indo-China.--There are productive deposits of possible future importance in French Indo-China. In 1916 these produced 1,437 tons of antimony ore with a metal content of 642 tons. Smelters were operated by the firm of Schön & Rhay, and both native and Chinese ore was treated. In 1914 and 1915, 883 and 630 tons of antimony ore were exported to France.
Japan.--Very little antimony ore has been produced in Japan since the development of the Chinese deposits, although, as in most other countries, there was a renewed development during the war. The smelting of Chinese ores in Japan has become extremely important; and the smelter production, which was only 32 tons in 1914, rose to 8,189 tons in 1915, and to 10,633 tons in 1916. It was 6,562 tons in 1917. The production of metal and crude from domestic ores was only 186 tons in 1915 and 286 tons in 1916. It is probable that as long as cheap ore is available in China little production from Japanese deposits is to be expected.
Japanese ownership in Chinese mines is probably small, as practically all Chinese antimony bought by Japan has been purchased in the open market in the form of crude and ore. Since 1914 Japan has played an important part in the smelting of Chinese ore and matte, and in this regard has ranked second only to China. Prior to that time, however, production was insignificant. China is now in a position to supply direct the major part of the world’s requirement of metal, having largely extended her facilities for treating antimony ores, and it is doubtful whether Japanese smelters will long be able to compete successfully.
Turkey.--The antimony production of the Turkish Empire comes from Eastern Asia Minor in the vilayets of Brussa and Smyrna. The productive district of Allchar, formerly in European Turkey, passed to Serbia after the last Balkan War. The deposits seem to be rich and capable of greater development. Bad government, lack of transportation facilities, and excessive export duties seem to have retarded production. Some mines were the property of the Sultan, and development was hindered by excessive royalties. Most of the mines seem to be owned or leased by Greeks. Deposits of antimony ores associated with argentiferous lead ores are reported in the vicinity of Karahissar, in Armenia. In 1914 the concession for these was held by the Asia Minor Mining Co., presumably a British corporation. Undeveloped deposits of possible importance occur in the islands of Mytelene and Chios, now in Greek ownership.
Little information is available as regards production. In 1911 the Djinli Kaya mine produced 1,500 tons of 50 per cent. ore. The 1912 production of Asia Minor is reported as 677 tons of ore. Exports of antimony ore from Turkey to Great Britain were as follows: 1910, 303 (metric) tons; 1911, 773 tons; 1912, 1,108 tons; and in 1913, 408 tons. Some ore was also shipped to Austria, and, in 1913, 205 tons went to France. It seems probable that, given good government and improved transportation facilities, an increased production could be obtained from the region even at peace-time prices, for according to the best available information the deposits are large and much of the ore is high grade.
Africa.
Algiers.--The Algerian deposits are probably capable of considerable development, as is shown by the response to the increased demand in 1915 and 1916. The ores are nearly all oxidized and contain various rare antimony minerals. Prior to the war the chief production consisted of antimonate of iron, mined together with lead and zinc ores at Hamman N’ Bails. During the war large deposits of oxides were developed and were supplying antimony at the rate of 300 tons per month during the early part of 1918. In 1912, there was produced 4,661 tons of ore; in 1913, 582 tons; in 1914, 1,100 tons; in 1915, 9,022 tons, and in 1916, 28,473 tons. Apparently the ore produced carries around 40 per cent. antimony (metallic content).
The mine of Hamman N’ Bails is owned by the great Belgian smelting company, the Société de la Vieille Montagne; and the La Lucette company (French) owns the productive Ain Kerma oxide deposits. Prior to the war, the German firm of Beer, Sondheimer & Co. was listed as the owner of one of the less important mines.
British South Africa.--Several antimony deposits are known in British South Africa, seemingly the most promising being those of the Murchison Range in the northern Transvaal. Here auriferous stibnite occurs as veins and replacements in limestone over a considerable area. The ore as mined carries 3 to 6 dwt. gold and 7 to 10 per cent. antimony. Sales and shipments of concentrated and crude antimony were as follows: 1913, 48 tons; 1914, nothing; 1915, 91 tons; 1916, 722 tons; and 1917, 617 tons.
The principal mine of the range, the United Jack, was purchased in 1917 by the La Lucette company (French). In 1916 there were four producing mines in the district. The antimony deposits of the Steynsdorp district, near the Swaziland border, were under development in 1916, and antimony deposits are known in the Forbes Reef district in Swaziland. Antimony ores are found over a considerable part of southern Rhodesia, and this district would probably be capable of a considerable output with better transportation facilities and continued high prices. Ore production in 1916 and 1917 was 38 and 15 tons. Some of the mines, such as the Hope Fountain, near Bulawayo, are chiefly gold producers, antimony being a by-product.
=Australia.=--The only antimony-producing district of any importance in Australia is the Costerfield district of Victoria. Here stibnite and antimony oxides occur in quartz veins cutting Ordovician slates. The antimony concentrates, which average about 48 per cent. antimony, and also contain about 2¹⁄₂ ounces of gold per ton, are shipped to England. The annual production is rather regularly 2,500 to 3,000 tons of concentrates.
TABLE 32.--WORLD’S PRODUCTION OF ANTIMONY (1912-1917)
Approximate recoverable metal content of ore produced, metric tons; antimonial lead ores not included
-----------------+------+----------+----------+----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | -----------------+------+----------+----------+----------+ United States | 0| 0 | 0 | 1,760 | Canada | 0| 0 | 0 | 420 | Mexico | 3,500| 2,340 | 1,570 | 200[91]| | | | | | Bolivia | 40| 30 | 70 | 7,170 | Peru | 0| 0 | 0 | 260 | | | | | | Austria-Hungary | 1,350| 840 | [92]| [92]| Germany | 0| 0 | [92]| 700 | | | | | [91]| France | 2,290| 5,170 | [92]| [92]| Italy | 310| 360 | 110 | 720 | Spain | 170| 0 | 0 | 100 | Portugal | 40| 10 | [92]| [92]| | | | | | Serbia | 300| 250[91]| [92]| [92]| | | | | | Algiers | 940| 180 | 320 | 2,740 | British S. Africa| 0| 30 | 0 | 50 | | | | | | China |10,800|11,000 |15,900 |10,500 | Japan | 70| 20 | 30 | 180 | India | 0| 0 | 0 | 0 | Indo-China | 110| 0 | 0 | 160 | Borneo | 0| 0 | 300 | 120 | Asia Minor | 270| 240 | [92]| [92]| | | | | | Victoria | 580| 960 | 890 | 1,300 | New South Wales | 30| 10 | 20 | 320 | Queensland | 0| 0 | 0 | 80 | West Australia | 0| 0 | 0 | 0 | +------+----------+----------+----------+ Total |20,800|21,440 |24,400[93]|35,400[93]| -----------------+------+----------+----------+----------+
-----------------+----------+----------+----------------------------- | | |Principal | | |financial | 1916 | 1917 |control -----------------+----------+----------+----------------------------- United States | 1,420 | 310 |United States Canada | 300 | 120 |Great Britain Mexico | 450[91]| 2,730 |Great Britain and United | | |States Bolivia | 9,100 | 7,340 |Great Britain Peru | 930 | 450 |Peru | | | Austria-Hungary | [92]| [92]|Hungary Germany | [92]| [92]|Germany | | | France | [92]| [92]|France Italy | 1,080 | 960 |Italy Spain | 170 | 160 |France Portugal | 1,000 | [92]|? | [91]| | Serbia | [92]| [92]|? | | | Algiers | 8,940 | [92]|France British S. Africa| 380 | 300 |Great Britain and France | | | China |42,800 |31,000 |China (Japan), Great Britain? Japan | 280 | [92]|Japan India | 400 | 50 |Great Britain Indo-China | 510 | [92]|Great Britain Borneo | [92]| [92]|Great Britain Asia Minor | [92]| [92]|Turkey (Greece) | | | Victoria | 1,320 | [92]|Great Britain New South Wales | 310 | 150 |Great Britain Queensland | 80 | [92]|Great Britain West Australia | 20 | 10 |Great Britain +----------+----------+----------------------------- Total |78,700[93]|54,300[93]| -----------------+----------+----------+-----------------------------
[91] Incomplete data; actual production probably larger.
[92] No data.
[93] Totals for years 1914-1917 include estimates of production of countries from which data are lacking.
The Hillgrove district, in New South Wales, was formerly of considerable importance, the highest annual output being 2,450 tons of ore in 1906. Recent production has been slight, and although a very large increase took place with the stimulus of war prices, the 1917 production was valued at only about 5 per cent. of that of Victoria. Insignificant amounts of antimony ore have recently been produced in Queensland and Western Australia. New Zealand yielded a small amount during the boom of 1906 and 1907, but no production is recorded since 1910.
Imports of antimony ore into Great Britain from Australia in 1915 amounted to 3,854 tons.
Statistics of production (1912-1917) are given in the table preceding.
POSITION OF THE LEADING COMMERCIAL NATIONS
=The United States.=--The United States is the largest consumer of antimony in the world, requiring under normal conditions between 7,000 and 8,000 tons of new metal, most of which, before the war, came from England. The consumption during the war was about double this amount, and was derived chiefly from the Orient, South America, and Mexico. The United States must remain dependent upon foreign sources for its supply, unless a much higher tariff is placed upon imports. Even under such conditions it is doubtful whether domestic mines would prove adequate to supply more than a small part of the country’s needs.
Chinese and Japanese antimony has largely replaced the British product since 1914 and has become so well established that it will probably continue to hold American markets. Chinese antimony in particular has shown itself equal in every way to the best British grades. With a somewhat higher level of prices the importation of ore from Mexico and South America may be undertaken by reducing plants in this country, as the experience gained by several companies during the war has made possible the production of high-grade metal.
=England.=--No figures as to the actual consumption of antimony in England are available. Judged from a balance of imports and exports, the normal consumption is about 4,500 tons annually. During the war consumption was enormously increased for the manufacture of munitions. English smelters are entirely dependent on foreign ores, most of which in the past have come from China, with smaller amounts from Mexico and Australia. The position of the industry, at least in so far as export trade is concerned, is threatened by the strong position of the Chinese industry acquired during the war, as represented particularly by the activities of the Wah Chang Mining & Smelting Co. Two-thirds of the English antimony exports went to the United States before 1914. It does not seem probable that England will be able to fully recover this market, now dominated completely by Chinese and Japanese antimony.
=France.=--France is the only world power that possesses important resources of antimony within her boundaries. Including her Algerian mines, she is entirely independent of outside supply. Inasmuch as certain of the French deposits contain important amounts of gold, and the principal Algerian mine contains lead and zinc, the production of antimony in France will probably continue to be of some importance, and it is probable that she will continue to export antimony as before the war, though probably to a less extent.
=Germany.=--Germany, prior to 1914, consumed about 20 per cent. of the world’s annual output of antimony. Her own resources of antimony are insignificant, and German interests in foreign deposits have not been widely extended but were rather those of smelter and middleman, raw material being drawn chiefly from China, and metal and salts being exported to the United States, Russia and Great Britain. During the war Germany drew largely upon Hungary for antimony supply, but it is known that this source could not adequately meet the demand.
=Japan.=--Japan’s actual consumption of antimony has never been large and before the war was confined largely to the production of “white metal” boxes, trays, and other articles. During the war her importance in the antimony trade rested upon her ability to supply a large part of the needs of the Allies, principally Russia, and later the United States and Canada. How long after the war she will be able to retain her position is uncertain. Favorable freight rates to Japanese shippers, and the fact that the present high price of silver and the consequent exchange conditions affect adversely Chinese production may enable Japan to continue a factor in the antimony trade.
RECENT CONDITIONS IN THE INDUSTRY
Owing to the very high prices prevailing for antimony during 1915 and 1916, caused by a greatly increased demand for antimony for the manufacture of munitions, several countries became large producers. The most important among these were Bolivia, Mexico, and Algeria, but Victoria and the United States, Peru, Burma, and Spain all contributed substantial amounts. With the possible exception of Algeria--whose principal mines yield considerable lead and zinc and are situated near to French reduction plants--and of Mexico, none of these countries will be important factors in the production of antimony at the usual low prices prevailing for that metal.
The sudden ending of the war found the belligerents with large stocks of antimony on hand, the English holding, according to figures published by the British Ministry of Munitions on March 1, 1919, 4,325 long tons of regulus. There is reason to believe that the other Allies had stocks of the same order of magnitude, and if so there must have been about a year’s supply available on April 1, 1919, as the 1913 consumption of antimony amounted to only about 20,000 tons. In addition there were large supplies of alloys and antimonial lead available and more will undoubtedly be obtained by salvage operations. It may be expected, therefore, that until these are absorbed the production of antimony will be even less than that of pre-war years. At present there is little inducement for mining. Costs of mining have increased everywhere. China, the largest producer, faces a particularly difficult situation, for the higher price of silver has resulted in doubling costs of labor and local supplies. If silver prices remain high after the demand for primary antimony has recovered, the other antimony-producing countries, not on a silver basis, will have a corresponding advantage over China in the matter of production.
SUMMARY
The peace-time consumption of antimony is limited rather by the relatively restricted uses to which antimony is put than by any lack of potential supply. As a consequence, steady production has been maintained only from those districts in which working expenses are low and markets readily available, or in which the deposits contain other metals of value. Modern warfare, however, creates a special use for antimony--in the manufacture of shrapnel--which requires many times the amount of antimony necessary for ordinary peace uses. In the case of each of the three important wars of the last twenty years, the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War, the curves of antimony prices and production have risen sharply in accordance with the demand, and have fallen as rapidly after the need for munitions was past.
China has for long been the most important source of antimony and will doubtless retain that position for many years. Steady though less important production has been maintained in France, Austria-Hungary and Mexico, while several other countries produced important amounts as a result of the largely increased demands of the war. Chief among these were Bolivia, Algeria, and Australia.
England dominated the antimony market prior to 1914 through her large smelting interest, trade agreements in the Orient, and selling agencies in America--the principal consuming country. Since that time, however, Chinese interests have become independent, and Japan has become of importance in the antimony smelting and trading field.
The United States possesses limited antimony resources which can be exploited only at very high prices, and is dependent almost entirely upon outside sources of supply. In the past this supply has been drawn largely from England, but more recently from the Orient and Mexico.
Germany has insignificant antimony resources of her own, and depended for her supply during the war upon the Hungarian deposits, which were apparently inadequate to meet the demands. Her interests prior to the war were chiefly those of the smelter and middleman, and did not extend very largely to foreign deposits.
The United States, France, Germany and Great Britain normally consume 85 per cent. of the antimony of the world, and of these France alone is independent of foreign sources of supply.
The antimony trade of the world is largely controlled by a few companies, of which the most important are: Cookson’s (British), Wah Chang Co. (Chinese), and Société de La Lucette (French). The Mitsui Co. (Japanese), largely through shipping interests, has a considerable share in the Chinese and Japanese antimony trade.
X. MOLYBDENUM
BY R. B. MOORE
USES OF MOLYBDENUM
Molybdenum is used in the manufacture of ferro-alloys for making steel. As wire, it is used for supporting the filament in incandescent electric lamps. The wire is also employed for winding electric resistance furnaces and for this use has proved cheaper and better than platinum because of the quicker heating and higher temperatures attainable. The metal has been successfully substituted for platinum and for platinum-iridium in electric contact-making devices. Molybdenum compounds are used in chemistry, particularly ammonium molybdate for the determination of phosphorus. Fast colors in a variety of shades may be produced on leather by employing molybdenum tannate in conjunction with logwood extracts. It has been employed for color glazes in porcelain and in coloring silks and rubber.
The addition of molybdenum to steel increases the elastic limit without diminishing the ductility. Molybdenum can be substituted for a certain percentage of tungsten in high-speed steel, as a rule one part of molybdenum taking the place of two to three parts of tungsten.
GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
Up to about 1916, practically all of the molybdenite concentrates produced came from Queensland, New South Wales, and Norway. Shortly after the opening of the war, interest was shown in the production of molybdenite in Canada, principally in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. During 1917 and 1918 there was a great deal of interest in the United States in molybdenum ores, and at the present time this country can probably produce molybdenite concentrates in quantity equaling if not exceeding the rest of the world put together. Some molybdenum is produced by Spain and Peru.
=Australia and Norway.=--The first official record of a production of molybdenite in Queensland was in 1900, when the output amounted to 12.3 short tons of high-grade material. The production gradually rose to 119 tons in 1906, and has not varied materially since that date, although the selling prices for concentrates increased considerably. The bulk of the material was mined at Wolfram Camp, in the Chillagoe field, 120 miles southwest of Cairns, in Northern Queensland. The mines at Bamford, in the same field, are credited with a small output. With the molybdenite ores are bismuth-tungsten ores, so that all three metals are produced.
The production of molybdenite was first reported in New South Wales in 1902; in that year the output was 17 short tons. The total output to the end of 1914 was 498 short tons, valued at $264,000. The chief producing molybdenite mines are at Whipstick, in the Pambula division, at Kingsgate, in the Glenn Innes division, and near Deepwater, in the Deepwater division. Molybdenite is also being produced at Rocky River, in the Tantafield division, and in the Bathhurst division. The production at all of these localities has not been large--in no one year exceeding 100 tons of concentrates.
In Norway, the production of high-grade molybdenite concentrates has averaged about 30 tons per annum since 1902. In 1906, an output of 1,129 short tons was reported. This probably refers to ore mined and not to concentrates produced.
The chief molybdenite districts in Norway are the provinces of Lister, Mandal, and Nedenes, on the extreme southern end of the peninsula. The district of Fjotland, in the former province, is probably richer in molybdenite than any yet discovered in Norway. A mine at Knaben, in this district, has been the largest and probably the only successful producer in Norway. This mine, owned by George G. Blackwell & Sons, of Liverpool, England,[94] has made an average output of about 25 short tons per annum.
[94] Reported taken over by a Norwegian company. U. S. Commerce Reports, September 24, 1918.
TABLE 33.--PRODUCTION OF MOLYBDENITE IN QUEENSLAND, NEW SOUTH WALES AND NORWAY
----+----------------+----------------+---------------- | Queensland |New South Wales | Norway +------+---------+------+---------+------+--------- |Weight| |Weight| |Weight| |(short| Value |(short| Value |(short| Value Year| tons)|(dollars)| tons)|(dollars)| tons)|(dollars) ----+------+---------+------+---------+------+--------- 1902| 45.9| 26,770 | 16.8| 8,960 | 22| 16,100 1903| 26.9| 10,220 | 32.5| 21,960 | 34| 21,400 1904| 23.6| 13,010 | 28.3| 13,270 | 33| 17,400 1905| 70.8| 41,340 | 21.7| 12,200 | 51| 16,300 1906| 118.9| 74,330 | 36.6| 23,350 | 1,129| 14,200 1907| 74.0| 41,080 | 24.2| 17,340 | 33| 12,900 1908| 98.7| 44,960 | 9.5| 4,520 | 39| 13,400 1909| 103.9| 45,120 | 31.5| 15,810 | 33| 12,100 1910| 118.6| 58,640 | 53.2| 27,580 | | 1911| 111.4| 64,610 | 23.1| 12,610 | 2| 800 1912| 114.6| 84,420 | 63.3| 18,030 | 23| 5,400 1913| 74.3| 92,460 | 88.3| 33,100 | 13| 3,200 1914| 87.1| 185,830 | 68.8| 55,720 | | ----+------+---------+------+---------+------+---------
The production of molybdenite in Queensland, New South Wales and Norway, by years, is shown in the preceding table.
Figures for more recent years indicate the total production in Australia of about 330 short tons per annum and 110 short tons in Norway in 1916. In 1917 the output in Norway was three times the 1916 figures.
=North America.=--As already stated, the chief molybdenite deposits in Canada are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. They are low grade and of course need concentration. The Canadian and British governments have been much interested in the concentration of these ores and the Canadian government has a mill engaged in experimental work and in commercial concentration. The Department of Mines has spent a good deal of time in experimentation, believing that molybdenite has an important future in metallurgy.
The production in 1917 was about 80 short tons of high-grade concentrates and was undoubtedly larger in 1918.
Canada when properly prospected may produce a good deal more molybdenite than now.
In the United States are a very large number of small molybdenum deposits, scattered over the western states from Washington to Arizona and from Colorado to California. There are two common minerals--molybdenite, or molybdenum sulphide, and wulfenite, or lead molybdate. Generally speaking, molybdenite is found in the northern states, and wulfenite in the southern states, but this rule is not without exception. In Arizona and New Mexico, the principal mineral is wulfenite, but there are some fairly large deposits of molybdenite, probably the best being at the Leviathan mines, in Copper Canyon, Mohave County, Arizona. This is the only molybdenite deposit that is being worked in New Mexico or Arizona. It is in the Cedar Valley mining district about three miles southeast of Copperville and about 25 miles east of Yucca. This ore carries a good deal of copper, as well as small traces of gold and silver. Some analyses have shown 2 or 3 per cent. MoS₂ and 1¹⁄₂ to 2 per cent. copper with 0.02 ounce of gold and 1 to 4 ounces of silver per ton. The percentage of molybdenite is undoubtedly above the average, which does not exceed 1 per cent. The country rock is medium-grained gray granite, consisting of quartz, feldspar, biotite, muscovite and small amounts of other accessory minerals, such as zircon and apatite. The company has erected a mill and has succeeded in making a satisfactory separation of the copper from the molybdenite.
The largest possibilities in Arizona and New Mexico are in mining wulfenite. This mineral is widely scattered over these two states, especially Arizona, and is, to a great extent, associated with vanadinite. One of the greatest difficulties in concentrating wulfenite has been the separation from vanadinite. The Bureau of Mines has worked on this problem for some time with partial success.
The most important deposit of wulfenite is at the Mammoth and Collins mines, in Pinal County. They were originally gold mines, and when the value of molybdenum became evident, Colonel Randolph, owner of the Mammoth mine, decided that it would be worth while to run the tailings dump for wulfenite. He converted his mill to this purpose, and not only ran the Mammoth dump but also the dump at the old Yuma mine, in Pima county. The total amount of concentrates produced by Colonel Randolph and others in the vicinity during the three years 1916 to 1918 are probably represented by 1,000 to 1,200 tons of wulfenite concentrates. While these operations were going on, they represented practically the only production of molybdenum concentrates in this country except on a very small scale. One other operating company is the Rowley Copper Mines Co., Gila Bend, Arizona, the ore being wulfenite and the principal impurity barite. The company has succeeded in making satisfactory concentrates, which carry, however, a considerable amount of barite. The Golden, Colo., station of the Bureau of Mines has run some tests on this concentrate and has made a partial separation of the barite and wulfenite.
Molybdenite is found in a considerable number of places in Colorado, Montana, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Texas and other western and northwestern states, but the largest occurrence is in Colorado. Generally speaking, the individual deposits in the West are not large enough to warrant the building of a mill for any one of them, and as the deposits are widely scattered, it is difficult to find a place where a custom mill could obtain a sufficient amount of ore. This is one of the chief difficulties in producing a large tonnage of molybdenite concentrates, outside of Colorado.
Probably the largest deposits of molybdenite in the world are at Climax, Colorado. These deposits are on the southwestern slope of Bartlett Mountain, Summit County, about 15 miles from Leadville. Outcrops are practically continuous across the whole length of the mountain and at places are one hundred to two hundred feet thick. The ore is rather granular and not flaky molybdenite, the average grade running about 8 per cent. MoS₂.
There are two operating companies, the Climax Molybdenum Co., a subsidiary of the American Metal Co., of New York and Denver, and the Molybdenum Products Co., of Denver. Both of these companies have erected mills having daily capacities of 200 tons. The mill of the American Metal Co. started continuous operation about March, 1918, and that of the other company was completed shortly afterwards. Both companies claim that they can enlarge the capacity at short notice. The writer was in the mine of the American Metal Co. Evidently a considerable part of the mountain is molybdenite, and without doubt, a very large tonnage can be produced. The Jackling interests recently acquired the adjoining properties owned by the Pingree Mines Co., but in 1918 had not built a mill or carried out any serious development work.
Another very large group of deposits of molybdenite lies near Empire, Clear Creek County, Colorado, on the eastern slope of Red Mountain, at an altitude of about 11,000 to 12,000 feet. The deposits are 14 miles from the Empire station of the Colorado & Southern Railroad and are owned by the Primos Chemical Co., of Primos, Pennsylvania. The ore-bearing bodies consist of three veins of low-grade ore. The ore zone, that is, the ground included between the footwall of Vein No. 1 and the hanging wall of Vein No. 3 where cut by the tunnel, is about 200 feet wide. The veins vary greatly in width and are not particularly well defined, thin veinlets and stringers of ore running into the walls. The Primos Chemical Co. has worked these mines off and on for several years. About three years ago it built a mill near the mine, but production has been rather intermittent. This company has probably used all of its concentrates for making ferromolybdenum at its own works in Primos, Pennsylvania.
A small mill has been erected at Pitkin, Colorado, in connection with the mine at that place owned by the Pennsylvania Molybdenum Mines Co., of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A number of other deposits of considerable interest are found in Colorado, especially around Breckenridge, Summit County. Here the pegmatite veins consist largely of muscovite and quartz, with some feldspar, and carry biotite, chalcopyrite and accessory minerals. The difficulty here is to separate the molybdenum from the copper minerals and also from the mica, most of which floats with the molybdenite.
Most of the developed molybdenum deposits of Mexico are in the State of Sonora. In the Sahuaripa district of eastern Sonora, the mineral occurs with scheelite in rich pockets containing very large pieces of pure mineral. Some molybdenum ore has been shipped from the Montezuma copper district to the Empire Smelting & Refining Co., of Deming, New Mexico. Molybdenum is reported in several other Sonora localities. Near Coyame and Marquez, northeastern Chihuahua, the mines of the Compañia Minera Aurora y Anexas produce molybdenum ore. Wulfenite is found abundantly with the lead ore of the Cuchillo Parado mine in the same district. The Jibosa copper mine of the American Smelters Securities Co., near Jimenez, Chihuahua, seems to carry considerable oxide of molybdenum, molybdite. It is not commercial at present.
Molybdenite deposits are also reported in the states of Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, and Jalisco.
RESERVES
As the production of molybdenum ores in the past in all countries has been relatively small, probably none of the deposits have been worked out and an increased output can be obtained. This applies particularly to the United States. All of the work that has been done so far has been on an experimental basis, and possibly the only mine whose tonnage will be decreased by past production is the Mammoth mine, near Mammoth, Arizona, and there is no certainty that this mine can not continue to produce as much for some time in the future as it did during its period of operation. Just what production can be obtained in the United States is somewhat uncertain, but it is probable that the deposits at Climax, Colorado, will yield at least one thousand tons of ore a day for several years and possibly for a good many years. The deposits of the Primos Chemical Co. near Empire, Colorado, are also extensive and should give a large output for some time to come. The rest of the deposits mentioned are small compared with these two, but the total production of all of them might be large, were a steady market assured and custom mills erected.
TREATMENT OF ORES
In concentrating wulfenite ores some form of table concentration, with the addition of slimers, is generally used. The metallurgical treatment of the concentrates varies and is still very much in the experimental stage. There is opportunity for the development of a process that will give the patentee a considerable advantage over competitors. The Bureau of Mines has been working on this problem and has recently devised a method that seems to be as efficient as any other and possibly has some additional advantages.
In the treatment of molybdenite the same methods are almost universally used. First the ore is crushed to the required fineness and the molybdenite is separated by flotation, largely oil flotation. The metallurgy of the concentrate, now more or less standardized, involves roasting the concentrate to the oxide and treating this oxide in an electric furnace for the production of ferromolybdenum. With small improvements, this practice is likely to be maintained for some time to come.
POLITICAL CONTROL
The political control of the molybdenum deposits of the world is determined by the geographical location. At present most of the known deposits are controlled by the United States and Great Britain, the latter controlling those in Canada and Australia. The British and Canadian governments actually have a government mill in Canada.
COMMERCIAL CONTROL
The Knaben mines, in Fjotland, the most famous and probably the only successful molybdenum mines in Norway, were acquired in 1905 by an English company, the Blackwell Developing Corporation. Later a newly organized Norwegian company, with head office in Christiania, took over the mines at a price of 2,500,000 crowns.
In Mexico the large molybdenum deposit in the Sahuaripa district of eastern Sonora is owned by George Fast, of Douglas, Arizona. The Lucky Tiger-Combination Gold Mining Co., of Kansas City, Mo., (American) owns the deposits in the Montezuma district. Another American company has acquired deposits near Poza, Sonora, about 20 miles north of Hermosillo. A deposit located 35 miles from the port of Topolabampo, northwestern Sinaloa, is owned by an American. The Compañia Minera Aurora y Anexas, operating molybdenum mines near Coyame and Marquez, northeastern Chihuahua, is owned by the Madero estate. The ore has been shipped to Leonard Worcester, El Paso, Texas, agent for the estate and also purchaser for L. Vogelstein & Co., New York, formerly a branch of the German metals combine.
In the United States, during the war the claim was made a number of times, both privately and in the press, that German interests were trying to obtain control of the molybdenum deposits of the country. This was due to the fact that the American Metal Co., which operates at Climax, Colorado, as the Climax Molybdenum Co., and which has some other molybdenum deposits, was formerly controlled by German interests. It is true that the majority of the stock of the American Metal Co. was owned in Germany, but Mr. Palmer, the Alien Property Custodian, took charge of this stock, and the affairs of the American Metal Co. were readjusted to changed conditions. The principal stockholders of the Primos Chemical Co. were four brothers by the name of Boericke. Before the war they had strong German connections, but outside of their deposits at Empire they made no special effort to get large molybdenum holdings in this country and did not seek to get a combination of any of the operating companies. The Primos Chemical Co. has since 1919 been taken over by the Vanadium Products Corporation, affiliated with the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. The Molybdenum Products Co., Denver, Colorado, which owns a part of the molybdenum deposit on the slope of Bartlett Mountain, near Climax, and operates a 200-ton mill, is a subsidiary of E. J. Longyear Co., exploring engineers, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both companies are owned by American stockholders.
In Canada and Australia it is certain that no one large interest has control, as the ore comes from a number of more or less independent small mines.
A large number of patents have been issued in connection with the concentration and metallurgy of molybdenum. None of these is vital to production; most are valueless, and even those that have a distinct value do not necessarily give control to the owner of the patents or secret processes.
In order to insure a steady demand for molybdenum, the prime requisite is a definite knowledge of the properties and uses of molybdenum steel. In the past this has been lacking, and at present it is not possessed by the majority of operators and steel makers. Europe should assist materially in supplying this deficiency. Molybdenum steel at the present time is in the same position as vanadium steel was a number of years ago--it is on trial. This uncertainty caused a very decided slump in the demand for molybdenum concentrates in the spring of 1918. A control of molybdenum is more likely to come through the manufacture of molybdenum steel than through processes connected with the production of concentrates or ferromolybdenum.
POSITION OF LEADING COMMERCIAL NATIONS
At present the United States has the largest potential supply of molybdenum ores of any country in the world. In addition it has three of the largest and most modern mills that are handling ore from any molybdenum deposit. It is in a favorable position to equal or surpass, for some time, any other country, in output of molybdenum concentrates.
Before the war Great Britain, through political control of the Australian and Canadian deposits, was the world’s leading producer. Some molybdenum came from Norway, but the amount was small as compared to the output of Australia, Norway producing in 1913 only 13 short tons and Australia 162.6. In both Canada and Australia the known deposits have not been worked to capacity and new deposits will probably be discovered with proper prospecting, so that the future molybdenum production under British control promises to increase. The Canadian and British governments are much interested in the development of the molybdenum resources of the dominion.
France is entirely dependent upon England and the United States, although it might be able to get a small amount of concentrates direct from Norway.
Germany was much interested in molybdenum before the war. During the war it probably did not import any molybdenum concentrates at all, and as the world production before that time was small it is not likely that there was any reserve on hand in the empire in 1919.
Japan has no molybdenum deposits as far as is known, and probably is not specially interested at present in the use of this metal.
The distribution of the chief molybdenum deposits of the world is shown in Plate VII.
SUMMARY
Molybdenum commands attention because of its growing importance as a steel alloy metal. Although the metallurgy and properties of molybdenum steels are not thoroughly understood and their use is not widespread, especially in this country, accumulating evidence indicates that molybdenum will eventually become one of the common alloy metals. It is used in the form of wire as supports for incandescent light filaments and in electrical apparatus, and may become essential in the manufacture of special steels. It cannot be easily replaced in chemistry, and for its other applications it is better and cheaper than other materials.
Up to 1915 practically all of the molybdenum produced came from Queensland, New South Wales, and Norway. At present more important deposits are being developed in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, Canada, and in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and other western states. The mineral is widely distributed and the discovery of additional deposits is likely if the demand is sufficient to encourage prospecting. The United States has deposits large enough to meet all domestic needs and also to produce a surplus for export. Some molybdenum is obtained from Mexico, Peru, and Spain, but the United States, Great Britain (Canada and Australia), and Norway control the important deposits.
The largest molybdenum deposit in the United States, located at Climax, Colorado, is owned by the Climax Molybdenum Co., a subsidiary of the American Metal Co. (formerly German), and by the Molybdenum Products Co., of Denver, an American company. Other deposits in Colorado are owned by the Primos Chemical Co., a company that had strong German connections before the war, but has been taken over by the Vanadium Products Corporation, an American company. Other producing deposits of the United States are owned by American citizens.
The Knaben mines, the most important in Norway, have been owned since 1905 by an English company, but, according to a report, they have been acquired by a Norwegian company. A number of the deposits of northern Mexico are owned by Americans. Others are owned by the Madero estate (Mexican). The Canadian and Australian deposits are controlled by small, independent operators. Both the United States and Great Britain have ample supplies of molybdenum; France produces none and is dependent upon other countries; Germany, which was much interested in molybdenum before the war, probably has no large stocks on hand.
XI. RADIUM AND URANIUM
BY R. A. F. PENROSE, JR.
Radium is a metal and is a product of the disintegration in nature of the metal uranium. Both radium and uranium are elements. Radium has been isolated in its metallic state, but is not used in that form and is known better in the form of its salts, among the most important of which, so far as their uses are concerned, are the bromide, chloride and sulphate.
Wherever uranium occurs in nature, radium is associated with it in certain definable quantities. Uranium can contain, however, only a certain maximum amount of radium at a time, and when it has reached this stage, the radium and uranium ratio is said to be in equilibrium. In this condition the amount of radium per gram of uranium has been calculated by Rutherford to be 3.4 × 10⁻⁷ gram. This corresponds to 1 gram of radium element to about 3,000 kilograms of uranium element, or 1 part of radium element to about 3,000,000 parts of uranium element. Uranium minerals as mined are usually impure and carry only a small percentage of uranium elements, so that the ratio between radium and the crude uranium ore may be 1 to several or many times 3,000,000.
The production of radium from uranium is usually stated in milligrams or grams, and even in the richest ores there is usually only a small fraction of a gram to a ton, while in the ordinary lower-grade ore there are only a few milligrams to a ton, corresponding to a small fraction of a grain to a ton. Less than twenty years ago it was estimated that probably not one gram of radium element in the form of its refined salts had been extracted in the world. Today a great many times, perhaps a hundred times or more, this amount has been extracted and is in use. The annual production of radium today in the world is probably several grams. The annual production of uranium in the world is probably several hundred pounds.
The unique position of uranium as the source of radium in nature makes it necessary to discuss both materials together.
=Uses of Radium.=--Radium is a heavy white metal which is very unstable, and alters rapidly in the air. It is not used in its metallic stage but only in the form of its salts. A few years ago these salts were supposed to have a general beneficial effect in the treatment of cancer and other malignant growths, but more recent investigations seem to confine their influence to only certain forms of these afflictions. Their influence in other diseased conditions is often very marked, but the full extent of the field of usefulness of radium for medical purposes has not yet been very clearly defined.
In recent years radium has been applied to other important purposes, especially in luminous paint for watches, clocks, compasses and other instruments; and this use has so greatly increased in recent years, especially for military purposes, that it now consumes more radium than is used in medicine. Radium salts are more or less luminous when seen in a darkened room, and this quality is often increased by the admixture of certain other materials, notably zinc sulphide. Hence their value in luminous paints. Radium salts also cause certain minerals to fluoresce, notably the zinc minerals willemite and sphalerite. In Germany, where radium during the war became scarce on account of the shortage of the ores from which it is extracted, radium salts are said to have been preserved for medical purposes, and mesothorium and other radioactive substances used in making luminous paints.
=Uses of Uranium.=--Uranium is a heavy white metal, which slowly tarnishes on exposure to the air. The chief use of uranium today is as a source of radium. For many years before the discovery of radium, however, uranium compounds were used in a small way in coloring glass and porcelain, in photography, in reagents for chemical analysis, in mordants for dyeing and for other minor purposes. The use of uranium metal in small quantities in steel manufacture has been tried with some degree of success.
ORES OF RADIUM AND URANIUM
=General Statement.=--The principal uranium minerals at present known in nature, which are therefore the principal sources of both uranium and radium, are carnotite and uraninite, with the impure amorphous form of uraninite known as pitchblende. Torbernite, autunite and some of the rarer uranium minerals have produced a little radium and uranium.
Carnotite and uraninite or pitchblende as mined for ores are generally more or less mixed with other materials and are rarely found pure. The uranium in the ores is usually stated commercially, for convenience, in the form of the uranium oxides represented by the formula UO₂ + 2UO₃, briefly expressed as U₃O₈. Most carnotite ore varies from 1 per cent. to 3 per cent. of U₃O₈; a 5 to 10 per cent. ore is considered high grade; a 20 to 40 per cent. ore is remarkably rich. Uraninite and pitchblende ordinarily contain more uranium than carnotite contains, and even in the impure forms in which they are mined as ores, they often show this greater uranium content. The ordinary uraninite and pitchblende ores carry from 2 to 3 per cent. to 8 or 10 per cent. U₃O₈, and a 20 per cent. ore is very high grade, though some ore runs 60 or 70 per cent.
=Carnotite.=--Carnotite is an amorphous, soft, powdery material, sometimes more or less coherent and of a talcose or waxy character, generally of a brilliant canary yellow color, though sometimes discolored by iron, organic matter and other substances. It is essentially a hydrous potassium uranium vanadate. Some authorities believe that carnotite is not a distinct mineral, but a mixture of different minerals.
=Uraninite and Pitchblende.=--The terms uraninite and pitchblende are often used synonymously to designate the same mineral, but more properly the term uraninite is a general name for all forms of the mineral and especially for the purer and distinctly crystalline variety, and the term pitchblende is applicable to the impure amorphous form. It is black or grayish black in color, opaque, and often has a submetallic glossy or pitchlike luster. Uraninite is often remarkably lacking in distinctive characteristics, so that its presence might frequently be overlooked. For this reason it seems possible that this mineral, now known in only comparatively small quantities, may some time in the future be found more abundantly.
Uraninite, like carnotite, has a somewhat indefinite formula, but is essentially a combination of the two uranium oxides UO₂ and UO₃, in which UO₂ seems to act as a base and UO₃ as an acid. A number of both the rarer and commoner elements are often associated with them. The relative amounts of the two oxides vary considerably in different specimens, especially in the impure form of pitchblende, and no definite formula can at present be given. In pitchblende a notable amount of water, perhaps sometimes in chemical combination, is often present. Several other minerals much rarer than uraninite or pitchblende are related to them in composition, among them being cleveite, bröggerite and nivenite.
=Other Ores.=--Though carnotite, uraninite and pitchblende are the most abundant of all the radium and uranium materials in nature, and produce almost all the radium and uranium of commerce, yet many other minerals contain both metals, and though as yet known only in such limited quantities as to be of small commercial value, may in the future be found in quantities of importance. Among them may be mentioned tyuyamunite, a hydrous calcium uranium vanadate often associated with the hydrous potassium uranium vanadate described above as carnotite; autunite, a hydrous calcium uranium phosphate; torbernite or chalcolite, a hydrous copper uranium phosphate.
GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF RADIUM AND URANIUM
The only regions of the world that have as yet produced any large amounts of radium and uranium minerals on a commercial scale are Colorado, Utah and Austria. Cornwall, Australia and Germany have produced a small quantity of these minerals. They are known in small quantities in France and Portugal, and have been reported in India and German East Africa, but in these regions they have not yet become commercially important. They occur sparingly, so far as yet known, and practically as only mineralogical curiosities, in Connecticut, North Carolina, Canada, Norway and many other regions, but may in the future be found in larger quantities.
Minute quantities of radium or its products of disintegration occur in almost all rocks and in the atmosphere, and in the waters of the sea and land, but in such small amounts as to be unavailable as a source of these substances. The source of all radium of commerce at the present time is in the certain few uranium minerals already mentioned. They are found in formations of various geologic ages, from recent superficial deposits to the older crystalline rocks, but show a tendency toward certain modes of occurrence, such as in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah as an impregnation in sandstone; in eastern Colorado, Cornwall, Austria and South Australia as one of the gangue minerals in veins of other ores; in North Carolina, Canada, Norway and West Australia in pegmatite or other feldspathic dikes.
RADIUM AND URANIUM RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES
=General Statement.=--The commercially important deposits of ores of radium and uranium in the United States are, so far as yet known, confined to the carnotite regions of southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, and the pitchblende deposits of Gilpin County, in eastern Colorado. In Connecticut, North Carolina and elsewhere, uraninite, pitchblende and other uranium minerals have been found; and near Mauch Chunk, in Pennsylvania, small quantities of carnotite have been discovered, but these occurrences are, so far as known, in quantities too small to be of commercial value.
=Colorado and Utah.=--The carnotite deposits of southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah are the most important sources of radium and uranium in the world. In Colorado the largest quantities of ore have come from many mines in Montrose County, especially in Paradox Valley, while Mesa, San Miguel, Dolores, Rio Blanco, Routt and other counties have been producers. In southeastern Utah the ores are carnotite, as in southwestern Colorado, and occur especially in Grand, Emery and San Juan counties, but have not been worked to the same extent as in Colorado.
The carnotite of Colorado and Utah occurs as an impregnation in sandstones and shaly sandstones, mostly in the McElmo and the La Plata formations, lying at the top of the Jurassic beds and below the Cretaceous sandstones and conglomerates of the region. The deposits seem to have been formed by the precipitation of carnotite from solution along certain strata of these formations, and the material occurs along bedding planes, in fissures and small cavities, in layers or irregular masses from a fraction of an inch to several inches in width, and sometimes as a general impregnation of the sandstone for several feet in thickness. It seems to be especially abundant in strata impregnated strongly with vegetable or animal matter, and is often in unusual quantities in lignitized or petrified trunks of trees. This phenomenon suggests the influence of organic matter in precipitating and segregating the carnotite.
The rocks carrying the carnotite lie horizontally or dip at low angles in most parts of the Colorado region; in Utah they lie often in the same way, but occasionally dip at steep angles. Where they appear on the surface, the carnotite sometimes impregnates certain strata for several hundred feet or more along the outcrops, but more generally it occurs in spots along them, with little or no carnotite in the intervening spaces. As these outcrops are followed into the hillsides, the ore appears to be even more irregular in its distribution than on the surface, and in many or most cases it becomes much scarcer the further it is explored underground, until within 10 to 40 or 50 feet from the surface it often mostly or entirely disappears. There are exceptions to this feature, but the gradual and often rapid decrease in quantity and grade of the carnotite ore as it is followed into a hill is generally recognized. This fact suggests that the carnotite may have been redissolved in the sandstone and carried to the surface by capillary action in this arid climate, forming rich, superficial efflorescences.
In many of the carnotite deposits, vanadium minerals occur independently of the vanadium in the carnotite, but this association is not always observed. They occur in sandstone and often give it a dark-gray or blackish color.
In eastern Colorado several mines near Central City, Gilpin County, have produced limited quantities of pitchblende. Among these are the Kirk, the Wood, the Belcher, the Alps, the German and the Calhoun mines. The pitchblende occurs as a subordinate constituent in the gold-bearing veins of that country. The veins intersect old metamorphic rocks intruded by igneous rocks. The mines of Gilpin County are today producing little if any pitchblende, and the total production has been small, amounting in all probably to only a few tons. Much more pitchblende, however, was let go to waste in former days when the mines were worked for other ores and the value of uranium was not recognized.
=Production.=--The United States is today by far the largest producer of radium and uranium ores in the world, and is also the largest producer of manufactured radium and uranium compounds. Before the war, England, France and Germany, especially Germany, imported large quantities of American ores and extracted the radium in a refined state as its different salts, much of which was returned to the United States for sale. Now, however, American ores are almost entirely treated in the United States, with the exception of a little shipped to England and possibly to France. The Standard Chemical Co., of Pittsburgh, was a pioneer in this work, and others quickly followed, among them the National Radium Institute, of Denver; the Schlesinger Radium Co., of Denver; the Chemical Products Co., of Denver; the Cummings Chemical Co., of Lansdowne, Pa.; the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, of New York, and others.
Before the discovery of radium in 1898, but little attention was given to uranium ores in America, though some little pitchblende was shipped from the Central City, Colorado, region for use in making uranium compounds. Shortly after the discovery of radium, however, mining was begun on the carnotite of southwestern Colorado, and from 1900 to 1910 several companies were formed to work these ores both in Colorado and Utah. The pitchblende of Central City also began to attract renewed attention. For a few years active work was done in prospecting for it, but the quantities have so far proved to be small. A few tons probably represent the total amount derived from these mines since the search began. In the meantime, however, the production of carnotite increased rapidly until 1915, when it greatly decreased on account of the curtailment of shipments to Europe. In the latter part of 1916, however, the production increased again, on account of the increased consumption of ore in this country, and in 1918 the production was very active, largely on account of the increased use of radium not only in medicine but especially in luminous paints.
The amount of radium and uranium ores produced in the United States, or in fact anywhere, during a given period, is difficult to determine, on account of the different bases on which reports are made, but it may be said that the tonnage is small compared with that of ores of commoner metals, a few thousand tons being a large amount of carnotite, and simply a few tons or pounds being a large amount of pitchblende. Though the mining of radium and uranium ores in the United States began about 1900 or shortly before, no very large quantities were produced until 1912, when about 1,100 tons were mined, consisting chiefly of Colorado carnotite. The production gradually increased to several thousand tons yearly, practically all of which is carnotite from Colorado and Utah.
RADIUM AND URANIUM RESOURCES OF EUROPE
=Austria.=--The most important radium and uranium ore in Europe at present is the uraninite or pitchblende found in the mines of Joachimsthal, in Bohemia. It occurs as a subordinate gangue mineral in certain silver veins of that region which intersect metamorphic and igneous rocks, and has been actively worked ever since the discovery of radium by M. and Mme. Curie in 1898. Before that time the mineral had a certain value as a source of uranium compounds.
These Austrian mines are second to those of the United States as a source of radium and uranium, but their production equals only a very small part of that of this country. Until the Great War this production was controlled largely, if not wholly, by the Austrian government, and as the production is said still to continue, it is probably still controlled in the same way.
=England.=--Next in importance in Europe to the uraninite or pitchblende ore of Joachimsthal as a source of radium and uranium, is the similar ore in some of the mines of Cornwall, England. It occurs as a subordinate mineral in the gangue of some of the old tin and copper mines, in veins intersecting metamorphic and igneous rocks, especially at St. Just, St. Ives, Grampound Road, St. Austell and elsewhere. The production and treatment of the ore has been under private or corporate auspices and the amount produced has not been large.
=Germany.=--In Germany the production of radium and uranium ores has always been insignificant. A small quantity of such ores has been produced at Schneeberg, Johanngeorgenstadt, Annaberg and elsewhere. Before the war, Germany was a large producer of manufactured radium and uranium compounds, but they were derived mostly from imported American ores.
=Other Localities.=--With the exception of Joachimsthal and Cornwall, Europe has produced but small quantities of radium and uranium minerals. A little uraninite or pitchblende has been found in other localities in Austria, such as Przibram and elsewhere, and sparingly in Norway. Autunite and other uranium minerals have been found in small quantities near Autun, France, and near Sabugal and Guarda, in Portugal, but no important quantities have been produced.
RADIUM AND URANIUM RESOURCES OF AUSTRALIA, INDIA AND AFRICA
=Australia.=--In South Australia carnotite, autunite, torbernite and other rare uranium minerals occur in regions of metamorphic and igneous rocks at Radium Hill, near Olary, and at Mount Painter, in the Flinders range. A few hundred tons of ore containing these minerals have been mined by private or corporation interests. Most of this has been sent to Woolwich, near Sydney, New South Wales, or to England, for the extraction of the radium. Since the war started no very active mining operations in such ores have been carried on in the South Australian region.
At Cooglegong, in Western Australia, the uranium mineral fergusonite and to a less extent the uranium mineral euxenite occur in the surface detrital material of the region. At Wodgina the minerals mackintoshite, thorogummite and pilbarite, all hydrous silicates of uranium, thorium and lead, occur in an albite pegmatite dike. No important quantities of these Western Australia ores have yet been produced.
=India and Africa.=--Radium and uranium minerals have been reported in India and German East Africa, but no important quantities have yet been produced.
PROSPECT OF FUTURE DISCOVERIES OF RADIUM AND URANIUM ORES
The prospect for increased discoveries of radium and uranium minerals at the present time seems best in the carnotite regions of Colorado and Utah. The workable deposits seem to be more or less superficial, and perhaps no large quantity of ore may be found in any one spot, yet the great extent of the region in which the formations carrying carnotite occur, will supply an immense aggregate amount of ore.
Increased discoveries of uraninite, pitchblende and other uranium minerals in Europe seem possible, even though that continent has already been well explored for them. Moreover, new discoveries of different radium and uranium minerals may very likely be made in still other parts of the United States than those mentioned, and in less explored parts of the world, especially certain regions of South America, Australia, Asia and Africa. Many of these minerals, especially pitchblende, have no very distinctive features when first observed, and might readily be overlooked many times before their true nature was discovered. Hence the possibilities of future discoveries.