Show flotation on research at university of utah I 1 no subject at the present time is of greater interest to the mining and metal surgical lurg ical industry of the country than the flotation process for increasing the extraction of metallic values from ores and for the recovery of those values which have formerly been lost when ordinary gravity methods of concentrating ores have been used for this reason the department of metallurgical research of the university of utah in operation cooperation co with the U S bureau of mines is paying particular attention to this subject mr D A lyon metallurgist for the U S bureau of mines and metallurgist in charge of the department of metallurgical research of the university of utah and 0 C ralston have recently returned from quite an extended trip which was taken in the interests of the flotation work which is being conducted by the department part ment of metallurgical research and the bureau of mines on this trip they attended the first gathering at lawrence kansas of metallurgists and mining men to consider exclusively the rapidly growing subject of flotation the university of kansas at lawrence w was as selected as the meeting place of the conference because of its central location and because of the pioneer work of its division of state chemical research in investigating the application of flotation to zinc recovery with the state of kansas the underlying objective of the conference was to discuss the problems which are yet to be solved in the process of flotation and more particularly to consider the research work now being conducted in various universities and mining schools with the object of encouraging further research and preventing useless duplication among the various investigators con berned the conference was brought about at the suggestion of D A lyon and the two days during which it was in session many interesting papers and discussions were heard in addition to attending this conference mr lyon and mr ralston visited flotation plants and held conferences with mining and metallurgical men of missouri kansas colorado new mexico texas arizona and california they state that on this trip they found that there are between and plants west of the mississippi that have already installed the flotation process or else have experimental work under way in the joplin district where about lead zinc mills are in operation it is probable that flotation will ultimately succeed in saving the values contained in the slimes which result in treating the ores as they are now milled in arizona it was found that the inspiration plant was just putting into operation the last section of flotation machines so that by now it is probably milling tons of ore a day all of which is treated by flotation one of the problems which has been given especial attention in the department of metallurgy Metal metallurgical lurg 1 cal research at the university of utah during the past year has been that of floating the values contained in carbonate ores at the inspiration plant as well as in other plants the flotation of oxidized forms of copper for use of soluble sulphides sulp hides in water seems to be successful on everything except silicate of copper on account of this fact many of the companies are now leaching all the oxides of copper rather than attempt to float them along with the sulphides sulp hides the flotation plant at magna is said to have also bad considerable success in the flotation of oxide forms of copper at bisbee a surprising amount of carbonates of lead has been developed during the mining of the copper ore bodies in that district the milling of these carbonates of lead presents a problem and as the department of metallurgical research of the university of utah has had very good success in the flotation of lead carbonates samples of this material were obtained for further experimental work in view of the research work in flotation that is being carried on by the department of metallurgical research in operation cooperation co with the bureau of mines this trip has proven unusually helpful in carrying forward the work in hand the work of the department on this problem is attracting wide attention and receiving the commendation of all investigators and mining and metallurgical men interested in the results that can be obtained by flotation which as before stated is becoming one of the vital factors in the economical operation of the mining and metallurgical industries |