Show mining equipment crushing and retorting of western petro by J B JENSON in the two previous articles I 1 have discussed in a general way some of the more essential features pertaining to the acquiring of shale lands and perfecting of titles requirements quire ments for construction and operation of retorting and refining plants drilling breaking and of shale including a general estimate for a ton retorting and refining plant it should be remembered that in submitting this general estimate that it is intended as a guide only that technically it cannot be applied to an individual case and that before an accurate estimate can be rendered to apply to a certain tract of shale land there are many items which must be considered and which will havo have an important bearing on the cost of installation some of the more important of these are the location and accessibility of property means of transportation whether equipment must be elevated on to high cliffs refinery installed at foot of ledges or broken shale conveyed over lengthy and costly tramways tram ways whether water must be piped great distances whether shale is free treating or fluxing flexing in its nature whether ref refinery anery can be installed near retort or crude oil must be conveyed through lengthy pipe lines with necessary provision for their heating whether only two or three oil products will be made or whether more extensive ref refining ining must be carried on alether wh wl ether installation will be made under present prices of labor and material or whether in 1 I the indefinite future when prices may have materially changed there Is hardly a week passes that I 1 am not asked to make several estimates and almost invariably without being furnished any material part of this information test at depth before constructing plant it is advisable before completing plans or making permanent arrangements for the erection of an extensive retorting and refan ing plant to first make commercial tests on shale coming from some distance underground and representing at least in part the mining engineer and oil shale special at t salt lake city utah permanent shale on which the plant is to be operated this requires tunnel work of sufficient extent to reach the unaltered and while we do not expect to find any great change in the physical or chemical properties of these as compared with the exposed on the escarpment or surface there is nevertheless a probability that there will be a decrease in oxygen and an increase in nitrogen content or other changes which unless this is done may require the complete remodeling of the plant incurring costly alterations te and expensive and provoking de has disclosed insufficient ores for profitable operation for years our western mining states have been dotted by these monuments or misjudgment and hasty construction representing ten thousand disappointed hopes each investor a living witness ready to forever discourage and becloud the mining industry there is no need for this tol to occur in the shale industry if good judgment and proper business methods are employed begin mining with handwork assuming that a property has been se 4 ra 01 1 10 rl wt jr 7 A 4 general view of works at brodburn broxburn Brox burn scotland showing benches of henderson retorts and air cooled condensers lays before the highest efficiency can be attained it is a well lvell known but deplorable tact fact that in the development of the mining industry many millions of dollars have been wasted and many mines which otherwise would have been paying investments have failed and the enterprise proven to be a complete financial loss due to the fact that their milling plants were either designed to treat the oxidized surface ores which with development have changed to low grade sulphide ores not recoverable by such mill or devel 19 lecter in one of the well known shale fields reasonably near to railroad transportation and otherwise possessing the necessary requisites as specified at the conclusion of chapter one we began by opening up with hand work one of the best grade beddings in the ledge this need not be one of the thickest but should be sufficiently good grade to enable the initial unit under early adverse conditions to operate at a profit this bedding should be located well down on the escarpment to permit overhead sloping when increased to tonnage anage shall be required no sloping or cutting of rooms should be undertaken at this time but full effort be made to drive into the bedding and to acquire the greatest possible length of tunnel by the time the retorting plant shall have been completed and made ready to receive the broken shale when this stage has been reached the rooms may be laid out and extraction of shale from them carried on as rapidly or as leisurely as operations of the plant may re N B X la ca latest improved henderson retort quire or overhead sloping may be under jaken taken if the thicker beddings are to be mined As soon as the adit reaches a few feet underground der ground a hand boring machine may be used to advantage until such time as power equipment is available ordinary drilling with single or double jack and hand steel is not profitable in shale and should be avoided whenever possible having provided a temporary camp and with mining well under way the may be laid out and excavation begun it if operation is to be in the debeque district a good location may be had on a bench in the low grade shale about midway up the escarpment and where the broken shale from the upper higher grade beddings may be conveyed by gravity economically to the retorts and ample room secured for tailings dump refinery and camp in the gulch below permanent mining camp should be provided the permanent camp may consist of houses constructed of rough lumber on the ground or of semi portable cottages furnished at a very reasonable cost by one of a num ber of manufacturers when ope operation operatic ratio n of plant gets under way any additional cottages t required may be built with brick made from the spent shale inasmuch as the shale plant must be near the point of operation it will be remote from towns or cities and become thereby a little community to itself this means that if the operator is to retain a desirable class of labor he must make provision for ordinary conveniences for his workmen including facilities in the cottages for heating for gas or electric lighting possibly a community reading room and amusement hall etc while the beginning may be made without these r rl plans should nevertheless be made to provide for them as soon as operations reach a stage of substantial importance notwithstanding the camp will be isolated often times in the mountains it will nevertheless have shave the advantage of an abundance of gas coming from the retorting plants and furnishing a very clean and convenient fuel for heating and cooking purposes for lighting purposes will also be produced abundantly and cheaply and these together with an ample water supply piped into the cottage will make it possible to supply the ordinary conveniences of city life and at a much less cost As one after another of the large plants get into operation the gorges will gradually become dotted with plants and camps which I 1 will eventually merge into each other and will permit the joint construction of school houses churches and theatres theartres the atres to serve the various camps so that within the next ten to twenty years one may expect to see a continuation or unbroken line of cottages in almost every one of the principal gorges and ravines that cut the shale beddings s throughout the main districts allow sufficient time in ordering machinery having made provision for the camp construction st the necessary mine equipment may be arranged for in placing orders for this as well as for all retorting and refining equipment several months time should be allowed for delivery and especially for such equipment as must be manufactured more time being required for specially built pieces of machinery and the retorts the mine should be provided with an air compressor with a capacity of at least 25 per cent greater than calculated requirements there will be frequent gas seepages see pages from crevices and faults and occasional gas pockets may be encountered and while it is not expected that these will be serious especially in the heart of the De debeque Deque green river and uinta basin and an part of the soldier summit fields where shale measures are practically practice tica ny undisturbed turbe and where they still remain I 1 in n their ong linal horizontal position there will nevertheless nevertie nevert be les folds lo 10 be local faul tings and compression where at some time in the earths history bistor Y the frictional heat and gas referred to in para first graph three under petro in our at is 11 article has been produced As depth fault a bained by penetration into the ledge movement ings may be expected where the ino oil will have been sufficient to have produced P g and unless u and gas in considerable quantities the surface su such fault or break has reached es to enabled and the oil and gas have been day temporarily temporal poran y cape as a seepage the gas tem avail be obnoxious if compressed air is not no ellelia el lelit any able for it its S speedy removal in referred r the small amount of gas previously pro lib libera aerated to which is constantly being ivory on OA as an odor in the workings be rc bes t the shale face progresses way may press prIss oi of ca c ni moved by a cons constant tant liberation ed air at the face of the workings to supply this air power drills are advisable when a distance of two or three hundred feet has been attained in the tunnel or drifts electric haulage preferably with a storage battery locomotive may be installed As soon as the plant is ready for operation the power shovel should be on hand after ame ome months and as production increases a second shovel should be provided with sufficient capacity to permit loading and to be done in one eight hour shift in case of a breakdown or other emergency the one shovel may then be made to operate double shift and prevent hanging up the retorts storage bins should have sufficient capacity to hold at least enough broken shale for a twenty four hour run and should be kept full crushing plant As the shale comes from the mine it should be dumped into a crusher feed bin with a sufficient capacity to keep the crusher running several hours in case of mishap in the mine but not necessarily large enough for storage purposes high grade shale yields slightly to compression in an ordinary jaw or gyratory crusher is slow in its passage through the crusher and and also requires more power than ordinary brittle rock this condition led the scotch to adopt heavy toothed rolls for crushing and on from the cc comparatively thin ledges such as are mined in scotland they are entirely satisfactory in our more massive tougher and higher grade western it is doubtful if they will be as efficient as a head motion jaw crusher for crushing and if finer crushing is ia wanted this to be followed by coarse crushing corrugated rolls and smooth rolls ordinarily maximum material should not be smaller than one half hal inch fin with a minimum of fines any kind of completely enclosed crusher should be avoided as should also grinding machines which produce frictional heat fines or dust the writer has designed a jaw crusher as illustrated herewith which does the work perfectly produces produce 3 uniform product and handles equally well the dry brittle encountered on the surface or the rich gummy which will H at times be encountered with depth and which will if encountered in considerable quantity choke up the jaw or gyratory crusher temporarily however and on medium grade especially near the surface any good type of jaw or gyratory crusher followed by y rolls may be employed and if only medium or low grade brittle are to be treated either of these types may be installed permanently if a type retort is to e used no rolls need be installed the in fitial lal crusher should be set with maximum opening of three to six inches depending on Iro product duct wanted and discharge passed over a grizzly with bars spaced from one half to one inch apart the coarse material going to the storage bin for the retorts and the fines disposed of in any suitable manner they may be conveyed to the tailings dump by a small stream of water in a V trough or utilized for auxiliary fuel in a gas producer A suitable conveyor to carry the broken shale from the crusher bin to the storage bin should be so arranged that it may distribute the shale more or less uniformly in the bin I 1 have crushed and treated a great variety of coming from almost every important in shale district in the west and have A V i 1 ani sor ILI T t r 4 ai eno ei jenson type shale crusher found crusher and rolls to be the cheapest simplest and most efficient method thus far to be had perhaps at a later time some may bring out a single machine to crush from coarse to fines but until the industry comes to be established on a firm basis the matter of experimenting in crushers may well be left alone should be crushed with a minimum of rubbing or grinding and the equipment just mentioned does does this better than most other crushing machinery distinction Dic between a and nd retorting plants before discussing the retorting and of from our american standpoint I 1 prefer first to give a very brief historical sketch of the birth and development of scotch retorting for the benefit of such readers as may be only just beginning their investigation of the possibilities of this new promising industry as well also as a very brief description of three or four of the more important types of scotch retorts which have done so much for the successful development of the scotch industry this in order to intelligently compare the fundamental principles as employed in scotch practice on scotch with what we are preparing to do by american methods on very different american inasmuch as I 1 shall use in the following in discussion the terms retorting and I 1 desire at this point to draw a distinction between the two terms in order that a clear understanding of the two methods may be had by the reader by the term retorting I 1 have in mind an operation in which a mass of shale or other material is placed in a closed vessel or chamber and external heat applied for the purpose of volatilizing jand and either driving or drawing the resultant gases out of the chamber such as is done for example in the scotch type of retort I 1 have in mind comparatively ively coarse crushing slow and steady application of heat and operation of plant the material coming to rest or nearly so at t some stage during the time of treatment and the equipment used resembling although perhaps remotely and in a modified form the original and ancient retort by the term I 1 have in mind that form of operation wherein the material is crushed comparatively fine to permit more rapid egress of the volatilized products where a comparatively rapid movement or passa passage ge of the material through the furnace is employed and the resultant gases drawn out and carried away without the shale or other material under treatment being bein permitted to come to rest A furnace wherein a steady stream of shale passes in at one end and a steady stream of spent shale out of the other after having educed deduced or drawn out the trogen pe and condensed to oil may be considered a perfect type of plant shale retorting industry is not new in the united states the shale retorting industry is more or less new to most of us inasmuch as we have not had occasion to use it now for more than half a century it is not however altogether new in america for it was in use in this country and furnished the principal supply of coal oil up to the time when petroleum was |