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Show BEST CEMENT 'ALL-UTAH' U: -s " v' - 'k tu-::: -ts ; , i-xt sz ; TP f4 Blast loosens 300 000 Tons ' I I j of Cenient Material J , T"--' ' ' f , m -J Union PoH-land Cement Planf 1 Dev.i's Slide, Utah .W t "'" ' -.ff,- ' I ' v ' - ' - - --J . Ill t-:" i-rt ?ts-. -av' i By FRED H. RICHARDSON jjvN'E hundred percent Utah" (I describes the Portland ce-ment ce-ment industry in this state. All of the raw materials used, all the coal consumed and all the electrical elec-trical energy employed in the manufacture of the cement are of Utah origin. About $4,500,000 Is Invested In plants and equipment here and at , capacity some 4100 barrels can be I turned out daily. ? "Portland" is not a special brand of cement, but a term as inclusive a3 "Irish" applied to potatoes, or ."sterling" to silver. The name designates de-signates a process rather than a variety. The process involves proper mixing, crushing, fine grinding grind-ing and intense heat. In the mix are limestone, marl, shale, clay, blast furnace slag and gypsum. One does not have to go abroad for any of them, nor for fuel or power. He does not even have to send outside for the powder with which to blast the rock. That, too, is made in Utah. Cement that would harden under water was made by the Romans and Carthaginians. The art was rediscovered in England in 1824 and developed in the United States in the '60s. Utah was the second state west of the Mississippi river to practice it, the first being California. Cali-fornia. In 1S90 the Utah Portland Cement Co. built a plant in Salt Lake City which, for three years, made natural cement on a small Bcale and experimented with port-land port-land cement. LaGua & Campbell took the plant over in 1S93 and installed in-stalled a kiln of the Danish ring oyen type. Commercial production was not attained until in 1895 when Tophatn Richardson, an Englishman, English-man, financed a small dome kiln and actually made satisfactory Portland cement. "Clinker", ths lard globules resulting from heating heat-ing the raw cement mixture to Incipient In-cipient fusion, was burned, ground on a set of old-fashioned flour mill Burrs and sold. e In 1S92 the English interests bought out LaGue & Campbell and built a new plant. They produced from 40 to 50 barrels a day of fairly fair-ly good Portland cement. In the spring of 1S9S the plant of the Utah Portland Cement Co. was swept by Are. It was rebuilt by the English ewners with a 40-foot kiln and 'electrical power. They found a market for about 100 barrels a day, extending from Great Falls on the north to San Francisco on the west 'end Denver on the east. The plant tvraa completely remodeled and brought to a capacity of 1000 barrels bar-rels a day in 1910. It was taken over by the present owners in 1915 and, In 1925-G, changed from a dry I to a wet process plant. Now it has j two kilns 1S5 feet long and a pro-jducfng pro-jducfng capaclt;- of about 1500 barrels bar-rels a day. The Union Portland Cement Co. constructed a plant in Weber canyon can-yon at Devil's Slide in 1906. With four kilns it produces about 2000 barrels of "Red Devil" cement a day, employs an average of 150 men and owns a town with dwellings, dwell-ings, water system, general store, drug store, hotel, clubhouse, recreation re-creation grounds and sewers. Mountains of limestone and shale slope to within a few yards of the plant. Six and one-half miles northwest of Brigham City a cement plant was built in 1910 by the Utah-Idaho Cement Co. Capacity was increased in 1917 by the addition of a third kiln, to 1300 barrels a day. Later the buildings were partly destroyed by fire and they have not been rebuilt. In the manufacture of cement the rocks are blasted loose in the quarry. Power shovel3 load them on dump cars for transportation to the mill, where huge gyratory Jaw crushers reduce lumps of piano size to fragments. Secondary crushers break the piece3 still smaller. Grinding is often done In ball or tube mills. The former are armor-plated cylinders half filled with tons of steel balls. As the cylinder revolves the balls roll over and over, reducing the material to a fine powder. Before final grinding the material Is exactly proportioned. Automatic scales, sealed and locked by the plant chemist, measure the proper amount of each ingredient. In the fine-grinding machines a thorough mixing takes place and the properly proper-ly proportioned power goes to the kilns. The kilns are steel-Jacketed cylinders lined with fire brick resting rest-ing on their sides at a slight angle from the horizontal. Heavy gears rotate the kilns, which operate on the blow torch principle. Nearly half a ton of coal is consumed for each ton of cement produced. Temperature Tem-perature mounts to 2500 or 3000 degrees. de-grees. After several hours the "clinker", about the size of marbles and glass-hard, goes to piles to cool and await final grinding. During Dur-ing this second grinding process gypsum Is added to regulate the "setting" time. Burning produces the chemical change which makes the material so valuable for the construction of highways, streets, sidewalks, public pub-lic and private buildings, dams, irrigation and water supply systems, sys-tems, septic tanks, sewer systems, reservoirs, swimming pools, tennis courts, danco floor3 and a thousand thou-sand other purposes. Beside creating direct employment employ-ment for hundreds of men, the Portland cement industry gives work to many more in mining coal and cement materials, in making explosives and In the transportation transporta-tion of materials to the mill and the product to the consumers. It not only keeps large sums at home, but brings much money from abroad to better the financial condition con-dition ot the state. |