Western mill and smelter methods of analysis (third edition)
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Western Mill and Smelter Methods of Analysis: A Practical Laboratory Handbook for the Assayer and Chemist, Describing the Methods of Analysis in ... and Custom Assay Offices (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Western Mill and Smelter Methods of Analysis...)
Excerpt from Western Mill and Smelter Methods of Analysis: A Practical Laboratory Handbook for the Assayer and Chemist, Describing the Methods of Analysis in Every-Day Use in Western Mills, Smelters and Custom Assay Offices
In May, 1904, I presented, in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the University of Colorado, a thesis entitled Smelter and Mill Methods of Analysis in Use in the West. This thesis was later published in Volume II., No. I, of the University Studies, and though primarily intended for the use of students in the University, it has been found to be of considerable help to practical chemists in all parts of the West.
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Philip Henry Argall was an Irish-American engineer and metallurgist.
Background
Philip Henry Argall was born on August 27, 1854 in Newtownards, Ireland, the son of Philip and Sarah Argall.
His ancestry was predominantly Celtic and endowed him with an enthusiastic and adaptable nature. Growing up among mines and metallurgical works, he finished grammar school and obtained a grounding in Latin, but at sixteen was laboring ten hours a day for a penny an hour in a mill of the Wicklow copper-mining district, south of Dublin.
Education
There is no record of his education.
Career
At seventeen he worked eight hours a day in a mine and had two hours of daily instruction in mathematics and surveying from an ex-officer of ordnance. He profited by association with the professors of a small technical college in Dublin, forty miles away. Using second-hand chemical apparatus found at an abandoned mine, he made analyses for copper and sulphur in ores.
At the age of nineteen he was promoted to shift-boss in the Cronebane mine. Two years later he was assistant manager, with the Cornish title of captain. At this early age, with little formal education, he wrote two papers on ore deposits and copper precipitation that were published by the Royal Dublin Society.
At twenty-five he took charge of a small metallurgical plant in Swansea, South Wales, at that time the leading metallurgical center of the world, and during a year and a half there he took a course in metallurgy. In quick succession, he was manager for an iron-ore company in Ireland, manager of a mine near Newquay in Cornwall, manager of an antimony smelter in London, and finally in 1884, at the age of thirty, went to New Zealand as manager of gold mines at Coromandel for the Kapanga Gold Mining Company.
After a year in New Zealand and Australia, he returned to England and then went to Mexico as superintendent of mines in Sonora, but a year later was back in Ireland building a successful concentrating mill for an iron-ore company and acting as consulting engineer for a silver-lead company in France. All these engagements contributed to the development of his versatility and taught him not to become discouraged even though his employers went bankrupt.
In 1887, at the age of thirty-three, he came to the United States as manager of the La Plata smelter at Leadville, Colo. The smelter soon had to close because of intense competition by a number of others that were bidding for the available ore.
In 1889 Argall became a naturalized American citizen. Reports began to reach America of the new cyanide process being developed in South Africa for extracting gold from ore. Many American mining men were incredulous of the new process, but a few small plants were built and experiments begun in adapting the little-understood technique to the difficult ores of Colorado.
In 1894 Argall went to Cripple Creek to investigate the failure of a small cyanide plant. The Moffat railroad interests encouraged the building of the first large custom-plant to treat Cripple Creek gold ores by cyanidation. This was done by the Metallic Extraction Company whose mill Argall designed, erected, and managed. By 1895 this mill was treating 3, 000 tons of ore a month, and two years later 10, 000 tons a month. These telluride ores presented many problems. The clay or talc in dry-crushed ore could not be wetted; the fine ore would not leach.
Argall briquetted 15 to 20 percent of the ore and roasted it prior to cyanidation. Later he patented apparatus for separating the dust from the sand, and a method of crushing in alkaline solution. The cost of treating Cripple Creek gold ores by wet methods was reduced from $15 a ton to $3. 50 in 1898 and to $1. 38 in 1913.
Argall advocated cyanidation, rather than chlorination, of Cripple Creek ores as simpler and cheaper. He engaged in several such metallurgical controversies, including those on dry and wet crushing, roasting and non-roasting, sliming and non-sliming. In 1906 he became consulting engineer for the British owners of the famous Stratton's Independence mine at Cripple Creek.
This mine had a large amount of dump ore containing about $3 per ton, but custom mills were charging $5. 50 for treating low-grade ore. Argall estimated that he could treat this ore for $1. 52 per ton for an extraction of 74. 22 percent. Results for six years on 671, 665 tons showed a cost of $1. 5138 and an extraction of 74. 57 percent, a remarkable record.
In 1905 and 1906 he had charge of the field work of the Zinc Commission appointed by the government of Canada to investigate the zinc resources of British Columbia and test the ores for metallurgical processes. He introduced the eight-hour day in Colorado mills in 1899. In 1903 he received a gold medal from the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (London) for a paper on "Sampling and Dry Crushing in Colorado. " With two sons, he maintained an office in Denver; for a time he was consulting metallurgist for the American branch of the MacArthur-Forest Company, well-known British engineers who invented the cyanide process in Glasgow in 1887.
At his death, ten children survived him; his wife died in 1903.