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Devon Energy Sells Stakes to SINOPEC in Shale Gas Plays
Devon Energy has raised $900 million in cash from Sinopec Group for a stake in Devon shale gas plays. These gas projects include the Utica, Niobrara, and Tuscaloosa formations. What is interesting is...
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Vannoccio Biringuccio. Sixteenth Century Chronicler of Metallurgy.
By the early 16th century in Europe, metallurgy had become an established cottage industry in numerous locales. Artisans were sourcing copper, tin, zinc, antimony and iron ores for reduction,...
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Return to fundamentals
As we labor away on our extractive metallurgy project, I continue to marvel at how even complex extraction schemes reduce to the application of fundamental chemistry and basic unit operations. It is...
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Pinch Predicted in the Uranium Market
According to an article in Mineweb, the remaining cold war era uranium will be consumed in the next few years, leaving the nuclear industry with inadequate supply streams from mining. Thomas Drolet of...
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Rhodochrosite Sample
Rhodochrosite Specimen with Galena and Pyrite (Copyright 2012 Th' Gaussling) Rhodochrosite is a mineral composed of MnCO3. The specimen above is in no way exceptional, other than as a curio. The mass...
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Agilent MP AES. The New AA.
Agilent is excited about their new 4100 MP-AES system. The initials stand for Microwave Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometer. The instrument uses the magnetic component of the microwave energy to...
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Fear and Loathing with Frac Fluids
There is considerable handwringing over hydraulic fracturing fluids and their potential effects on “the environment”. I use quotes in ironic fashion because I see very little parsing of the issue into...
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Mining Asteroids
The founders of the Silicon Valley startup, Planetary Resources, have announced plans for mining asteroids for valuable metals. Peter Diamandis, Eric Anderson and investors including director James...
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Blogopithocene Man Smelts Tin. Meh.
The problem of the origin of Cu:Sn bronze has intrigued historians for many years. Bronze artifacts have been dated to 5000 BCE on the Iranian Plateau. It is thought that the earliest bronzes were...
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Why not encourage Iran and other states to develop thorium-based nuclear power?
It is a crying shame that we (the rest of the world) did not think to encourage Iran and other states to develop thorium-based nuclear power many years ago. The thorium fuel cycle provides...
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Comments on the cable TV series “Gold Rush”
I’m a fan of Gold Rush on the Discovery Channel and have been since the beginning. Aside from the producers constant over-dramatization and spreading the content a little too thin over the time block,...
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Getting the pay out of pay dirt
This is an excerpt from a writing project I’m working on. The impulse to find and extract gold and silver was one of the drivers of 19th century westward expansion in North America. The discovery of...
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Gilded Blight
After a weekend in the Alma, CO, mining district, I have come around a bit on the merits of gold mining. Oh sure, I have always known that it was a dirty business, what with the mercury, the cyanide,...
View ArticleAntimony is in Short Supply
Antimony, Sb, is an obscure metalloid that rarely gets much notice outside of a few highly specialized areas of technology. The element is most often found in the mineral Stibnite, Sb2S3. Antimony is...
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Uranium Town: Uravan, Colorado
The town of Uravan, Colorado, shows up on maps and road signs. You might think it is a physical town. It sits north of Naturita (pronounced natter reeta), CO, on Hwy 141 about 15 miles up the narrow...
View ArticleYellow Gold and Black Gold in the Ground
Some years back I visited the large CC&V open pit gold mine by Cripple Creek, Colorado. Standing at the bottom of the pit we could see haul trucks busily transferring ore to a staging site....
View ArticleOre Processing and Smelting at MPMM
Ok, I’ll just come out with it and say that I’m a big fan of YouTube. Amidst the large population of silly or stupid videos is a wealth of quite well-done amateur presentations on science and...
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Idaho Cobalt Mining
As interest in lithium batteries continues to ramp upwards, interest in other metals like cobalt used in lithium batteries advances with it. Cobalt has been identified as a particularly problematic...
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Economic Foams and Lithium
While cockeyed optimists are working toward a new age of electric vehicles in the glare of an admiring public, I find myself standing off to the side mired in skepticism. What are the long-term...
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Cripple Creek Gold
A Blacksmith shop is all that remains of Anaconda, Colorado. The discovery of gold in the early 1890’s west of Pikes Peak at Cripple Creek was the last major gold rush in Colorado. This discovery...
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