Sulfur mine

“ While it is comparatively easy to remove the mustard gas from the separated sulfur by decantation, a certain amount always remains with the sulfur. It is almost impossible to economically remove this, and its presence adds to the difficulty of removing the sulfur from the reactors; the men engaged in this operation almost always become casualties. ”

“ Sulfur is used primarily in the casting subsystem in the fabrication sector (about 600 kg required) and in the manufacture of sulfuric acid. This product is mass-limited about equally by the amounts of S and H available. The 4000 kg of sulfur can be used to prepare 12,000 kg H2SO4, and the 200 kg of hydrogen can make up 9800 kg of the acid. Since hydrogen also has many other uses, available S will be underutilized and perhaps 1 or 2 tons of H2SO4 reasonably can be produced. ”

“ Sulfur is one of Texas’ most valuable minerals. It consists of only a single element, sulfur. This mineral has a resinous luster and is transparent to translucent. Sulfur ordinarily is yellow, but impurities cause it to look greenish, brownish, reddish, or grayish. When you rub it across a streak plate, it leaves a white or a pale-yellow streak. Sulfur has a specific gravity of 2.04 to 2.09 and is soft enough to be scratched by a copper penny. It breaks with a conchoidal to uneven fracture. When it gets hot enough (478° Fahrenheit) , sulfur will burn. ”

“ Mineral deposits, showing the presence of copper, iron, lead, and silver, are found in many parts of the island, but either from their poorness or the want of fuel, no attempt has been made to utilise them. Calcareous stone, marbles (?) , and feldspath are also found; and large deposits of sulphur likewise exist in some districts, which at different times have been the object of commercial speculation. The sulphur mines at Krisuvik, in the south, are at present worked for foreign account, but, I believe, owing to their partial inaccessibility, and difficulty of transport, without much success. ”

“ On the other hand, the sulphur must, no doubt, have accumulated to a considerable degree in the mines of the north for the last twenty years they have not been worked; it is, therefore, pretty certain that they might now yield a considerable quantity of sulphur if they were worked in the right manner; but as it must always be borne in mind that no mines are so liable to deterioration as sulphur mines, it must in consequence be very precarious to make them over to foreigners. ”

“ The destruction of the mines, as well as the impurity of the sulphur, arises from careless digging. When the peasants dig the sulphur out of a mine, and particles of earth and impurities are sticking to it, they clear away the largest lumps; but they do not take care not to let the impurities fall down where they had taken the sulphur, where some flowers of sulphur always remain. For although the uppermost sulphur is tolerably compact and crystallised, the lowest is loose. ”

“ The passages to the mines are so narrow, that persons can with difficulty pass each other; they then expand into high vaults, the roofs of which are ornamented with beautiful crystals of celestine and gypsum. On account of the excessive heat, the workmen labour in a nearly nude state, their dark brown skins sprinkled with light yellow sulphur dust, making them look savage and strange in the extreme. Towards the end of the last century, the sulphur mine of Sommatin caught fire, the conflagration causing the complete abandonment of the pit. ”

“ Such a heap is a good thing to keep away from, for the fumes of sulphur are very disagreeable. Indeed, they will kill trees and other growing things wherever the wind may carry them, even several miles away. The managers of mines of copper as well as of gold and silver have learned to economize; and it has been found that instead of letting these fumes go into the air, they may be made to pass through acid chambers lined with zinc and full of water. The water holds the fumes, and can be used in making sulphuric acid.
After the ore has been roasted, it is put into the furnace for smelting. ”

“ Estimates as to the reserves of ore vary greatly, but seem to indicate that there is from 40 to 60 million tons of ore still unmined, which will average about 23 per cent. of sulphur content.
Mining has been mostly by hand and the ore brought out on the backs of men. A few mines had modern hoisting machinery and trams. The shortage of labor during the war has increased the introduction of modern appliances in some of the newer mines. With increasing depth the cost of mining has increased to the point where American sulphur can compete in European markets. ”

“ Combined with metals (sulphides) , it is common in all mineral districts. Iron pyrites (FeS2) is the most abundant source of this element. Sulphates, such as gypsum, are fairly common, but have no value so far as the sulphur in them is concerned. In coal it exists as an impurity, occurring partly as a constituent of organic compounds.
Sulphur, whether free or combined with metals, forms, on burning, sulphurous oxide (SO2) , which by the action of oxidising agents and water is converted into sulphuric acid. ”

“ In some mines, however, the laborers are paid when the sulphur is fused and ready for exportation. One ton of sulphur, or its equivalent (say from 40 to 50 lire) , is the amount generally paid. In mines where this system obtains the administration is only responsible for their maintenance. Each miner produces on an average about 11⁄2 tons of ore daily, and when the works are not more than 40 meters in depth he employs one boy to assist him, two boys when they reach 60 meters, and three when under 100 meters. ”

“ The presence of more than 1% of sulphur renders coal unfit for the economical production of good light-gas, and more than 2% of sulphur renders it objectionable for use as domestic fuel. In like manner, coals containing mineral ingredients in excess are to be avoided, not merely on account of the quantity of ashes left by them, but for their tendency to vitrify upon the bars of the furnace, and to produce what is technically called ‘clinkers.’ The presence of much silica or alumina, and more particularly of any of the salts of lime, in ‘steam coal,’ is, on this account, highly objectionable. ”

“ Sulphur always renders an ore [Pg 173] refractory; for, when it is expelled by torrefaction, the ore melts easily. Its dull aspect is not less conclusive; for, the more an ore is roasted, and the more sulphur there is driven off, the brighter it grows. This is evident to every smelter, who cannot fail to observe the surprising brilliancy the ore assumes after it has gone through the first operation in the log furnace. That the difficulties daily experienced in smelting the La Motte ores are, therefore, attributable to the extraordinary quantity of sulphur they contain, is extremely probable ”

“ The distinction between sulphur present as sulphate and sulphide is of importance in the examination of coals intended for iron smelting, as the sulphates of the earthy metals are reduced by the gases of the furnace to sulphides, which pass into the slag without affecting the quality of the iron produced, while the sulphur of the metallic sulphides in the ash acts prejudicially upon the metal. Coals for gas-making should contain little sulphur, as the gases produced in the combustion are noxious and have very corrosive properties. ”

“ In Germany the coal coked so that the by-products could be recovered was 30 per cent, in 1900; 82 per cent, in 1909.
Our chemists are devising means to prevent the contamination of the atmosphere by industrial wastes. Witness the Sulphur, Copper and Iron Company at Ducktown, Tenn, whose blast furnace gases contain a high percentage of sulphur dioxide because of the abundance of sulphur in the ores. Instead of, as formerly, allowing this to escape to poison the surrounding vegetation it is caught and converted into sulphuric acid. One hundred and sixty tons are produced daily, of high purity ”

“ When the sulphur contents of pyritous ores are sufficiently high, and after the ore has been initially fired with auxiliary carbonaceous fuel, it is unnecessary, in a properly designed roasting furnace, to add fuel to the ore to enable the heat for oxidation to be obtained. The oxidation or burning of the sulphur will provide all the heat necessary to maintain the continuity of the process. The temperature necessary for effecting the elimination of both sulphur and arsenic is not higher than that equivalent to dull red heat ”

“ If he does not think the sulphur good or abundant enough to be dug out at that time, he leaves the mine thus disturbed; and the rising sulphur is sublimated among the disturbed lumps of earth and sulphur, and the whole becomes a compact mass; it often looks quite pure, but turns out altogether different at the refinery. Thus a single man may in one hour destroy a great many mines that might have been excellent if more carefully handled. ”

“ Sicily, Italy, Japan, Louisiana and Utah have mines of native sulphur, which is used in manufacturing sulphuric acid, gunpowder, matches, as a disinfectant, for bleaching and vulcanizing rubber.
Blue vitriol, green vitriol and alum are sulphates. Sulphur is imported from Sicily and Italy.
Thorium. See rare metals.
Tin is less abundant than most of the common metals. The Malay peninsula and nearby islands (Banca and Billiton) produce over half the tin ore of the world. The remainder is mined in Bolivia, Australia, Tasmania and Cornwall, England. Small deposits occur in the United States. ”

“ There are no falls of earth, as in coal mines, for the rock-salt is extremely tenacious, and the miners never undermine it but blast it, which is a much safer operation. The two great dangers to which rock-salt mining is exposed, though they rarely result in loss to human life, are the falling in of the mine bodily, or of the shafts and neighbouring earths, and the breaking in of brine either at the head of the top-rock shaft or from old mines, long disused, and full of brine. ”

“ The best hitherto produced is the so-called ‘vapour-fusion’ invented by a certain Sig. Thomas, and patented to the Società privilegiata per la fusione dello Zolfo in Italia, an anonymous body, whose headquarters are at Milan. The essential part of the process is to separate the ore by ordinary fuel, using for the transmission of caloric water-steam at the tension corresponding with the temperature which fuses sulphur. The Society established its apparatus at several mines, which paid a proportion of raw sulphur as bonus to the patentees ”

“ The mining engineering field force of the Geological Survey, at the head of which is Mr. George S. Rice, an experienced mining and consulting engineer, has already made great progress in the study of underground mining conditions and methods. Nearly all the more dangerous coal mines in the United States have been examined; samples of gas, coal, and dust have been taken and analyzed at the chemical laboratories at Pittsburg; extended tests have been made as to the explosibility of various mixtures of gas and air; as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals ”

“ The conversion of the sulphur which escapes from our chimneys into sulphuretted hydrogen, and then into sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, has already been referred to, and we can only hope that in these days when every available source of wealth is being looked up, and when there threatens to remain nothing which shall in the future be known as "waste," that the atmosphere will be spared being longer the receptacle for the unowned and execrated brimstone of millions of fires and furnaces. ”

“ The formation of the Anglo-Italian sulphur syndicate arrested the downward tendency of prices and increased the output of sulphur, so that the amount exported in 1899 was 424,018 tons, worth £1,738,475, whereas some years previously the value of sulphur exported had hardly been £800,000. Nineteen-twentieths of the sulphur consumed in the world was formerly drawn from Sicilian mines, while some 50,000 persons were employed in the extraction, manufacture, transport and trade in the mineral. ”

“ Although the metal miner is subjected to fewer accidents than are his brethren working in coal mines, the atmosphere in the former is far more destructive to human life. In lead mines, the duration of life averages scarcely more than thirty-two years, and in those containing arsenical pyrites or quicksilver ores, the average is still lower. Before the use of gunpowder in underground operations, the rocks containing the ore were attacked with fire, indeed the practice is still retained in some countries. ”

“ But to give absolutely pure air to the workers in the mine is an utter impossibility under any system that has yet been devised. The outer atmosphere that is drawn into the mines has hardly got beyond the light of the sun before it has taken up a certain percentage of impurities. As it passes by the working faces of the chambers it carries along with it the gases evolved from the coal; principally the carbonic acid gas or black damp, and the light carbureted hydrogen or fire damp. ”

“ Mining coal is dangerous work. Any blow of the pickaxe may break into a vein of water which will burst out and flood the mine. The wooden props which support the roof may break, or the pillars of coal may not be large enough; and the roof may fall in and crush the workers. There are always poisonous gases. The coal, as has been said before, was made under water, and therefore the gas which was formed in the decaying leaves and wood could not escape. It is always bubbling out from the coal, and at any moment a pickaxe may break into a hole that is full of it. ”