August, 1924
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he will receive encouragement to advance himself according to his ability.
EXTENT OF APPLICATION Opponents to this plan will argue that not all subjects taught in colleges are sufficiently important to every student to warrant a comprehensive understanding. The writer realizes that in certain instances a course is purely informational, perhaps cultural, and does not necessarily prepare one to utilize the knowledge as
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an actual tool. I t is so clearly evident that thorough work, even in a limited number of courses, is exceptional in the higher institutions of learning of our day, that, while the plan may not be favorably received for universal application, it should a t least have serious consideration in the student’s major field. The writer believes that a ten-year trial of such a plan in an institution of learning would unquestionably raise that institution to a level far higher than the average college or university of America holds a t present.
T h e U. S. Geological Survey and t h e Chemical Industry’” By Frank L. Hess U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
A
.FEW years ago a manufacturer engaged in the chemical
industry asked the Survey where calcium chloride could be found on the Pacific Coast. A geologist, in studying the gypsum deposits of California, had visited some of the playa deposits a short time before, and suggested the possibility of calcium chloride in the heavy brine at Amboy, San Bernardino County. The inquirer had been obtaining calcium chloride from deep wells and did not think i t probable that calcium chloride could exist so near the surface. Analyses showed that the water carried 20 per cent of CaC12, however, and a calcium chloride industry now exists on the edge of the playa. Some time ago another man asked for a large supply of the native hydrous ferrous sulfate, melanterite. Only small deposits are known in this country, but it happened that the same geologist had visited an old mine in Bolivia, now unworked, in search of rare minerals known to have been found there. The rather extensive workings are now filling with a beautiful deposit of melanterite. The correspondent was put in touch with the proper person and wrote that negotiations would be taken up a t once t o obtain the desired supplies. A chemist wished cesium for research work, and the Survey was able to refer him t o the owner of a pegmatite dike in Maine, where was the only known deposit that contained enough of this very rare element to allow any considerable experimentation. Later, a call came for germanium, also for chemical research, and again the Survey was able to place the investigator in touch with the one known adequate supply, this time in the residues of certain zinc ores. Many such examples of the Survey’s opportunities for helpfulness to the chemical industry might be given, and many more if among chemists were to be included those whose chemical reactions depend mostly on heat and dry reagents-that is to say, the “dry” chemists, or metallurgists and ceramists, as distinguished from the “wets,” among whom will be found the majority of the readers of THISJOURNAL. These examples are of rather unusual demands for unusual minerals which the Survey has been able to meet through the observation and deduction of its geologists in their regular work, through their observations even on leave without pay, and through records kept of unusual mineral occurrences. But it is not through observations and record of the unusual that most is ordinarily accomplished; it is through laboriously and systematically observing and recording the commonplace that the Survey is and expects t o be most useful. 1 Piesented under the tille, “Mineral Resources for the Chemical Industry,” before the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry a t the 67th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., April 21 to 26, 1924. 2 Published b y permission of the Director, U. S. Geological Survey.
ANNUAL REPORTS The United States Geological Survey, therefore, in its efforts t o be of assistance to both the producer and the user of minerals, has since 1882 issued annual reports, entitled “Mineral Resources of the United States,” in which the results of a canvass of the mineral industry of the country are given by subjects, which include more than one hundred minerals and mineral productspractically every exploited mineral, from platinum and radium t o clay and natural gas. An effort is made to give in these articles the principal producers, localities, production, qualities, prices, uses, consumers, in many articles a stated or inferred comparison with foreign deposits, and world statistics. Great effort is made t o include in the canvass every locality and all producers, though from their numbers all cannot be included in the text. In this way all minerals and many of the mineral products of the United States, and in epitome those of other countries, are so treated that everyone interested may keep in touch with the general statistics of his industry. CLEARING HOUSEFOR MINERALINFORMATION
In the collection of statistics the Survey comes into touch with practically every American producer and many consumers of minerals and obtains a great fund of information concerning both sources and markets. The chemical manufacturer usually knows well the standard sources of the minerals he uses, but the United States is large and it frequently happens that the Survey in its canvass of the mineral resources learns of new sources, particularly of the rarer minerals, before the manufacturer. These new sources are often brought to the Survey’s knowledge by the producer who is looking for a market, so that the Survey automatically becomes something of a clearing house for mineral ,information, and it finds a ready disposition on the part of producers, middlemen, and consumers to impart as well as ask for information. Among the recent inquiries are requests for names of buyers and users of calcium and calcium-silicon, possible sources of cyanite and sillimanite, and the requests for names of purchasers of various minerals are numberless. Requests both for sources and buyers of platinum and other rare metals are perennial, and a great deal more common than discoveries of platinum deposits. CHEMICAL LABORATORY CONTRIBUTIONS The Survey’s nearest parallelism to the commercial chemist’s work is naturally in its chemical laboratory, and the laboratory has contributed a t least three standard methods of determination helpful t o the profession in general-those for the colorimetric determination of titanium, for the determination of boron, and for the determination of small quantities of fluorine. Besides these special determinations Hillebrand‘s treatise on “The Analy-
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sis of Silicate and Carbonate Rocks” has been the standard method of procedure in the analysis of rocks for many years, and has gone through four editions. Other helpful schemes, such as Wells’ adaptation of the volatile chloride process in the separation of titanium, tantalum, and columbium, have been used to advantage by other chemists. AIDSTO THE CHEMICAL MANUFACTURER The Survey’s activities, however, touch the interests of the chemist a t many points. If some one contemplates the erection of a chemical plant a t any point, he will probably find that the Survey has published a topographic map of the region showing the character of the country, its hills, streams, roads, railroads, and even buildings; for the Survey has mapped most of the manufacturing regions of the United States. It may be that a geologic folio showing the geology of the area has been issued. The brick yards, cement mills, quarries, and sand and gravel pits of the vicinity, which must furnish his building material, are probably listed by the Survey’s Mineral Resources Division. Concerning his power, he will find the Survey’s publications on oil and gas and coal resources are legion and the location of his most available and suitable supplies has probably been all determined. If he wishes to buy power, the Survey can furnish him with the name and location of every fuel fed or hydroelectric plant, its capacity and load, and can probably tell him very closely what his chances are for putting in a hydroelectric plant of his owh, for many of the sites for new water power plants are measured and mapped. On the raw mineral materials that he may use in his operations, he is almost sure to find that the Survey has published results of investigations, and many have been described in monographic reports, such as those on salt and brines, borax, soda minerals, gypsum, limestone, dolomite, magnesite, cement materials, sulfur, phosphates, potash, and so on through the whole list. Of the minerals he uses, water is the most important, since it is the most important of all mineral resources except air, although perhaps not so spectacularly so as coal and oil. The Survey, through its Water Resources Branch, has made very extensive investigations of the water resources of the country both in streams and ground waters. It has created standards for stream gaging, for the determination of turbidity and of color. Stream gaging and water examination have been carried on independently, in cooperation with and for or through individual states, so that for any important stream the flow and the sediment carried can be told, not only for last year, but for ten years ago, or possibly twenty years ago. Cooperation with the individual states and with individual companies has made possible an amount of work otherwise wholly impossible for either the Federal Survey or for the cooperators, and all data are kept in the Washington office. The connection between the observation of the sediment carried by streams aed the chemical industry m,ay not a t once be apparent, but that “no man liveth unto himself and no man dieth unto himself” is as true of industries as of individuals, and the sediment that may fill a reservoir, destroy an irrigation project and with i t a local market for the products of chemical industry, may also destroy a power plant reservoir on which depend a number of chemical plants. The Survey has published more than five hundred “Water-Supply Papers,” containing a hundred thousand or more pages and many thousands of maps, charts, and illustrations. STUDY O F POTENTIAL
MINERAL RESOURCES
Constant efforts are made, as funds allow, to extend the country’s knowledge of its mineral resources ahead of exploitation. Possible oil and gas fields are examined and their structures mapped, though the Survey does no drilling. Coal-bearing lands are likewise carefully mapped, and outcrops, possible underground extensions, and probable quantities carefully estimated.
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The publications on these subjects alone form a respectable library. POTASH-DUring the Great War, when the call for potash was especially great, owing to the cutting off of our European supplies, Congress voted a sum of money to be spent in drilling for it, and this was mostly spent in the western playas where the chances for easy exploitation seemed best if potash were present in workable quantity. The Survey foresaw the possibility of potash in the salt beds of western Texas and drilling was started, but before a test hole could be completed funds were exhausted and the work had to stop. Since then, the enormous salt deposits of western Texas and eastern New Mexico have been outlined by Darton, drilling by private firms a t various points has shown polyhalite and other potash salts, and the finding of deposits rivalirig those of Stassfurt and Alsace seems within the possibilities. Two bills are before Congress to allot money to the Survey to prospect the area by drilling. It may not be amiss to call attention here to the work and money required for such prospecting. In Alsace, of 165 holes drilled 95 went through the salt beds but did not show potash, and only 17 struck the potash. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are therefore likely to be spent in unproductive drilling, even if the largest potash beds ever known should be found. Should such drilling be successful a chemical industry of the first magnitude would result. Much other work has been done on potash, such as the study of Searles Lake, cement-kiln dusts, and the Utah alunite deposits. The green sands of the Atlantic coast; the leucite lavas of Wyoming; the dumps of the Cripple Creek mines, which are rich in potash feldspar; and dumps of other mines rich in sericite, a potash mica; any of which may by some discovery or combination of circumstances become valuable for potash, have all been studied, and the information is available for the future. OIL SHaLE-The Survey has also been gathering advance data for what may well prove to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, single chemical industry, the oil shale industry. All who will can already see approaching a cloud, which appears to some no bigger than a man’s hand, but which it takes no Elijah to interpret as meaning the near end of cheap oil. Distillation of coal may put off, temporarily, the exploitation of shale, hut coming it is. The shale deposits are already largely outlined, their comparative richness determined, the topography is mapped, the streams which will be essential to the industry, are gaged, and the waters, in part a t least, are analyzed. The composition of the shales, the physical and chemical character of the oil-producing substances are being studied, and when the chemists of industry are ready to tackle the job of distillation or solution of the oil, these basic data will be a t hand for their use. PHOSPHATES-A somewhat similar story might be told of the unrivaled phosphate deposits of Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. They are mapped, several reports have been issued on them, and a more general report is in preparation. At this time they concern the chemical industry in a comparatively small way, but the time will come when they will enter very much more largely into trade and many of the essential data are ready. CONCLUSION That the Survey is not omniscient, no one realizes more keenly than its members. However, as I have tried to show, it has collected great quantities of information that may be of use to chemists and that it would like to make known, but there are many more things concerning minerals that it is necessary to know, and that the Survey is still trying to find out. That is why it exists. The Survey’s greatest desire is to be of service; otherwise it has no excuse for being. If you have a problem that seems to be within the Survey’s province, ask. The answer may be one of the things it knows.
