The Interest of Our Young Professional Men in Natural Resources P
T IS understandable that natural resources of our earth
I have a liqit and that such limit is different for each country and its way of life. “Have not” or “have” of required and available natural resources has been the subject of a debate, across this broad land of ours, by those who know of forthcoming natural resource exhaustion and those who believe otherwise and who realize we are an industrious, ingenious, and resourceful people. Further, we are particularly appreciative of our oncoming young professional men, with new ideas that make possible ever new and expanding real resources. An example is “The President’s (Mr. Truman’s) Commission” on natural resources, which about half a dozen years ago came out with a several volume report. As of then this report shows us, as a nation, to he a “near have not” on some important resources of ores and minerals and a generation hence to be in a far worse situation. To this report and its reasoning, the mining, metallurgical, and chemical industries, on the whole, have taken sharp and often vigorous exception. What is a n economic resource?
Disregarding the politics and the desire for aggrandizement of the nation’s (central) administrative authoritycertainly an influential motif of the New Deal and the Fair Deal-the final answer as to resources is a technical question following from our studies in fundamental and applied science. Immediately, and in the absence of actual warfare, the question to be answered is economic and commercial -what is an “economic natural resource,” “an ore,” “a mineral deposit” (including coal, petroleum, and natural gas) , “a
It would be expected that one who was born in a Rocky Mountain state and who attended the western universitiesColorado at Boulder and California at Berkeley-would have an ever-continuing interest in natural resources. One usually associates Colorado with the precious metal states, but in spite of all its gold and silver production, its zinc, lead, tungsten, molybdenum, its coal and iron, its petroleum and natural gas, and now its uranium, its still most precious natural resource is its water-that which falls, that beneficially used, that wasted. The writer of this month’s contribution, Harry V. Welch, was born in 1882 in the small and at that time near frontier community of Greeley, Colo. Undergraduate work was followed by about three years in the metallurgical industry and two in graduate study. Since December 1915, Harry has been associated with the Western Precipitation Corp., first as research chemist, then chief chemist, followed by director. At present in semiretirement, he is consultant and director.
October 1955
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mine,” “a quarry pit”? It is here our scientific professional, expressing himself as a research chemist, a physical chemist, a metallurgist, a chemical engineer, a geochemist, or the like, has provided the answer in the past and must provide the answer in the future. It’s an ore, or it’s metallurgy, or it’s a chemical process if, by treatment, the yield and values per unit weight are greater than the cost thereof. The old timer is always telling of the past when “good ore,” “high grade,” “grass roots ore deposits” were plentiful, but commonly adds, rather sadly too, that now the best, the next best, and the good have gone. Further-and here he is joined by our “have not” and “will have not” alarmists-in all probability a dismal future confronts us! But that’s not so! It is true, for example, that in the early West, say, perhaps, 1890 in Montana and Arizona, operators had to have about a 30% copper ore to make a going concern and to shorn7 a profit. By 1900 they were operating around 12 to 15% copper ore and doing about as well financially and with great increase in actual metal production; by the year 1910 they were down to 4 or 5% copper ore and still larger production. Today 1% copper ore is commonly worked and even 0.8 to 0.9% copper is under treatment, with accompanying extraordinarily large metal tonnage production. Every forthcoming improvement in the art and chemistry of treatment, in scientific exploratory methods and applied scientific procedures, every improved device and tool, every improved and new alloy and a vast multitude of new compounds, made possible the enormous production of the last half century which was so very essential to the successful prosecution of two world wars. It will be vastly more important from here on. Problem of next half century
S o w , the next half century, or much longer, if you mill, requires even more critical interest and sustaining activity of our young scientific professionals in our natural resources, for the available resources will be still lower grade, the market expanded still more and insistent upon not only quantity but also quality products-perhaps “C.P.’S” in large volume. Today (this year), examples of such expanding possibilities are to be found in new chemical plants and processes and may be illustrated by the leaching of nickel from its ores by ammonia in plants in Alberta, Canada, and in the far east end of Cuba (the latter a LT. S. Government nickel leaching plant) with recovery of a pure nickel product. More is in the offing, of pressure digestion and accompanying oxidation of sulfide minerals and successive precipitation by
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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The Professional M a n hydrogen, or other means, of not only nickel but also cobalt, copper, zinc, and the like, and all as pure metal products and as metal powders. This latter farm of finished product from a primary chemical plant operation is of very large potential interest to the widely spread as well as diversified user and to what then would be a multitude of independent and individual producers. The commercial smelter and refinery, which must be large to be economic and possessed of large capital resources, is well suited to concentrated areas of production, but over extended areas it fails to meet the economic needs of many mineral occurrences. One should not overlook possibilities of ion exchange, of vacuum furnacing, refining and alloying, perhaps even a solar furnace for the oxides of nitrogen. Further, we must produce more of rare earth metals, from rare earth ores which occur in nature, sometimes as one or more in a hundred, sometimes as one or more in a thousand, sometimes one part in many thousands. Yes, there is the need and even the urgency for our young men, now and in the long continued future, to take a yast and potent interest in our natural resources. I n parting, one may note, our young professionals have the problem-so very important to a goodly percentage of our population-of producing fresh water from brackish or sea water, or reclaiming fresh water, minerals, and plant and animal foods from sewage, industrial wastes, and sea water. It is true their elders have tried and are trying and, we
think, are meeting with some success in these fields, b u t nearly everywhere we are losing seriously on our ground water levels, our greatest natural resource. Big cities waste to the sea, of fresh water, potash, phosphate, nitrates, etc., will, in time and if not checked. impoverish the nation. Mining the sea
I n the end, with a land surface substantially exhausted of its usable minerals, the oncoming young professional must “mine” and “cultivate” the sea, where everything elemental we want or need is present in apparently unending quantities but often so diluted or present in such infinitesimal concentration, that today we do not figure the ocean in our immediate available reserves, excepting, of course, such minor items as common salt, or limited production of bromine or magnesium salts and the like. The young professional should and in due course of time must have visions and processes, too, for men’s endless wants and nature’s endless supply in the oceans of our earth. Therefore, with our young professional men’s interest in our natural resources, as our leading factor, we are unwilling to consider that depressing doctrine of ‘‘too little and too late” or “it is later than you think”-rather we believe in the future with a “created abundance” and that “it’s not as late as you think.” Correspondence concerning this column will be forwarded if promptly addressed to the author, % Editor, ISDUSTRIAL AND ENQINEERINQ CHEMISTRY, 1155--16th St., N.W., V‘ashington 6, D. C.
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
Vol. 47, No. 10
