The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-11-05
MAGNETIC IRON ORE sspARAT,oN.
A Day With Mr.. Edison at His Ex+..
Works in New Jersey.
New York Post. }

Mr.. Edison, db Ills WorAe Aore, holds I'D
before your eyes some of the natty little
briquettes of refined iron ore that he is
shipping AWAY to the furnaces. They
have Just come out of the oven, and are
being ratified by the hundred at a time
into the train of cars waiting at Edison
N. j., to convey them to the yawning
nav of fire down Bethlehem way or
thereabouts. They are the concrete ex-
preston of many hopes and much work
on the part of the great inventor for long
years. past, and their story would be worth
telling, even if some lesser man had been
engage in their production. New lines of
perspective are opening up in the iron in
dustry, for at the very. moment when this
country Is beginning to export iron to
England, the recognized fields of produce
ton have been challenged by others more
remote, just as the wheat fields of the
East were thrown out of cultivation by
the newer areas of the West.
Mr.. Edison, standing on his miles of
clean ore in Jersey is only 100 miles from
his market needing such Bessemer ores,
while the Lake Superior deposits are
!, 500 miles away, and the foreign sources,
like those of Africa. Spain, and Cuba,
are further off. If he can refine his ore
magnetioally, and thus concentrate it
cheaply, the item of freight tips the scale
against his competitors. This idea has
been haunting him for a long time, run
ming like sub-consciousness under all
his work on the stock ticker, the quadru-
pick telegraph, the photograph, and the
a icht of hat IA alnno in,
magnetic separation work, for DR..
Borchers, in his classic book on electric
smelling and refining, states that more
than 170Apatents have been granted in the
United States alone. But Mr.. Edison,
with wonted boldness and broadness, has
lifted the subject up to plane OF impor-
lance and magnitude never attained be-
fore, and made it universal in Its interest
Here, in the central uplands of Jersey,
now in autumnal flush, hard by Lake
Hopatcong, he is working on half-a dozen
veins of low-grade ore, of a total length
of score Of miles, and the dip of his
needle promises workable material a full
mile down from the roots of the trees he
is telling to make sleepers for his mine
railroads. These roads ramify like ten
acles from the works, and at their outer
ends are two or three huge excavators
digging steel lips into the hillsides and
delivering four or five tons of iron rock
every minute to the skips on the train.
Out on one of these bluffs, about to be
stripped of it's superintendent earth, you
are likely TO catch him, dreamily medi-
tating, cigar-butt between his lips.
Then you will go back at his invitation to
the works and see the mills of the gods
grinding the rocks up in anything but a
slow way, in order that the iron may be
freed for concentration from the feldspar
gangue. Two hundred million tons of
rock is here to be crushed and yield 3d.,
900, 900 tons of high-grade concentrates.
AS the works can grapple with, say, 5000
tons of rock a day, it is obvious that the
plant may still be running when the next
century closes.
The first crushing reduces the rock to
pieces fifteen inches in diameter, and step
by step it is broken down by the rolls,
until it is of fnenessS that permits 1t to
respond to the pull of the first series of
magnets to which it is subjected. At no
stage is it handled. Mr.. Edison despises
mere manual labor, and says that no
man gets the most out OF himself till he
drives machinery About 25U men, there
fore, do work which would seem to re-
quire ordinarily ten times that number
From vein to briquette the ore is entirely
under automatic treatment, and the only
part that escapes is some dust which is
rather pervasive. Even here, however,
MIR. Edison scores. Dust in machinery
and bearings is a nuisance, and has been
countered only by extravaganza lubrica-
ton. Mr. Edison makes the dust protect
his oilfeed on all the moving parts. AS
the scab of accumulative dust thickens it
is rubbed off and the oil feeds; and the
process is so steady and slow at each bear
ing that the oil consumption is reduced
to minimum.
The crushed rock, as already intimated,
undergoess magnetic treatment as soon as
it'll small enough. The building for this
purpose allows the ore to stream down
from height, across the face of a mile
of magnets, by which the iron is DETECTED
while the gangue falls straight, Some of
the ore is even then still crusted with
gangue. This has to be crushed again.
Twice and thrice is this process repeated
until at the stage of so mesh to the inch
the ore is from 80 to 80 per cent oxide, and
is concentrated ready for briquetting.
Every four tons of rock yields about one
ton of such ore, and evidently with such
leanness the possibility of profit depends
upon cheapness of extraction and loWness
of freight charges The concentrate is
delivered into storage, or can be taken
Immediately by travelling belt to the
briquetting department. Here an entirely
different series of processes come into
view, all of which presented MANY
initial problems connected with the CON
6ollQaUlOn OF Gne pOWuefy ORC luuO SuCh d
form as would render it best for shipment
and most acceptable at the furnaces
where the blast is so fierce.
When Mr.. Edison first shipped his bri-
uuettes, they absorbed water freely. To-
day they absolutely refuse water, but will
take up rs per cent of their own volume
of alcohol, and they are thoroughly nor
GUS to the furnace gases. The loose dust
is fed into mixers where a bipdinp
material in it is taken up, and the
compound then goes to the thirty
briquette machines, where under an
enormous pressure Fall around the bri.
quettes are turned out swiftly by the
| thousand, each weighing slightly more
than pound and measuring 1.3 inches
by 8. Band eonveyors pick up those
briquettes and take them on personally
conducted tour around the furnaces ad ia.
cent for about an hour, where a TEN.
perature of 600 degrees Fair. brings them
to the breaking strain of the AVERAGE
American pie crust. When thus kin
dried, the tough little briquettes are ready
for shipment, and one man at the snont
end of the department can load whole
train of cars with them very quickly II
is a fascinating sight to see the convevop
bring them down and to watch thsI,,
dealt out like chips, clicking and rattlina