IMPROVEMENTS IN EFFECTING THE MASSING OR AGGLOMERATION OF MINERAL SUBSTANCES
Year: 1872

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Robert Mallet and Henry
Scholefield at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
their Petition, on the 7th October 1872.
We, ROBERT MALLET, of Westminster Chambers, in the City of
Westminster, Civil Engineer, and HENRY SCHOLEFIELD, of the Town
and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Mineral Broker, do hereby
declare the nature of our said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN EFFECTING
THE MASSING OR AGGLOMERATION OF MINERAL SUBSTANCES," to be as follows:-
Various mineral bodies as found in nature, or as educts or products
of certain manufactures are sometimes in a state more or less pul-
verulent, which condition prevents their being treated by the ordinary
processes either metallurgically or otherwise with advantage. Thus
certain ores of iron occur in nature, or result from their extraction
from the mine or separation afterwards in a state of division too fine
to be advantageously smelted' in the blast furnace, amongst these are
various hæmatites, titanite of iron, as a sand, like that from New
Zealand, and elsewhere, the oxides of iron resulting from exhausted
iron pyrites used for vitriol making, either before or after any copper,

page_text: silver, gold, or other matters it may contain have been extracted, and
which when dry is in powder or too small or too friable to be capable
of being smelted in the blast furnace in the usual way without loss.
Oxide of manganese is also found in nature, or by reason of the method
of mining for it, or by subsequent preparation, or of its transport more
or less in a pulverulent or divided state such as to prevent the same
being advantageously used for the production of chlorine or other uses,
to which such oxides of manganese are applied in the arts. Iron
pyrites (or bisulphuret of iron) is also found, or is more or less in tho
same way reduced to a state of division too great to be advantageously
employed for burning so as economically to produce vitriol by the usual
well known processes.
In all these cases one object of this Invention is to enable these
bodies to be agglomerated into masses, lumps, or briguets, whereby sub-
sequent operations, metallurgic, chemical, or otherwise may be better
performed upon them.
The general method of procedure in all these cases consists in the
intimate admixture of the noncohesive materials to be massed or
agglomerated with a solution of a silicate of an alkali, and then pressing
portions of the plastic mass into suitable sized lumps or masses by
means of suitable machinery or otherwise, and then slowly drying the
same and permitting them to harden, or if required baking them at a
higher temperature than that of the atmosphere. The solution of
the silicate may be employed alone; the material to be massed or
agglomerated may be mixed with the silicate and the other substances
according to the nature of the material under treatment. Thus
exhausted pyrites, after crushing, grinding, or sifting (or even without),
as also the calcined ores may if necesary be mixed with advantage
occasionally for smelting with clay, or sand, or lime, or fluor spar in
powder or oxides of manganese or with all of these along with an
alkaline silicate.
Small iron pyrites (after grinding, or sifting, if necessary) in order
to be massed or agglomerated by means of the soluble silicate, should
be mixed with a certain proportion of lime, or of alumina, or of
clay, or of fluor spar.
The soluble alkaline silicate may be formed by any known method,
and be mixed in a state of solution or otherwise with the other sub-

page_text: stances, or those substances may be mixed at once with sand or silex in
some suitable form or with clay, or with both, and boiled under a pressure
of steam of three to five atmospheres with a solution of crude caustic
soda, or of potass, with or without lime, and the plastic mass obtained
after this treatment moulded into lumps or masses by suitable machinery,
but I prefer the former treatment.
The proportion of silicate or of any of the other materials may be
varied, and they will depend upon the material to be treated and the
degree of consistency it is desired to obtain.