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November 1942. "Flotation machines at one of the copper concentrators of the Utah Copper Company. Its plants at Magna and Arthur in Utah are treating vast quantities of the copper so vital for war purposes." Photo by Andreas Feininger for the Office of War Information. View full size.
I'm curious about the way the floor slopes up. Is the system using gravity to pass material from one machine to the next, or did they just happen to convert a concert hall or sports stadium into a copper refining factory?
For the big game between the dynamos and the automatons.
... in a large university lecture hall.
I wonder about the stepped configuration. Did the slurry flow downwards in grades as it was processed? There must be some hidden plumbing that transferred the slurry to and from these vats.
An impressive scene that reminds me of barbershop mirrors.
This is a newer style motor. Still it's all so primitive compared to today.
It points out just how difficult it was to win WWII for a nation with much fewer people than we have today. They truly were the Greatest Generation, because everything they did had to be done the hard way, from 1000 plane raids for one target to hundreds of flotation machines for what would be done with maybe 5 or 10 modern ones.
Well, I thought you just "smelted" some ore and out came the copper... but see below. Apparently just one step in a pretty complex process:
was developed in the early 1900's and is one of the fundamental industrial refining processes that make our technological society possible. In this case, a slurry of pulverized copper-bearing ore, water and surfactant chemicals is introduced into each of these centrifugal machines. A bubbly froth containing the valuable mineral component is whipped up and skimmed off for further purification. It's like a Copper Cuisinart.
Without this process, metals like copper and lead would be too expensive to produce very many shell casings, iPhones or car batteries. All hail froth flotation!
Is this where little Daleks come from?
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