Archives for August, 2015
I plan to commence a series of posts on specialty metals and minerals. There are various definitions – my definition excludes base and precious metals, bulk minerals such as iron ore and energy metals such as uranium. Specialty metals include those that are alloyed with other metals, such as antimony, titanium…
Selling Metal Concentrates: Payable Metal, Treatment Charges, Penalties, Terms of Sale An evergreen from 2013. It has information that is very difficult to obtain without fee. Therefore, it is reposted on numerous sites. The Investment Clock: Revisited An investment clock from Citi, one of the best I have seen. A…
I have been involved in the zinc business for a couple of decades. For much of that time pundits have told us that a price spike is imminent. People say, for example, LME stocks are low, we are running out of zinc. That is not so. LME warehouse stocks are…
In 2008 the New York Federal Reserve republished the comic book: “A Penny Saved – Why and how we save, and how savings helps the US economy”. The comic is worth a read, it concludes that the declining savings rate at the time was bad for the economy. That is,…
The following article is by Wolf Richter at Wolf Street, re-posted with permission. It is a great insight into the US fracking industry, where things are not quite what they seem. — Natural gas driller Samson Resources is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by August 15, when a…
Back in the day, I developed a sulphur dioxide (“SO2”) leach process to produce electrolytic manganese dioxide (“EMD”), from a ferromanganese feedstock. EMD is the active ingredient in dry cell batteries. The leach process was lower cost than existing technologies. And far less polluting. We built a pilot plant at…