OCR Text |
Show 24 soon lost interest in the small, Irregular veins and lenses of asphaltite that on burning yielded ash with only one to eight per cent vanadium. Exploration of the asphaltite deposits in Peru has been carried on at Intervals since their discovery, but only one has been successfully operated for vanadium and this was under stimulus of high prices paid for the ore by the Japanese. The American company, now the Vanadium Corporation of America, in 1907 began producing vanadium from its Mina Ragra mine, which has been the world's largest vanadium producer. To January 1942 the mine produced about 38,500,000 pounds, approximately half the world's production and virtually the entire output of vanadium from Peru, The mine is at an altitude of 16,500 feet and is situated a few hundred yards east of the crest of the western Cordillera of the Andes and 25 miles north of Ricran on the Cerro de Pasco Railway in the department of Junin. Vanadium mineralization is along a shear zone in a series of compact red shales over 2,000 feet thick, overlain by thick beds of limestone. The ore body is lenticular, is 600 feet long and 200 feet wide, and extends 270 feet below the outcrop. High-grade oxide ores with complex composition occurred at the surface where mining operations were first started. Below the oxide zone high-grade vanadium sulfide (patronite) ore was found. Subseauent mining disclosed a lens about 330 feet long, 30 feet wide and 120 feet deep |