Mineral Ore Exploration, Mining, and Processing Flashcards
Use of gold in everyday life
jewelry, dentistry, electronics
What minerals do iron and steel come from?
hematite, magnetite, limonite
What minerals does copper come from? and what is its use?
malachite, azurite, chrysocolla
use: wires, pennies, electronics
What minerals does aluminum come from? and what is its use?
bauxite
use: cans, foil, bike, aircraft etc.
What minerals does lead come from? and what is its use?
galena
use: formerly plumbing and paints, now - mostly in chemical industry
What are the most abundant chemical elements in Earth’s Crust
Oxygen - 46.6%
Silicon - 27.7%
Al - 8.1%
Iron - 5%
etc.
At what percent of Earth’s Crust is highly useful and valuable
1.7%
Minerals that can be extracted, processed, and marketed at a profit
Economic Minerals
Factors of Economic Minerals
- interest in the mineral
- size of the deposit
- mineral concentration
- mineral depth below the surface (more expensive if deeper)
- market value
natural material with a high concentration of economically valuable minerals that can be mined for a profit
ore
the process of extracting useful materials from the earth.
mining
what are rocks composed of?
aggravates and minerals
Steps in mining
- pre-mining/exploration (project design, using aircraft to detect anomalies, drill to confirm anomalies, feasibility study [is it economical?])
- mining and processing (dig tunnel if subsurface mining, use explosives, mine, milling, separation, and processing [make it slurry [powder and water], flotation tanks, filter])
- post-mining/mine closure (cover up land, closure plans which should be planned already during the feasibility study, restoration, reclamation, and rehabilitation, sustaining post-mining use)
What are the chances that the anomalies during the exploration process are valuable
1/1000
method of extracting minerals near the surface of the Earth.
- mass damage
- easier and safer
- non-metals and organic substances are extracted
surface mining
types of surface mining
- open pit
- strip mining
- quarrying
- placer mining
a surface mining technique that extracts minerals from an open pit in the ground. It is the most common method used throughout the world for mineral mining and does not require extractive methods or tunnels.
Open pit mining
the process of removing a thin strip of overburden (earth or soil) above a desired deposit, dumping the removed overburden behind the deposit, extracting the desired deposit, creating a second, parallel strip in the same manner, and depositing the waste materials from that second (new) strip onto the first strip. And so on.
strip mining
the process of removing rock, sand, gravel or other minerals from the ground in order to use them to produce materials for construction
quarrying
a collection of mining methods that use water to separate valuable ore from the surrounding sediment. It literally began as a flash in the pan, flecks of gold awash in a slurry of sediment, recovered by miners using a skilled hand with only a pan the size of a dinner plate and river water
placer mining
mining removes minerals that are deep underground.
- environmental effects are not as bad
- more expensive & dangerous
- metals & denser minerals are extracted
subsurface mining
when recovering minerals from an ore, where is the separation usually done
in a mill
is employed for the concentration of minerals by utilizing the differences in magnetic susceptibility of minerals/ore from that of gangue bearing components.
magnetic separation
involves crushing the ore to liberate separate grains of the various valuable minerals and gangue components, pulping the ore particles with water, and then selectively rendering hydrophobic the surface of the mineral of interest. A stream of air bubbles is then passed through the pulp; the bubbles attach to and levitate the hydrophobic particles, which collect in a froth layer which flows over the weir of the flotation cell.
flotation process
