Metals resources

Metal resources are nonrenewable and their long-term availabihty depends on the known reserves and the cost of extraction. With some metals such as uranium, the fraction of the oxide present in earth is approximately 0.1-0.2%. This means that a large area of earth has to be processed to extract the metal. This would result in relatively larger environmental impact compared to producing a metal such as aluminum 

FIGURE 1.8 Estimated embodied energy (left) and carbon emissions (right) of classes of building materials globally consumed in 2011. Source Calculations based on data in Hammond and Jones (2011). See http //www.circularecology.com/ice-database.html. 

TABLE 1.2 Estimated Future Global Supply of Some Common Metals 

Metal Estimated supply (years) Metal Estimated supply (years) 

---

P. F. Chapman and F. Roberts, Metal Resources and Energy, Butterworths, London, 1983. 

It has been a long way from early synthetic polymers created as artificial substitutes (Kunststoffe) for scarcening metal resources, to modem materials tailormade to fill specific functions through particular properties and processing characteristics in many areas of application. Ever since they were first prepared, surprising new or improved properties have been discovered or engineered. 

Agency of Natural Resources and Energy (1993) Report of the survey in the occurrence of rare metal resource evaluation of its potential. Tokyo Ministry of International Trade and Industry (in Japanese). 

C. K. Gupta and T. K. Mukherjee, Base Metal Resource Processing by Chlorination, Mineral Processing and Technology Review, Vol. 1, p. Ill, 1983. 

The decreased value of holdings in minerals properties has meant that even large mining companies are considered to be available as potential sources of metal resources - via takeover - by both well-funded companies and as-yet well-funded... 

The Swiss Agency of Environment and Landscape decided to re-evaluate mechanical metal separation techniques to reduce the landfill volume and to improve the BA quality for deposition by exploiting metal resources. A sampling campaign in all 28 incineration plants was initiated to verify BA quality and to establish a solid data base. A common sampling procedure, sample treatment, and analytical method were prescribed in order to obtain consistent information of chemical and structural composition and the leaching behaviour of current BA. This paper is focused on the chemical and mineralogi-cal results from the study. 

Metals Resources Reserves Production 1981 Cumulative demand estim. 1978—2000 Price in US/lb... 

Rhodium occurs only to the extent of 10 % in the earth s crust. Fortunately, it is not eveifly distributed, but is found, alloyed with the other platinum metals, to the extent of a few ppm (several grams per tonne) in its ores. The principal locations of these ore bodies are in the Urals near Ekaterinburg (the earliest commercial source) and in the Merensky reef near Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa. The latter is the major source today. Minor sources are found in North America and Zimbabwe. Many platinum metal resources, such as that at Sudbury in Ontario, contain very little rhodium. Various other minor sources are known, and in fact the element was first isolated by Wollaston in 1804 from impure platinum of South American origin. 

El 1.3 From the given value for rfH ) and ionic radii for the Group 1 metals (Resource Section 1) wc can obtain the following y values and corresponding structures (recall equation 3.1 y = r smad/rimge) ... 

These tailings are located in Australia and are the result of former exploitation of the Hellyer mine. The owners are Dominion Mining Ltd. and Western Metals Resources Ltd. 

Table 1 shows the reserve-production ratio of some representative metal resources at the beginning of the twenty-first century [1-3]. The reserve-production ratio could be defined as the value of confirmed reserve (CR) per annual producticm (AP, output). 

R. Saager, in Metallic Resources Encyclopedia from Antimony to Zirconium, Bank von Tobel, Zurich, 1984. 

During the last decades, the market for metal resources has been greatly stimulated by the emergence of new technologies and by the world population increase. On the other hand, the limited metal resources as well as fossil... 

Titanium is an element of group 4 of the periodic table. It is in the same group as zirconium and hafnium. It has a high similarity to silicon which was the same group in the old periodic table. Titanium exists in 5600 ppm in the Earth s crust [1], it is the fourth largest element after iron, aluminium and magnesium as common use metal. The titanium deposits are approx. 340 million tons or more [2], The span of life as a metal resource is three thousand years or more, the ranking of the life of resources as practical metals is the second after iron. 

Copper exists as 50 ppm in the Earth s crust, and is the fifth element next to Fe, Ti, A1 and Zn as the life span of metal resources (the life span of copper is 100 years or more). Therefore, copper is a metal which exists in relatively large amounts in the world. The production of copper was about 12 million tons in 1995 in the world [12-13b]. 

---