Resources minerals

Minerals, metals, and materials are essential to every sector of every nation s economy and will play a determining role in the feasibility of the emerging technologies that sustainability will require. To provide technical background in addressing sustainability themes as they apply to mineral resources, the following information was presented  

Andrew Bloodworth, Head of Science for Minerals, British Geological Survey 

Future Global Demand for Minerals Supply Challenges and Sustainability 

The British Geological Survey believes that adequate mineral supplies can be maintained into the foreseeable future. Science and technology will have major roles to play  

WHAT SUSTAINABILITY MEANS TO THE MINING AND MINERALS SECTOR 

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Deep-sea manganese nodules represent a significant potential mineral resource. Whereas the principal constituent of these deposits is manganese, the primary interest has come from the associated metals that the nodules can also contain (see Ocean rawmaterials). For example, metals can range from 0.01—2.0% nickel, 0.01—2.0% copper, and 0.01—2.25% cobalt (12). Recovery is considered an economic potential in the northwestern equatorial Pacific, and to a lesser degree in the southern and western Pacific and Indian Oceans (13—18). 

The ocean is host to a variety and quantity of inorganic raw materials equal to or surpassiag the resources of these materials available on land. Inorganic raw materials are defined here as any mineral deposit found ia the marine environment. The mineral resources are classified generally as iadustrial minerals, mineral sands, phosphorites, metalliferous oxides, metalliferous sulfides, and dissolved minerals and iaclude geothermal resources, precious corals, and some algae. The resources are mosdy unconsoHdated, consoHdated, or fluid materials which are chemically enriched ia certain elements and are found ia or upon the seabeds of the continental shelves and ocean basias. These may be classified according to the environment and form ia which they occur (Table 1) and with few exceptions are similar to traditional mineral deposits on land. 

Table 1. Classification of Global Marine Mineral Resources ...

V. E. McKelvey and co-workers. Subsea Mineral Resources, Bulletin 1689-A, U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole, Mass., 1986. 

F. C. F. Eamey, Marine Mineral Resources, Roudedge, London, 1990. 

T. P. Mohide, Silver, Ontario Ministry of Mineral Resources, Toronto, Canada, 1985. 

Celestite, Mineral Dossier No. 6, Mineral Resources Consultative Committee, HMSO, London, 1973. 

U.S. Geological Suiwey and U.S. Bureau of Mines. (1976). Principles of the Mineral Resource Classification System of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and U.S. Geological Suiwey. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1450-A. Washington, DC U.S. Government Printing Office. 

As the materials used in drilling processes are produced from depletable mineral resources, there is a continuous upward trend of cost with time. The field engineer must make a detailed cost comparison of materials available within the target cost of the project. The final choice may be a tradeoff between cost and performance. This is because the choice may narrow down to two or more materials with different initial costs and different expected service lives. Transportation costs of selected materials must also be included in the final cost. 

The changes in spatial distribution of mineral resources and the morphological and physiological characteristics of the dominant plants have an effect on key ecosystem processes by affecting the timing of growth and... 

Berger, B.R. (1983a) Epithermal gold-silver quartz-adularia type. In Cox, D.P. (ed.), GEOMINAS Mineral Resource Assessment of Columbia — Ore Deposit Models, U.S. Geological Survey. Open-File Report, 83, V. 23, 39. 

Giles, D.L. and Nelson, C.E. (1983) Principal features of epithermal lode gold deposits of the Circum-Pacific energy and minerals resource conference, Circum-Pacific series, AAPG. 

Nishiwaki, C. and Yasui, T. (1974) Submarine mineral resources and plate tectonics. Kagaku (Science), 44, 247-255 (in Japanese). 

Seki, Y. (1993) Geologic setting of the Takatama gold deposit, Japan an example of caldera-related epithermal gold mineralization. Resource Geology Special Issue, 14, 123-136. 

Shikazono, N., Naito, K. and Izawa, E. (eds.) (1993) High Grade Epithermal Gold Mineralization. Resource Geology Special Issue, 14. 

Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) (1993) Report on abundance of rare metal mineral resources. Tokyo MITI (in Japanese). 

Institute for Isotope Geology and Mineral Resources Department of Earth Sciences... 

Minerals are well regarded as national assets. Extensive use of mineral resources forms the physical basis of a high standard of living not only in the developed but also in the developing countries. A strong positive correlation exists, for example, between the per... 

Mineral resources are nonrenewable resources, in contrast to renewable resources such as surface water and timber, which are or can be replenished naturally or artificially. The geological processes by which most mineral deposits form take a very long time. They can, in no way, be thought to replenish deposits extracted from the ground and dispersed by use. However, it is important to recognize that mineral resources are extendable with the help of advancing technology that develops uses for sources that were not readily usable or exploitable before, allows hidden deposits to be discovered, and enhances the efficiency of recovery and of use. 

Sources of metals or the mineral resources are distributed quite non-uniformly over the Earth s surface. No country can claim that it has domestic supplies of all the minerals it needs. The situation and outlook as to the availability of minerals thus varies from country to country and commodity to commodity. 

Mineral resources are broadly divided into discovered and the undiscovered categories. Features such as size, quality, characteristics and exact location of individual resources are matters of almost pure speculation for the latter. Undiscovered resources are unlikely to contribute much to the total supply in the immediate future. In the case of discovered resources estimates can be made, with an indication of the degree of reliability, of the timing and the future rates of production on a deposit-by-deposit basis. Using such estimation the occurrence and the likely rate of future availability can be combined in plots such as those shown in Figure 1.18 for discovered resources. Three situations are depicted. The first corresponds to future supply from sources that are reliable, the second to likely sources... 

W. H. Dennen, Mineral Resources Geology, Exploration, and Development, Taylor and Francis, New York, 1989. 

When nonrenewable mineral resources are processed for metal extraction and the metals extracted are utilized in various ways and in diverse forms, they become potentially available for reclamation and recycling. Recycled metals produced by the extraction and refining of metallic wastes are known as secondary metals, whereas metals produced from primary ores are termed primary metals. A classification of recyclable metalliferous resources such... 

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