Minerals ore bodies

Approximately 3.5 million metric tons of asbestos are produced annually. Major producers are the former Soviet Union (60%) and Canada (17%). Production and use in the United States is very minor due to health and liability concerns, although California hosts a short fiber chrysotile deposit considered to be the largest single mineral ore body in the world. Major asbestos appHcations worldwide are asbestos cement, friction products, roofing, insulation, fiooring, plastics, and gaskets. 

Fluorspar occurs in two distinct types of formation in the fluorspar district of southern Illinois and Kentucky in vertical fissure veins and in horizontal bedded replacement deposits. A 61-m bed of sandstone and shale serves as a cap rock for ascending fluorine-containing solutions and gases. Mineralizing solutions come up the faults and form vein ore bodies where the larger faults are plugged by shale. Bedded deposits occur under the thick sandstone and shale roofs. Other elements of value associated with fluorspar ore bodies are zinc, lead, cadmium, silver, germanium, iron, and thorium. Ore has been mined as deep as 300 m in this district. 

Alaska, Washington, and Nevada. Ores of the Southeast Missouri lead belt and extensive deposits such as in Silesia and Morocco are of the replacement type. These deposits formed when an aqueous solution of the minerals, under the influence of changing temperature and pressure, deposited the sulfides in susceptible sedimentary rock, usually limestone and dolomites. These ore bodies usually contain galena, sphalerite, and pyrite minerals, but seldom contain gold, silver, copper, antimony, or bismuth. 

Ores which comprise a variety of minerals are, as a rule, heterogeneous. An ore body is usually named for the most important mineral (s) in the rock, referred to as value minerals, mineral values, or simply values. Some minerals contain metals, which are extracted by concentration and smelting. Other minerals, such as diamond, asbestos (qv), quartz (see Silicon COMPOUNDS), feldspars, micas (see Mica), gypsum, soda, mirabillite, clays (qv), etc, maybe used either as found, with some or no pretreatment, or as stock materials for industrial compounds or building materials (qv) (3). 

Processing costs include those for size reduction, size classification, minerals concentration and separations, soHd—Hquid separation (dewatering), materials handling and transportation, and tailings disposal. Size reduction, one of the most expensive unit operations in minerals processing, could account for as much as 50% of the total energy consumed. This cost varies considerably from deposit to deposit and quite often from one area of a deposit to another. Ore bodies are extremely heterogeneous and the associated minerals Hberation, complex. 

Vein Deposits. The vein deposits of uranium are those in which uranium minerals fill cavities such as cracks, fissures, pore spaces, breccias, and stockworks. The dimensions of the openings have a wide range, from the narrow pitchblende-fiHed cracks, faults, and fissures in some of the ore bodies in Europe, Canada, and AustraHa to the massive veins of pitchblende at Jachymov, Czech RepubHc (15). 

Typically, ore bodies are relatively low in iron content. Iron minerals are finely divided in a gangue matrix. Wet grinding is usually required to Hberate the iron minerals, although some beach sands may have Hberated iron mineral values. Wet dmm separators are limited to the treatment of material <10 mm. The magnetic dmm separators appHed are usually related to the grinding circuit required to Hberate the iron mineral, and are typically designated by appHcation as cobbers, roughers, or finishers. 

Like selenium, tellurium minerals, although widely disseminated, do not form ore bodies. Hence, there are no deposits that can be mined for tellurium alone, and there are no formally stated reserves. Large resources however, are present in the base-metal sulfide deposits mined for copper, nickel, gold, silver, and lead, where the recovery of tellurium, like that of selenium, is incidental. 

Copper ore minerals maybe classified as primary, secondary, oxidized, and native copper. Primaryrninerals were concentrated in ore bodies by hydrothermal processes secondary minerals formed when copper sulfide deposits exposed at the surface were leached by weathering and groundwater, and the copper reprecipitated near the water table (see Metallurgy, extractive). The important copper minerals are Hsted in Table 1. Of the sulfide ores, bornite, chalcopyrite, and tetrahedrite—teimantite are primary minerals and coveUite, chalcocite, and digenite are more commonly secondary minerals. The oxide minerals, such as chrysocoUa, malachite, and azurite, were formed by oxidation of surface sulfides. Native copper is usually found in the oxidized zone. However, the principal native copper deposits in Michigan are considered primary (5). 

Mixed layer clay mineral (sericite/smectite) is found in Kuroko ore bodies and altered dacitic rocks underlying the ore. This mineral is thought to have formed by the... 

Kaolin minerals (kaolinite, dickite, nacrite), pyrophyllite and mica-rich mica/smec-tite mixed layer mineral occur as envelopes around barite-sulfide ore bodies in the footwall alteration zones of the Minamishiraoi and Inarizawa deposits, northern part of Japan (south Hokkaido) (Marumo, 1989). Marumo (1989) considered from the phase relation in Al203-Si02-H20 system that the hydrothermal alteration minerals in these deposits formed at relatively lower temperature and farther from the heat source than larger sulfide-sulfate deposits in the Hokuroku district. 

Main opaque minerals are chalcopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite, sphalerite and bornite (Table 2.22). These minerals commonly occur in massive, banded and disseminated ores and are usually metamorphosed. Hematite occurs in red chert which is composed of fine grained hematite and aluminosilicates (chlorite, stilpnomelane, amphibole, quartz) and carbonates. The massive sulfide ore bodies are overlain by a thin layer of red ferruginous rock in the Okuki (Watanabe et al., 1970). Minor opaque minerals are cobalt minerals (cobaltite, cobalt pentlandite, cobalt mackinawite, carrollite), tetrahedrite-tennantite, native gold, native silver, chalcocite, acanthite, hessite, silver-rich electrum, cubanite, valleriite , and mawsonite or stannoidite (Table 2.22). 

Barite and sphalerite tend to precipitate at lower temperature from the hydrothermal solution mixed with a large amount of cold seawater (but mixing ratio (seawater/hydrothermal solution) may be less than 0.2). These minerals precipitate on the seafloor and/or at very shallow subsurface environment. However, chalcopyrite tends to precipitate from high temperature solutions in ore bodies and/or at the sub-seafloor sediments. Usually shale which is relatively impermeable overlies the Besshi-type ore bodies. This suggests that hydrothermal solution could not issue from the seafloor and... 

The main alteration minerals surrounding Kuroko ore body are K-mica, K-feldspar, kaolinite, albite, chlorite, quartz, gypsum, anhydrite, and carbonates (dolomite, calcite, magnesite-siderite solid solution), hematite, pyrite and magnetite. Epidote is rarely found in the altered basalt (Shikazono et al., 1995). It contains higher amounts of ferrous iron (Fe203 content) than that from midoceanic ridges (Shikazono, 1984). 

Vigier N, Bourdon B, Turner S, Allegre CJ (2001) Erosion timescales derived from U-decay series measurements in rivers. Earth Planet Sci Lett 193 549-563 von Gunten HR, Roessler E, Lowson RT, Reid PD, Short SA (1999) Distribution of uranium- and thorium series radionuclides in mineral phases of a weathered lateritic transect of a uranium ore body. Chem Geol 160 225-240... 

All ore mineral deposits lie in or on solid rocks of which the Earth s crust is predominantly composed. The geological processes which are responsible for the formation of rocks also form the ore bodies associated with them. For the formation of an ore body, the metal or metals concerned must be enriched to a considerably higher level than their normal crustal abundance. The degree of such enrichment below which the extraction cost makes the processing of the ore uneconomical is termed the concentration factor. Typical values of the concentration factor for some of the common metals are given in Table 1.5. 

In the leaching process, bacteria such as Thiobacillus ferroxidans and those belonging to the Sulfolobus genera, play a major role in the oxidation reactions at moderate and higher temperatures respectively. The oxidation of sulfides by bacteria is typified by the reactions of pyrite, a common accessory mineral in primary copper ore bodies this reaction can be considered to proceed through two stages ... 

These minerals can occur separately (e.g. cemssite) or as mixtures of two or more oxide minerals. Depending on the formation of the ore body with oxide minerals, the ore may... 

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