MINING 101

Mining 101
Part One

Have you used any of these lately?

School Bus?

Cereal?

Bicycle or Skateboard?

Car?

Alarm Clock?

Pencil or Computer?

Stove, Microwave, Cupboards, Countertops?

Coins?

Video Games?

Musical Instruments?

Toothbrush and Toothpaste?

Cellphone

Silverware or Television?

Do the items in the photographs have anything in common?

If you guessed rocks and minerals, you are right!

Thousands of things you use every day are made from rocks and minerals.

Thats a lot of rocks and How do you think we get all minerals!
those rocks and minerals?

If you said Mining, you are right!

MINING 101
Part 2

A mine is a place where rocks and minerals of value are extracted.

The first phase of mining is called

EXPLORATION.

What happens during exploration?

Geologic maps are created.

Satellites, airplanes, or helicopters are used to help find mineral deposits.

Radioactive minerals like uranium may be found with a Geiger counter.

If an area looks promising, a drill is moved to the site.

The drill goes deep into the Earths crust removing long cylinders of rock called cores.

What about the environment?

Before a mine can be opened, a complete environmental study is done so the land can be put to good use during and after mining.

Discovery to Production can take 20 years or more!

What about people?

What about people?

Mining Towns
Mining Town of Ketchikan, Alaska

Mining Brings: Jobs Transportation Education Housing

For Example:

Battle Mountain Trades Program Newmont Mining Corporation provided land and homebuilding materials. High school students learned building and selling skills. Profits from the house renewed the program for the following year.

An African Project
AngloGold Ashanti established medical programs that improve the health of people living near their mining operations.

MINING 101
PART 3

There are two basic types of Mining.

Underground Mining

Surface Mining

Underground
Nickel Miners Underground Drill

Stan the Safety Man

All mining companies have extensive safety training. No one can go underground without it. Miners must be certified and demonstrate safety knowledge.

More Underground Mining

Longwall coal mining cuts a slice from the long wall.
Notice the safety gear that these miners wear everyday.

Surface Mining
Kennecott Utah Coppers Bingham Canyon Mine Two-story high haul trucks can carry hundreds of tons of ore.

Other surface mines

Albert Frei & Sons Sand Quarry in Idaho Springs, Colorado Rock of Ages Granite Quarry in Barre, Vermont

Extraction
is the process of removing mineral resources from the Earths crust and converting them into products that can be sold.

Drilling to set charges for a blast.

Carefully controlled blasting breaks up the rock.

Blasted ore is hauled to the processing facility.

Crushers/grinders break up the ore to the size of small pebbles or sand.

Every ore deposit is different even if they contain the same minerals. So, there are many kinds of processing to remove the minerals from the ore. Following are just a few processes.

Processing

Milling
This rock contains gold. Milling is the process of breaking large rocks into tiny pieces so that the desired mineral (gold in this case) can be separated from the unwanted rock (called gangue.) See if you can find the specks of gold.

Concentration and Flotation

Some minerals are separated by washing, flotation, or magnetic separation. Flotation is a process that combines water, chemicals, air and agitation to make desired mineral particles attach to bubbles and float away from gangue.

Smelting
Smelting uses high heat and chemicals to remove impurities from concentrates. Smelting furnaces can reach temperatures above 1400Celcius. What would that number be in Fahrenheit?

Leaching
Aerial view of a leach pad at a copper mine in Morenci, Arizona. These pads are the size of several football fields. This one is being stacked with crushed ore. Sulfuric acid will be dripped over the ore, separating out the copper.

Electrowinning
Starter sheets are lowered into an acidic copper solution. An electrical charge passes through the solution, causing copper ions to stick to the sheets.

How much land does Mining use in the US?

Land used by Agriculture

Washington D.C.

Land used by 80 Years of Mining

Nearly 50% has been reclaimed.

Reclamation
(Means restoration)

Modern mines reclaim or restore the land during and after mining is completed, returning it to useful purposes.

Reclaimed by Starvaggi Industries in West Virginia.

Before After

Reclamation at Luck Stone Aggregate Mine, West Virginia

Before After

ForkCreek Coal Mining Co., West Virginia

Before After

Homestake Mining Companys McLaughlin Gold Mine in California

Before After

MINING 101

THE END

Resources
AngloGold Ashanti, www.anglogold.co.za Colorado Mining Association, www.coloradomining.org Mining Basics, www.miningbasics.com Mineral Information Institute, SME Foundation, www.mii.org Mining Engineering Magazine, SME, www.miningengineeringmagazine.com National Mining Association, www.nma.org Newmont Mining Corporation, www.newmont.com Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, www.smenet.org Women in Mining Education Foundation, www.womeninmining.org U.S. Department of Agriculture, www.usda.gov U.S. Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov Christensen, John W. and Teri L., Global Science: Earth/Environmental Systems Science, Kendall Hunt. Dubuque, Iowa. 7th ed. 2009