Universit Ibn Zohr

Semester 6 Module 21

Facult Polydisciplinaire de Taroudant

English for Scientific Purposes

Filire: Gotechnique & Mines

Pr. A. Hermas

Surface mining and mining techniques

Mining techniques can be divided into two common excavation types, surface mining and
underground mining. Surface mining is a broad category of mining in which vegetation, dirt, or
layers of rock covering the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed. It is the opposite of
underground mining, in which the overlying rock is left in place while the mineral removed through
shafts or tunnels.
In mining, gangue is the commercially worthless material that surrounds,
or is closely mixed with, a wanted mineral in an ore deposit. It is thus distinct
from overburden, which is the waste rock or materials overlying an ore or
mineral body that are displaced during mining without being processed.
Surface mining began in the mid-sixteenth century. It is much more common throughout the
world today, although the majority of surface mining occurs in North America. For example, it
produces 85% of minerals in the United States, excluding petroleum and natural gas.
In most forms of surface mining, heavy equipment such as earthmovers (bulldozers and
heavy trucks) takes away the overburden first. Next, huge machines like dragline excavators or
Bucket wheel excavators (BWEs) extract the mineral.
To reach buried ore deposits, four main techniques are used. One is open-pit mining which is
the recovery of materials from an open pit in the ground. Open-pit mines are typically enlarged until
either the mineral resource is exhausted or more overburden than ore makes further mining
unprofitable. The second is quarrying. A quarry is an open-pit mine where building materials such as
dimension stone, rock, sand, or gravel are taken. Another technique is strip mining, which consists of
removing surface layers off to reveal ore underneath. Last, mountaintop removal involves taking the
top of a mountain off to reach ore deposits in depth. It is commonly associated with coal mining.
A. Answer the questions
1. Write examples of mining machinery: Dragline excavators or Bucket wheel excavators.
2. What are the mining techniques in the text? Open-Pit, Quarrying, strip mining and mountaintop.
3. What is the difference between the overburden and gangue? The gangue is that element without
value ore that surrounded the ore body. The overburden is the elements non desirable that we
have to get rid of it.

Handout 3

4. What is the difference between surface and underground mining? Surface mining is a broad
category of mining in which vegetation, dirt, or layers of rock covering the mineral deposit (the
overburden) are removed. It is the opposite of underground mining, in which the overlying rock
is left in place while the mineral removed through shafts or tunnels.

B. Rewrite the sentences correctly

1. An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals including metals.
2. Overburden is the material that lies above an area of economic or scientific
interest, also called waste or spoil.
3. Tailings or tails are the materials left of an ore over after the process of
separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction.
4. Smelting makes the ore to get the metal base use of heat and a chemical
reducing agent to decompose.
C. Fill in each blank with an appropriate word from the list: gold,
techniques, aluminium,
crushed, dressing, gangue, extract , dense, oxides,
grinding, mechanical

Processing
Mineral processing, also called mineral dressing or ore dressing, is the separation of
minerals or valuable metals from ores or gangue. This is done through chemical or mechanical
means. Mechanical means include crushing, grinding and washing.
The extraction of minerals can be done in two ways: placer mining or hard rock mining. The
first uses water and gravity to extract minerals. It is frequently used for precious metal deposits
like gold and gemstones. Since gems and heavy metals are considerably more dense than sand,
they tend to accumulate at the base of placer deposits.
The second uses the pulverization of rock then chemicals. The rock ore is crushed and
pulverized into fine particles and next valuable minerals are isolated by one or a combination of
several mechanical and chemical techniques. Since most metals are present in ores as oxides or
sulfides, the metal needs to be reduced to its metallic form. This is done through chemical means
such as smelting or through electrolytic reduction, as in the case of aluminium.

Handout 3