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MINING
Lesson 1 - Page 5

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Some of the minerals produced, such as coal and salt, are ready to use right after they have been mined. These are referred to as "dig and ship." It may be necessary to wash or treat these commodities in different ways to enhance their quality, but their properties remain essentially unchanged.

However, most metals usually occur in nature combined with other materials which is called an ore. Ores need to be treated, usually with chemicals or heat, to separate the metal from its host material. These processing techniques can be very complex and expensive, but they are the only way to recover the metal of interest. The table below shows ore minerals for the listed elements.


Ready to ship

element

oxide

sulfide

carbonate

mercury

cinnabar

   

tin

cassiterite

   

lead

minim

galena

cerrusite

copper

cuprite

chalcopyrite

malachite

silver

 

argentite

 

iron

hematite

pyrite

siderite

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