Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals concentrated above background levels, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit. The grade of ore refers to the concentration of the desired material it contains. The value of the metals or minerals a rock contains must be weighed against the cost of extraction to determine whether it is of sufficiently high grade to be worth mining and is therefore considered an ore. A complex ore is one containing more than one valuable mineral.
Pentlandite is an iron–nickel sulfide with the chemical formula (Fe,Ni)9S8. Pentlandite has a narrow variation range in nickel to iron ratios (Ni:Fe), but it is usually described as 1:1. In some cases, this ratio is skewed by the presence of pyrrhotite inclusions. It also contains minor cobalt, usually at low levels as a fraction of weight.
The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine in the western United States, located in Butte, Montana. It is one mile (1.6 km) long by one-half mile (800 m) wide, with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic, about the acidity of Coca-Cola, lemon juice, or gastric acid. As a result, the pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals that leach from the rock, including copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.
The Southeast Missouri Lead District, commonly called the Lead Belt, is a lead mining district in the southeastern part of Missouri. Counties in the Lead Belt include Saint Francois, Crawford, Dent, Iron, Madison, Reynolds, and Washington. This mining district is the most important and critical lead producer in the United States.
Various theories of ore genesis explain how the various types of mineral deposits form within Earth's crust. Ore-genesis theories vary depending on the mineral or commodity examined.
Iron Mountain Mine, also known as the Richmond Mine at Iron Mountain, is a mine near Redding in Northern California, US. Geologically classified as a "massive sulfide ore deposit", the site was mined for iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc, quartz, and pyrite intermittently from the 1860s until 1963. The mine is the source of extremely acidic mine drainage which also contains large amounts of zinc, copper, and cadmium. One of America's most toxic waste sites, it has been listed as a federal Superfund site since 1983.
Creighton Mine is an underground nickel, copper, and platinum-group elements (PGE) mine. It is presently owned and operated by Vale Limited in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Open pit mining began in 1901, and underground mining began in 1906. The mine is situated in the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) in its South Range geologic unit. The mine is the source of many excavation-related seismic events, such as earthquakes and rock burst events. It is home to SNOLAB, and is currently the deepest nickel mine in Canada. Expansion projects to deepen the Creighton Mine are currently underway.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
The Midnite Mine is an inactive uranium mine in the Selkirk Mountains of the state of Washington that operated from 1955 to 1965 and again from 1968 to 1981. Located within the reservation of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, it is approximately 8 miles (13 km) from Wellpinit, Stevens County. The mine was listed as a Superfund site under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) on May 11, 2000. In addition to elevated levels of radioactivity, heavy metals mobilized in uranium acid mine drainage pose a potential threat to human health and the environment.
The Nonesuch Shale is a Proterozoic geologic formation that outcrops in Michigan and Wisconsin, United States, but has been found by drill holes to extend in the subsurface as far southwest as Iowa.
Leviathan Mine is a United States superfund site at an abandoned open-pit sulfur mine located in Alpine County, California. The mine is located on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada at about 7,000-foot (2,100 m) elevation, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Markleeville and 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe. The mine site comprises approximately 250 acres (100 ha) of land surrounded by the Toiyabe National Forest, which is only accessible a few months a year. The approximately 22 million tons of sulfur ore-containing crushed rock at the mine are responsible for contaminating the Leviathan and Aspen Creek, which join with Mountaineer Creek to form Bryant Creek which ultimately empties into the East Fork of the Carson River. These water bodies are listed as 303(d) impaired. The site location is seismically active.
Carlin–type gold deposits are sediment-hosted disseminated gold deposits. These deposits are characterized by invisible gold in arsenic rich pyrite and arsenopyrite. This dissolved kind of gold is called "Invisible Gold", as it can only be found through chemical analysis. The deposit is named after the Carlin mine, the first large deposit of this type discovered in the Carlin Trend, Nevada.
Idaho Cobalt Operations (ICO) is a cobalt mine located in Lemhi County, Idaho in the United States near the town of Salmon. The mine has reserves amounting to 3.8 million tonnes of ore grading 0.5% cobalt. The mine will also produce copper and gold. The project is located directly adjacent to the inactive Blackbird mine.
Farallon Negro is a volcano in the Catamarca province of Argentina. Active between about 9-8 million years ago, it was formerly a stratovolcano or a multi vent volcano. Eventually, erosion removed most of the volcano and exposed the underlying structure including subvolcanic intrusions.
The Tati Goldfields are a mineral-rich band in Botswana and Zimbabwe in southern Africa. The band runs approximately 130 kilometres (81 mi) long by 5 kilometres (3 mi) wide, and crosses the Tati River. It is the southernmost of the gold-bearing bands in the Archaen greenstone (schist) belts of Zimbabwe. It is estimated that between 1866 and 1963 over 200,000 ounces of gold were produced from mines in the Tati Goldfields.
Hydrothermal mineral deposits are accumulations of valuable minerals which formed from hot waters circulating in Earth's crust through fractures. They eventually create metallic-rich fluids concentrated in a selected volume of rock, which become supersaturated and then precipitate ore minerals. In some occurrences, minerals can be extracted for a profit by mining. Discovery of mineral deposits consumes considerable time and resources and only about one in every one thousand prospects explored by companies are eventually developed into a mine. A mineral deposit is any geologically significant concentration of an economically useful rock or mineral present in a specified area. The presence of a known but unexploited mineral deposit implies a lack of evidence for profitable extraction.
The Chilean Iron Belt is a geological province rich in iron ore deposits in northern Chile. It extends as a north-south beld along the western part of the Chilean regions of Coquimbo and Atacama, chiefly between the cities of La Serena and Taltal. The belt follows much of the Atacama Fault System and is about 600 km long and 25 km broad.
Michel Jébrak is a Franco-Canadian geologist, academic and a researcher. He is an emeritus professor at University of Quebec’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He is a former Vice-Rector for Research and Creation at UQAM and holder of the UQAT-UQAM Mining Entrepreneurship Chair.
An orogenic gold deposit is a type of hydrothermal mineral deposit. More than 75% of the gold recovered by humans through history belongs to the class of orogenic gold deposits. Rock structure is the primary control of orogenic gold mineralization at all scales, as it controls both the transport and deposition processes of the mineralized fluids, creating structural pathways of high permeability and focusing deposition to structurally controlled locations.
Electra Battery Materials Corporation is a Canadian multinational corporation engaged in mining and refining raw materials for electric batteries. Electra owns and operates the first fully permitted metallurgical refinery in North America for producing battery-grade cobalt and nickel sulfate. The company also owns the Iron Creek cobalt-copper deposit in Lemhi County, Idaho, US.
