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In mineral processing, recovery or recovery rate is the mass fraction of a valuable mineral that is carried over in a beneficiation process from the ore feedstock to the concentrate. For example, 90% recovery of a metal indicates that 10% were "rejected", sent by the ore mill into the tailings along with the gangue: [1]
In cases where a valuable metal, for example iron (Fe) is being recovered from a range of minerals, such hematite (Fe2O3), goethite (FeO(OH)) and magnetite (Fe3O4) from iron ore, the definition is broadened:
In such cases, terminology like iron recovery or 'recovery (%Fe)' is used.
The term weight recovery (also referred to as yield) is also applied, and refers to ratio of the mass of concentrate to the mass of feed:
Recovery features in grade-recovery curves that communicate how 'upgrading' an ore often comes at the cost of decreasing recovery.