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Minerals equipments: crusher, Mineral deposits, minerals introduction and economic value

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Minerals equipments: crusher, Mineral deposits, minerals introduction and economic value

June 8, 2023 nflg 0 Comments

Mineral resources take key role in modern building and usage because it can supply us energy. In the mineral processing plants, NFLG can supply you crushing, grinding, screening and feeding equipments with low price and high quality in mining industry.

MINERALS INTRODUCTION

The earth’s crust is composed of many kinds of rocks, each of which is an aggregate of one or more minerals. In geology, the term mineral describes any naturally-occurring solid substance with a specific composition and crystal structure. A mineral’s composition refers to the kinds and proportions of elements making up the mineral. The way these elements are packed together determines the structure of the mineral. More than 3,500 different minerals have been identified. There are only 12 common elements (oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, titanium, hydrogen, manganese, phosphorus) that occur in the earth’s crust. They have abundances of 0.1 percent or more. All other naturally occurring elements are found in very minor or trace amounts.

Silicon and oxygen are the most abundant crustal elements, together comprising more than 70 percent by weight. It is therefore not surprising that the most abundant crustal minerals are the silicates (e.g. olivine, Mg2SiO4), followed by the oxides (e.g. hematite, Fe2O3).

Other important types of minerals include: the carbonates (e.g. calcite, CaCO3) the sulfides (e.g. galena, PbS) and the sulfates (e.g. anhydrite, CaSO4). Most of the abundant minerals in the earth’s crust are not of commercial value. Economically valuable minerals (metallic and nonmetallic) that provide the raw materials for industry tend to be rare and hard to find. Therefore, considerable effort and skill is necessary for finding where they occur and extracting them in sufficient quantities.

ECONOMIC VALUE OF MINERALS

Minerals that are of economic value can be classified as metallic or nonmetallic. Metallic minerals are those from which valuable metals (e.g. iron, copper) can be extracted for commercial use. Metals that are considered geochemically abundant occur at crustal abundances of 0.1 percent or more (e.g. iron, aluminum, manganese, magnesium, titanium). Metals that are considered geochemically scarce occur at crustal abundances of less than 0.1 percent (e.g. nickel, copper, zinc, platinum metals). Some important metallic minerals are: hematite (a source of iron), bauxite (a source of aluminum), sphalerite (a source of zinc) and galena (a source of lead). Metallic minerals occasionally but rarely occur as a single element (e.g. native gold or copper).

Nonmetallic minerals are valuable, not for the metals they contain, but for their properties as chemical compounds. Because they are commonly used in industry, they are also often referred to as industrial minerals. They are classified according to their use. Some industrial minerals are used as sources of important chemicals (e.g. halite for sodium chloride and borax for borates). Some are used for building materials (e.g. gypsum for plaster and kaolin for bricks). Others are used for making fertilizers (e.g. apatite for phosphate and sylvite for potassium). Still others are used as abrasives (e.g. diamond and corrundum).

Mineral equipments

Mineral equipments are the industrial processing machines used in mineral mining industry for crushing, grinding, screening etc. Mineral crusher is usually used as primary crushing equipment for crushing in mineral resources process. It includes jaw crusher , impact crushing equipments, gyratory crusher or cone crusher (spring, cs, hydraulic etc.), mobile crusher or portable crushing station etc. According to the features of minerals, we can supply nonmetallic mineral crusher and metallic mineral crusher for sale in mining industry. Different mineral resource has various hard, we also can manufacture copper ore crusher , nickel crusher, zinc ore crusher, gold ore crusher, coal crusher , diamond crusher etc.

In the mineral processing plants, mineral mill takes an important role for grinding such as kaolin grinder, gypsum ball mill , building materials grinding machines, coal mill , cement mill (ball mill and vertical mill ) etc.

MINERAL DEPOSITS

Minerals are everywhere around us. For example, the ocean is estimated to contain more than 70 million tons of gold. Yet, it would be much too expensive to recover that gold because of its very low concentration in the water. Minerals must be concentrated into deposits to make their collection economically feasible. A mineral deposit containing one or more minerals that can be extracted profitably is called an ore. Many minerals are commonly found together (e.g. quartz and gold; molybdenum, tin and tungsten; copper, lead and zinc; platinum and palladium). Because various geologic processes can create local enrichments of minerals, mineral deposits can be classified according to the concentration process that formed them. The five basic types of mineral deposits are: hydrothermal, magmatic, sedimentary, placer and residual.

Hydrothermal mineral deposits are formed when minerals are deposited by hot, aqueous solutions flowing through fractures and pore spaces of crustal rock. Many famous ore bodies have resulted from hydrothermal depositon, including the tin mines in Cornwa ll, England and the copper mines in Arizona and Utah. Magmatic mineral deposits are formed when processes such as partial melting and fractional crystallization occur during the melting and cooling of rocks. Pegmatite rocks formed by fractional crystallization can contain high concentrations of lithium, beryllium and cesium. Layers of chromite (chrome ore) were also formed by igneous processes in the famous Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa.

Several mineral concentration processes involve sedimentation or weathering. Water soluble salts can form sedimentary mineral deposits when they precipitate during evaporation of lake or seawater (evaporite deposits). Important deposits of industrial minerals were formed in this manner, including the borax deposits at Death Valley and Searles Lake, and the marine deposits of gypsum found in many states.

Minerals with a high specific gravity (e.g. gold, platinum, diamonds) can be concentrated by flowing water in placer deposits found in stream beds and along shorelines. The most famous gold placer deposits occur in the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa. Residual mineral deposits can form when weathering processes remove water soluble minerals from an area, leaving a concentration of less soluble minerals. The aluminum ore, bauxite, was originally formed in this manner under tropical weathering conditions. The best known bauxite deposit in the United States occurs in Arkansas.

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