Mineral processing extracts valuable materials from ores using heavy machinery. There are four main types of processing: reducing particle size, separating particles by size, concentrating desired minerals, and removing liquids. Early methods involved manual labor, but modern techniques use mechanized unit processes. Dehydration is the final step, and metals may undergo additional pyrometallurgical processing.
Mineral processing refers to a series of interconnected procedures that are all aimed at extracting valuable material from ores. Many valuable minerals are mined as ores, which are rocks that contain useful substances. In the past the processing of minerals was done by hand, although in modern times it is typically achieved through the use of heavy machinery. There are four main types of ore processing, each using a different method to separate the precious materials from the ore gangue. The four different methods involve reducing the particle size of the mineral, separating the particles by size, concentrating the desired minerals, and removing the liquids from the solid minerals.
Early ore processing typically involved manual labor, such as striking the ore with hammers to break it. This process of manually separating ore from ore was known as spalling. Similar processes were developed during the 10th century which mechanized the use of hammers to break up ore. These stamp mills typically used a water wheel to lift the hammers and gravity to draw them onto the ore. Early processing techniques also relied on manual labor to extract every single mineral particle from the mineral gangue.
Modern mineral processing techniques typically use mechanized unit processes to separate ore from ore. The first process is typically comminution, which may consist of crushing or grinding a mineral. This procedure can break down ores from ores, allowing them to be further processed. The next step could be to separate the particles by size. A common way to achieve this is through the use of progressively finer screens.
After the mineral has been broken down and sorted by size, it can undergo one or more processes to separate the desired minerals from the unwanted mineral gangue. The specific processes can vary between different minerals and are highly dependent on the physical qualities of both the ore and the ore. Gravity concentration is a relatively simple method that works due to the different specific gravity of each ore and mineral. This is a relatively low-tech method and one of the first used. It typically involves placing the ore and ore in a container and shaking it until the different materials have settled separately.
The final procedure in ore processing is often dehydration, which separates the moisture from the minerals. This can be accomplished by passing ores through specialized screens or through other methods. Particular minerals, such as metals, may undergo additional processing methods. Metals can be subjected to a variety of pyrometallurgical ore processing techniques, such as smelting.
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