Mining

The taking of minerals from the earth, including production from surface waters and from wells. Usually the oil and gas industries are regarded as separate from the mining industry. The term mining industry commonly includes such functions as exploration, mineral separation, hydrometallurgy, electrolytic reduction, and smelting and refining, even though these are not actually mining operations.

Mining is broadly divided into three basic methods: opencast, underground, and fluid mining. Opencast mining is done either from pits or gouged-out slopes or by surface mining, which involves extraction from a series of successive parallel trenches. Dredging is a type of surface mining, with digging done from barges. Hydraulic mining uses jets of water to excavate material.

Underground mining involves extraction from beneath the surface, from depths as great as 10,000 ft (3 km), by any of several methods.

Fluid mining is extraction from natural brines, lakes, oceans, or underground waters; from solutions made by dissolving underground materials and pumping to the surface; from underground oil or gas pools; by melting underground material with hot water and pumping to the surface; or by driving material from well to well by gas drive, water drive, or combustion. Most fluid mining is done by wells. In one experimental type of well mining, insoluble material is washed loose by underground jets and the slurry is pumped to the surface.

The activities of the mining industry begin with exploration, which, since accidental discoveries or surficially exposed deposits are no longer sufficient, has become a complicated, expensive, and highly technical task. After suitable deposits have been found and their worth proved, development, or preparation for mining, is necessary. For opencast mining, this involves stripping off overburden; and for underground mining, the sinking of shafts, driving of adits and various other underground openings, and providing for drainage and ventilation. For mining by wells, drilling must be done. For all these cases, equipment must be provided for such purposes as blasthole drilling, blasting, loading, transporting, hoisting, power transmission, pumping, ventilation, storage, or casing and connecting wells. Mines may ship their crude products directly to reduction plants, refiners, or consumers, but commonly, concentrating mills are provided to separate useful from useless (gangue) minerals.

A unique feature of mining is the circumstance that mineral deposits undergoing extraction are “wasting assets,” meaning that they are not renewable as are other natural resources. This depletability of mineral deposits requires that mining companies must periodically find new deposits and constantly improve their technology in order to stay in business. Depletion means that the supplies of any particular mineral, except those derived from oceanic brine, must be drawn from ever-lower-grade sources.