Chapter 1 - General principles of applied mineralogy

Abstract

This chapter is designed to illustrate the general principles of applied mineralogy. Applied mineralogy in the mining industry is the application of mineralogical information to understanding and solving problems encountered during exploration and mining, and during processing of ores, concentrates, smelter products, and related materials. It involves characterizing minerals and materials, and interpreting the data with respect to exploration, mineral processing, tailings disposal and treatment, hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, and refining. Numerous techniques for determining mineral characteristics have been developed in the last three decades as a consequence of the availability of new equipment, including scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray analyzer (SEM/EDX), environmental scanning electron microscope (E-SEM), microprobe (MP), image analyzer (IA), proton-induced X-ray analyzer (FIXE), secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS), time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometer (ToF-SIMS), laser ionization mass spectrometer (LIMS), time of flight-laser ionization mass spectrometer (ToF-LIMS), infra-red analysis (IRA), cathodluminescence, and others. The results obtained by using the afore-mentioned equipment have augmented knowledge of mineral characteristics and have provided a better understanding of mineral behaviors during processing.