When a person wants to achieve a goal, he follows a series of steps to meet the specific requirements of the goal.
For an example, let's say for cooking, the first stage includes to find the things to cook such as vegetables, cookery which can be found in supermarkets.The second stage of cooking include the quantity required to cook which needs to bought. The things that are need to be done to vegetables is the third stage which includes cutting, heating the pan. The final stage of cooking is to cook the items and it finishes your goal of cooking. The first three stages are as important as the last stage, but the last stage holds the prime importance as everything depends on its success.
A similar story runs around in mining. First stage is to inspect the locations to find the type of minerals present at that location which is called prospecting. Once the minerals are found, the quantity of the minerals, depth of the deposit and the surroundings of the mineral can be investigated which is known as exploration. To reach the deposit, a pathway needs to be prepared which can be removal of overburden or declines or shafts and crosscuts which is known as development. The most important stage of the mine life is exploitation of the mineral i.e. extraction of the mineral which can be done by several methods. While the cooking has only four stages, mining has fifth stage known as reclamation which is to fill up the area with other material such that there are no pot holes created or to make that useful.
Prospecting:
There are different types of methods to find the potential locations of the minerals such as - Geological methods
- Geo-chemical methods
- Geophysical methods
Geological methods can be used to find the minerals with the help of visual inspection which can be found on the earth surface.
Geo-chemical methods can be best describes as some plants are grow in abundance at the sites of the certain minerals which makes geologist job easy to make a guess of the minerals according to the surroundings.
Geophysical methods make use of gravitational, seismic, electrical, magnetic, electromagnetic and radiometric methods to find the minerals inside the mother earth.
Exploration:
This is the stage where the extents of the mineral are found by drilling and collecting the core logs. The tonnage calculations and the grade determinations are made to estimate the value of the deposit. The feasibility studies are conducted to categorize the mineral into reserves or the future resources which simply means if the mineral can be extracted with the existing technology economically or which is not economically at current state and the up-gradation of the technology can make the extraction of the mineral economical.
Development:
Development depends on the depth of the mineral deposits which may be characterized as the near the earth surface deposits and the deeply buried mineral deposits that are characterized based upon the value of the mineral.
For near surface mineral deposit, the overburden rock/soil is stripped covering the deposit to gain access for exploitation of the mineral which become the surface mining methods.
For deeply buried mineral deposits. the openings are excavated such as shafts, declines, adits, inclines to reach the deeply buried deposits to prepare for underground mining methods.
Exploitation:
Prime important stage of mining is started when enough development is done to ensure that production once started continues uninterrupted. The development goes on in succession with the production. There are different mining methods used to exploit a mineral from the mother earth. The mining methods are dependent on the type, depth and extent of the mineral deposit. Safety, technology, environmental concerns and economics ultimately derive the selection of the mining method. On a broad scale, the mining methods are classified into- Surface Mining Methods
- Underground Mining Methods
Reclamation:
The reclamation of the mine site is of paramount importance. The plans of the reclamation should be submitted before the development of the mine is started which ensure the goal of sustainability. The planned works during the reclamation process are to restore the land surface and make the plantations on that area to make it habitable and monitor the water quality through the years. The old mine sites have been converted into national parks, golf courses. lakes, underground storage facilities, solid waste disposal areas and others which benefits the society in one form or the other.
This is a cyclic process, the available land is prospected, explored, mined and reclaimed.
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