Mining Low-grade Ores.docx

Furia, Juliet Czarina V.

April 8, 2015

2011-39000

Is it economical to mine low-grade ores?

The decision to mine an ore or to leave it be is largely dependent on whether the benefits of mining exceed the costs of extraction. This means that mining low-grade ores can be economical for as long as the amount of metal obtained is large enough to be economically useful and therefore the benefits will exceed the costs. The reason for this is that the cost of mining low-grade ores will be greater because larger volumes of ore will need to be processed in order to obtain an economically useful amount of metal and mining larger volumes of ore will require the disruption of a larger area of land, ultimately resulting to more wastes and increased pollution. However, there have been recent improvements in the process of extracting which results to less land disruption and lesser pollution but this technology is of other countries and is not currently used in the Philippines. Therefore, in cases where the amount of metal in low-grade ore is too little to be of economic benefit, it will be more economical to use the land for other purposes such as agriculture than to pursue mining the ores.

References http://quizlet.com/17614933/apes-chapter-15-flash-cards/ Miller, G., Spoolman, S. 2010. Environmental Science. Page 289. Yolanda Cossio. Zhou, Y. 1976. Recent Advances in Mining and Processing of Low-Grade and Submarginal Mineral Deposits. Pergamon Press Inc.