Mining of stones and minerals in different countries. Mining Minerals, precious stones, how they are mined

In addition to the famous tea plantations, Sri Lanka is also famous for its precious stones. It occupies a leading position in the mining of precious stones. The process of extracting stones has remained unchanged since ancient times. It's still manual labor. Mines are dug using a pick and shovel, usually close to the river bank. The rock itself is lifted up in baskets or buckets using ropes, and then washed under running water or in a nearby river. Then special people get to work, trying to find a jewel in a handful of stones. Sometimes you can find one, two or even a whole handful of stones, but often the searchers are left empty-handed. And the whole process begins again. Almost all precious stones, especially large ones, are sold at auction. During the time of Arab traders, the island was called Serendip or the island of precious stones. Under the name "Serendip" Sri Lanka entered the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, who visited Sri Lanka twice, and the tales of 1000 and 1 night. The famous traveler Marco Polo saw a ruby ​​as thick as a man's arm adorning the Ruwanveli Dagoba in Anuradhapura. The famous blue sapphire “Blue Beauty” of 400 carats, adorning the English crown, as well as the “Star of India” sapphire of 536 carats, exhibited in the New York Museum, comes from Sri Lanka, namely from the city of Ratnapura, which has been important for centuries center for the extraction of precious stones. 01. Mining is carried out only manually. The only automation equipment is pumps that constantly pump out water. They dig right in the rice fields. If you turn off the pump, the mine will flood in about an hour. If the mine is deep, then air is forced into the adit using a motor pump.
02. Previously, they used excavators and other heavy equipment for mining, but they left behind lakes.
03. In Sri Lanka, about 90% of the land contains almost half of the 200 varieties of precious and semi-precious stones that exist in the world.
04. To mine stones you need a license, it costs $5,000 a year.
05. In these wicker baskets the soil is passed upstairs, where it is washed in search of precious stones.
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07. More serious development of several mines. The depth of the mine is from 7 to 30 meters.
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09. Development here was stopped several months ago, the mine is abandoned.
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11. All raised clay is washed.
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13. After 10 minutes, only small pebbles remain in a special basket.
14. Precious sapphires, rubies, alexandrites, etc. are found among them. Sometimes you can dig for 2-3 months and not find a single stone.
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16. Here are some semi-precious stones. After the end of the shift, they are handed over to the market. Until you start processing a stone, it is not clear how valuable it is, so no one will give much for an unprocessed stone. But if the stone turns out to be clean, without foreign impurities, it can be very expensive, but the person who mined it will not know about it. In order not to lose money in case of such luck, many prospectors work as families, some mine, others process.
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18. A real Marlboro cowboy.
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20. 21.
22. After processing, the stones are delivered to the store.
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24. Store them in envelopes. Only a professional can understand where a real valuable stone is. Sapphires, for example, are heated to give them the desired color. Real pure sapphire does not need heat treatment and is very expensive. The price of one carat reaches $10,000.
25. Handbag for expensive stones.
26. In Sri Lanka there are different types of garnets: essonite (orange-brown), almandine (fiery red), rhodolite (pale red), spesartite (brown-red), as well as yellowish-red garnet. You can also find here greenish-yellow Alexandrite, Cat's eye, Moonstone (light, translucent, with bluish reflections), Amethyst, Aquamarine, Beryl, Topaz (usually yellow-brown), Zircon, Tourmaline Chrysoberyl (golden yellow or greenish color) , and Spinel.
27. Sapphires, average price $300 per carat.
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Instructions

Finding minerals is a field job, so you need to have the right equipment. You should have comfortable, strong clothing, shoes suitable for walking on mountain slopes, a backpack, a short shovel (preferably a mining shovel), a geological hammer and a pair of chisels of different sizes. It is useful to have a short crowbar or crowbar with you. To package the collected minerals, you need paper bags or at least newspapers.

If you think that to search for minerals you need a certain area - for example, a mountainous area, then you are deeply mistaken. Minerals can be found everywhere. First, study at least basic information about geology and the origin of minerals, information about your region. This will help you understand what minerals you can find in your area.

It is best to start searching for them in existing quarries and mines nearby. The rock in such places exposes deep layers, which greatly contributes to a successful search. It is more difficult, but no less interesting, to look for minerals in natural outcrops, such as rocks, screes, and river canyons. Do not miss various pits, places of excavation for automobiles and power line routes. Everywhere where a bulldozer has worked, you can find something interesting.

First of all, pay attention to any deviation in the rocks, in the location of the layers. Don't miss the spots that sparkle in the sun. Even if yours seems to have been explored far and wide, do not lose optimism - geologists are usually hunting for something specific, so you may well find something that has escaped their gaze.

If the found mineral is located in the rock, carefully cut it out using a hammer and chisel. Chop off the bulk of the excess rock from it immediately; all the fine work should be done at home. Pack the sample in a paper bag or wrap it in newspaper, and be sure to write down the location and time of discovery on the package. If you do not provide the data right away, then later you may simply get confused in dozens of packages with collected samples.

Alternatively, indicate the number on the package, be sure to do so several times and in different places in the package, and write down the basic data, including the number, in a field diary. The convenience of this method is that you can add additional notes to your diary. Later, re-reading the diary, you will get a lot of pleasant impressions from the memories of your hikes and finds.

At home, sort out the collected minerals. Clean the samples from debris and excess rock, make stands for them or place them in storage boxes. Attach a small label with a number to each sample. You can also indicate the name of the mineral. Store the collection in closed boxes or a glass cabinet, otherwise the minerals quickly become covered with dust and lose their attractive appearance.

People have been interested in mining semi-precious stones ever since primitive man picked up the first colored pebble in the mountains or found transparent amber on the shore.

Most often, precious stones are mined underground, in mine workings, and less often in open quarries. It also happens that under the influence of erosion, stones are gradually freed from the parent rock and are carried downstream by water flows. In such places, the development of these alluvial deposits is carried out by manual washing, using dredges.

Many gem deposits were discovered by accident. Even today, systematic searches in most areas of the world are limited mainly to diamonds alone.

As for other precious stones, the search for their deposits is usually carried out using the simplest means, without the use of modern technology and in the absence of an appropriate scientific base.

Nevertheless, it is still worthy of surprise with what success local search engines are identifying more and more new deposits. Mining enterprises that exploit deposits of precious stones are called mines, mines or mines.

The methods of extracting precious stones, with the exception of diamonds, are very primitive in most countries; in some areas they are essentially the same as at the dawn of our era. The easiest way is to collect gems located directly on the surface. This is possible in a dry river valley or in rock crevices. Crystals that have grown on the rock are broken off using a hammer and chisel, a pick or a crowbar, as well as pneumatic jackhammers or an explosive method.

The extraction of precious stones from young placers is relatively simple. First of all, the overlying sediments are removed. If the placers lie deep from the surface, then there are pits and shafts, sometimes up to 10 or more meters deep. Simple ceilings protect the mouth of the mine from rain; groundwater seeping from below is scooped out with buckets or pumped out with mechanical pumps. From the bottom of the mine, horizontal underground workings run through the layer of sands carrying precious stones. In the largest production shafts, temporary support is installed.

Sometimes precious stones are even mined directly from the river bed. To do this, the river is artificially dammed in some places so that its waters flow faster. Workers, standing waist-deep in such water, stir up the bottom soil with long poles and rakes. Clay-sand components of the soil, which have a lower density, are carried away with the flow of water, and heavier precious stones remain at the bottom.

Further enrichment of sands extracted from mines or rivers with precious stones is carried out by washing them. Workers fill special baskets with loose rock containing gemstones and shake them in wash pits filled with water. This removes the clay and sand, leaving the heavier gemstones to accumulate in concentrate. Light stones like beryl, feldspar, quartz and tourmaline are, of course, lost with this mining method.

In some countries, hydraulic methods of placer mining are practiced, when loose clastic material is washed off the slopes by strong water jets.
The greatest costs are required for underground mining, in which adits pass through hard rock. They resort to it only in those places where the presence of a vein with precious stones is firmly established.

Theft is a particular problem when mining precious stones. They are dangerous for a mining enterprise primarily because they drive down the price of stones to a lower level than is economically justified.
The ingenuity of thieves in the ways and techniques of stealing precious stones from mines and mines seems inexhaustible. But measures to combat theft are becoming more and more sophisticated. Diamond mines are most reliably guarded.

[In the Soviet Union, the extraction of precious stones is carried out both by large specialized mining and processing plants and by small enterprises; Often production is combined with geological exploration and is carried out directly by geological exploration parties.

In some cases, precious stones are mined as a by-product during the development of deposits of other types of mineral raw materials.

Regarding the rights to exploration and mining of precious stones, and the payment of workers, each country has its own rules. In general, it can be said that in most countries, work in the exploration and mining of precious stones is the lot of poor people.

MINERAL MINING (a. mineral production, mineral output, mineral recovery; n. Gewinnung von nutzbaren Bodenschatzen; f. exploitation des mineraux ufiles; i. explotacion de minerales utiles) - processes of solid, liquid and gaseous production using technical means. The term “mining” is also used as an economic category and is expressed in volumetric or weight units of measurement: in relation to - in m 3, - in m 3 / day (, and other components - in tons), non-metallic raw materials - in tons, - in, semi-precious stones - in kilograms, (, etc.) - in m3, raw materials for, paint raw materials - in tons, decorative facing stones - in m 2. The calculation of extracted minerals is carried out in absolute figures obtained from the mineral deposit, taking into account losses (the so-called marketable product) and in terms of the useful component (metal or). The latter makes data on the extraction of a specific mineral from different deposits comparable (that is, it takes into account the % content of the valuable component in minerals).

Mining has a history of thousands of years (see). The process of mining consists of extracting a valuable component in a relatively pure form (for example, oil, natural gas, coal, precious stones, etc.) or in a form (for example, metal ores), which is further processed.

On land, mining is carried out, and; in the sea - with drilling wells, and special autonomous ones that collect nodules from the bottom.

The overwhelming number of solid mineral deposits are developed using mines and quarries, as well as boreholes, by artificially converting a number of solid minerals into a mobile (liquid, gaseous) state (native salt, rock salt, coal, etc.). About 90% of brown and 20% of hard coals, 70% of metal ores, and 95% of non-metallic building materials are mined in quarries. Liquid and gaseous minerals (oil, brines, groundwater, natural gas) are extracted using drilling wells, a number of oil fields are developed using mines, and open pit mining is used to extract oil-saturated sands ("heavy" oils). A number of fields use a combination of mining methods (open pit and mine, mine and borehole). The choice of mining method is determined mainly by the mining and geological conditions of the minerals and economic calculations.

The annual production of solid minerals in the world is about 20 billion tons (including non-metallic minerals - 13 billion tons), oil - about 3 billion tons, gaseous minerals - 1.5 trillion. m 3 (1980). The scale of mining is increasing with the development of industrial production, technological progress and population growth. Of the total amount of minerals extracted from the bowels of the earth in the entire history of human civilization, the predominant volume was extracted in the 20th century (1901-80), incl. oil 99.5%, coal 90%, 87%, over 80%, 70%. The growth of mineral extraction is ensured by the discovery of new deposits, the involvement of deep deposits in the exploitation, and the development of ores with low contents of useful components. An important reserve for increasing industrial consumption is the improvement of mineral processing technologies, the introduction of low-waste and non-waste technologies with the utilization of all components of the mined rock mass. The largest volumes of mineral extraction come from machine (in some cases automated) systems, the importance of the most advanced physicochemical and biological methods is increasing, allowing selective extraction of metals from deposits directly in rock masses, without significant disruption of their continuity (for example,). Mining is an energy-intensive process. The main sources of energy are electric, liquid fuel, explosives. Energy consumption during open-pit mining is 10-30 times less than during mining.

Mining is the most important area of ​​human activity, ensuring the development of the productive forces of society. See table.

Friends, hello everyone. Today I will tell you about what methods of mining exist, and their impact on the environment, but first of all, these methods depend on the minerals themselves, their physical and chemical properties, locations and the development of technological progress.

Until recently, the extraction of natural resources was carried out manually, which required great physical effort and considerable labor costs, and it itself had rather low labor productivity.

In modern conditions, everything has changed radically: with the development of powerful technical means and the use of special machines, labor costs have decreased, and productivity and volumes of mineral extraction have increased significantly.

Basic methods and technology of natural resource extraction

Everything, both solid, liquid, and gaseous on our planet, is distributed unevenly and is either on the surface or deep underground, and depending on their location and occurrence, one or another method is used for their extraction. The most common methods of extracting natural resources can be considered:

1. open path or career path,
2. closed method or underground or mine method,
3. combined method or open-underground method,
4. geotechnological method or borehole method,
5. dredging method.

All of these methods have both their advantages and disadvantages, therefore the open-pit mining technology involves the creation of deep pits in the form of large quarries or cuts at the sites of development and extraction of natural resources, the dimensions of which depend on the relatively small depth and length, as well as power fossil beds.
The advantage of this method of extraction is its relative cheapness, the highest productivity and labor intensity, safe working conditions, and the disadvantages are a large decrease in the quality of raw materials due to the content of a large amount of waste rock, and negative consequences for the environment.

Natural construction and industrial raw materials such as -

• limestone and chalk,
• sand and clay,
• peat and coal,
• copper and lead,
• molybdenum and nickel,
• tin and tungsten,
• chromium and manganese,
• zinc and iron.

Solid minerals located at a sufficiently large depth are mined underground, i.e. closed method, in which underground mines are constructed.
The disadvantage of this method is its huge risk for miners, associated with collapse and gas contamination, and therefore an explosion hazard.

Ores, polymetals and minerals are usually mined in this way.

such as:

• copper and gold,
• tungsten and iron,
• and mineral salts.

If the open and closed method of mining is not suitable for a given deposit of industrial raw materials, then a combined open-underground method is used, where raw materials from the upper layers are first extracted by open method, and then the remaining reserves of metal ores located at a sufficiently large depth are processed using the mine method. .

The advantages of this method are large volumes of extraction of natural raw materials, and many non-ferrous metals and diamonds are usually mined in this way.

The geotechnological or borehole method is used in the extraction of special types of raw materials that are in a gaseous or liquid state using a procedure such as drilling deep wells, where, using the physico-chemical method of sedimentation, leaching and melting, minerals coming out through pipes are extracted from the bowels of the earth to the surface.

This method is usually obtained:

• gas and oil,
• sulfur and lithium,
• phosphorus and uranium.

And finally, a separate dredge method, where the mining enterprise simultaneously carries out both the extraction of raw materials and its enrichment, i.e., with the help of special equipment, the primary separation of valuable rock from the accompanying waste rock occurs.

Placer deposits are usually developed in this way:

• gold and diamonds,
• platinoids and cassiterite.

Impact on the environment of mining of useful raw materials

Mining by any method cannot but have a negative impact on the environment, since it occupies huge areas of economic land, sometimes reaching tens of thousands of square kilometers.
Such a technogenic load on the natural environment disrupts the natural course of self-regulation of life processes in the environment and sometimes leads to its rapid degradation.

As a rule, the most productive soil chernozems are located under their development:

1. fields and arable land,
2. forests and reservoirs,
3. roads and settlements.

Production begins with preparatory clearing work, where all artificial barriers are removed from the area, as follows:

• Perennial forests with valuable tree species are cut down,
• centuries-old reservoirs in the form of swamps, rivers and lakes are drained,
• Utilities are laid in the form of drainage ditches and access roads.

Then stripping work is carried out, the purpose of which is to remove layer-by-layer and move waste rock into dumps, which opens access to the natural resources themselves:

• soft and light rock is mined using bulldozers and earthmoving machines,
• rock and hard rock are first blasted using drilling and blasting equipment, and then mined using excavators and scrapers,

already exposed minerals are mined and loaded onto special vehicles - mining dump trucks,

which transport extracted raw materials to processing plants and metallurgical plants.

The extraction of natural raw materials also has such negative consequences for the environment as contamination of soil, water and air with chemical elements from dumps, which has a detrimental effect on both the flora and fauna of the area.

This negative impact on the environment also negatively affects the health of people living in nearby areas - increasing the incidence of illness in the local population.

Therefore, during the development of mineral deposits, such regular activities as observations and environmental monitoring are necessary.
It is possible to reduce the negative impact on the environment in the future by improving development methods, as well as by reclaiming these lands, returning them and bringing them to their original state, but this requires huge financial resources and a considerable time interval.

Therefore, mining enterprises, in accordance with the law of subsoil and environmental protection, are obliged, after all work on the extraction of raw materials, to ensure the restoration of the natural landscape of the area, where at their own expense they plant forests and subsequently create recreation areas, and also restore the fertile layer of soil, involving it in agricultural turnover

I hope you enjoyed my article on mining methods and learned a lot from it. Maybe you know some new ways of extracting natural raw materials. Tell me about it in the comments to the article, I will be curious to know them. Let me say goodbye to you and see you again, dear friends.

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