Chapter – 6

MINERAL AND ENERGY RESOURCES

THEIR LINK TO THE ENVIRONMENT

Dr V Shreedhara

15-12-2021
 Minerals And Human Use
• Our society depends on the availability of mineral resources.
• Specifically, consider your breakfast this morning. You probably drank
from a glass made primarily of quartz-sand; ate food from dishes made
from clay; flavored your food with salt mined from Earth; ate fruit grown
with the aid of fertilizers, such as potassium carbonate (potash) and
phosphorus; and used utensils made from stainless steel, which comes
from processing iron ore and other minerals.
• If you read a magazine or newspaper while eating, the paper was
probably made using clay fillers. If the phone rang and you answered, you
were using more than 40 minerals in the telephone. You may have
listened to music on your iPod while eating or made your day’s
appointments with your Smart Phone. These electronic items are made
of metals and petroleum products. When you went to school or work you
may have turned on a computer or other equipment made largely of
minerals .
• Why do we need minerals?
Houses Cars
Trains Buses
Utensils Medicine
Toothpaste Plumbing / Pipes
Wire / plates Fertilizers
Aeroplanes Electronics
Jewellery Glass

• Where do we get raw materials required for these things?

• If we can’t grow it, it has to be mined!
• Mining has been the second of mankind’s earliest
endeavours after agriculture. 3
 Historical Background

• Utilization of minerals dates back to the

beginning of human history.
 Au and Ag by Greeks around 2,500 BC
 Cu by early Egyptians around 1,200 BC
 Gemstones by Babylonians and early Egyptians
• The most extensive utilization is registered
during
 The industrial revolution/England
 After second world war
 MINERAL RESOURCES
• Our modern society completely depends on the availability of
mineral resources. As world population increases, we face an
ever-increasing resource crisis. It is feared that Earth may have
reached its capacity to absorb environmental degradation
related to mineral extraction, processing, and use.
• Minerals are extremely important to people; all other things
being equal, one’s standard of living increases with the
increased availability of minerals in useful forms. Furthermore,
the availability of mineral resources is one measure of the
wealth of a society. Societies that have been successful in the
location, extraction, or importation and use of minerals have
grown and prospered. Without mineral resources, modern
technological civilization as we know it would not be possible.
 Important Terminology
• Mineral: a naturally occurring inorganic element or compound
having an orderly internal structure and a characteristic chemical
composition, crystal form and physical properties, which can be
extracted under the presently available technology.
• Ore is a natural material with a high concentration of
economically valuable minerals that can be mined for a
profit
• Orebody: a mineral deposit that has sufficient utility and
value to be mined at a profit.
• Gangue: the valueless mineral particles within an ore
deposit that must be discarded.
• Waste: the material associated with an ore deposit that
must be mined to get at the ore and must then be
discarded. Gangue is a particular type of waste.
• Mine: an excavation made in the earth to extract minerals

6
 Important Terminology
• Mineralization / Ore Deposit: Concentration of valuable
minerals.
• Economic mineral deposits: Geologic bodies that may
be economically worked for one or more minerals or
metals.
• Mineral deposits: Carries no necessary profitability
implications and usually denotes sub-economic or
incompletely evaluated occurrences of ore minerals
• Host rock: The rock within which the ore deposit occurs.

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 Important Terminology
• Overburden: is the waste rock or materials overlying an ore
or mineral body that are displaced during mining without
being processed.
• Gangue: the valueless mineral particles within an ore
deposit that must be discarded
• The good example for this is quartz, which is gangue in
auriferous quartz veins while it is an ore in quartz sand.

Why??

• Hence, the term gangue depends on what we are going to

extract.
8
1. Renewable Resources
Either grows every year / season or gets recycled /
regenerated fast enough for use. air, water, energy (sun, food)
2. Non-renewable
Takes geological time for formation & recycling. Not available,
(once exhausted) on the life-time of human species

 Abundance in the Earth’s Most:

 Si (30%) – latest element used by man
 Al (8.1%)
 Fe (5%)
 Cu 50 PPm
 Least :
 Au 0.4 PPb – earliest metal used by man
 Availability does not depend on abundance
 Geochemical Properties and
 Geological Processes decided on the availability of metals to man.
 RESOURCES AND RESERVE
• A mineral resource is a concentration of a naturally occurring material (i.e., solid,
liquid, or gas) in or on the crust of Earth in a form that can now or potentially be
extracted at a profit.
• Reserve is the portion of a resource that is identified and is currently available to
be legally extracted at a profit.
• A resource is that amount of a geologic commodity that exists in both discovered
and undiscovered deposits—by definition, then, a “best guess.” Reserves are that
subgroup of a resource that have been discovered, have a known size, and can be
extracted at a profit. For example, of the world's estimated oil resource of three
trillion barrels, the world's reserves are estimated at about a third of that amount
• The distinction between resources and reserves, therefore, is based on current
geologic, economic, and legal factors. Not all resource categories are reserves.

• Earth’s crust contains almost 2 trillion metric tons of silver. This is Earth’s crustal
resource of silver—an amount much larger than the annual world use. The known
reserve of silver, reflecting the amount we could obtain immediately with known
techniques, is about 200,000 metric tons, or a 20-year supply at current use levels .
CLASSIFICATION OF MINERAL RESOURCES
• Mineral resources with commercial value can be classified
into several categories, based on geologic processes of
formation:
• Igneous processes, including crystal settling, late magmatic
process, and hydrothermal replacement
• Metamorphic processes associated with contact or regional
metamorphism
• Sedimentary processes, including accumulation in oceanic,
lake, stream, wind, and glacial environments
• Biological processes
• Weathering processes, such as soil formations and in situ (i.e.,
in-place) concentrations of insoluble minerals in weathered
rock debris
 Types of Mineral Resources
• Type Example
• Igneous
• Disseminated Diamonds—South Africa
• Crystal settling Chromites—Stillwater, Montana
• Late magmatic Magnetite - Adirondack Mountains,
New York
• Pegmatite Beryl and lithium - Black Hills,
South Dakota
• Hydrothermal Copper- Butte, Montana
• Metamorphic
• Contact metamorphism Lead and silver—Leadville, Colorado
• Regional metamorphism Asbestos—Quebec, Canada
• Sedimentary
• Evaporite (lake or ocean) Potassium—Carlsbad, New Mexico
• Placer (stream) Gold - Sierra Nevada foothills,
California
• Glacial Sand and gravel—northern Indiana
• Deep-ocean Manganese oxide nodules—central and
southern Pacific Ocean

Biological Phosphorus , Florida

Weathering
Residual soil Bauxite, Arkansas
Secondary enrichment Copper, Utah
 Igneous Processes
1) Very valuable minerals- dispersed, but
worth scavanging
Example: Kimberlite pipes and diamonds
 Metamorphic Processes
3) Metamorphic Concentration Mechanisms:
Contact metamorphism occurs at the contact
between hot magma and cool country rocks
 replacement ores (include Cu, W, Sn, Pb, Zn…)
Fluorite (CaF2) Calcite (CaCO3)

Sphalerite (ZnS)

Scheelite (CaWO4)

Replacement ore of the

Tem-Piute Mine, Nevada.
Mined for tungsten.
 Sedimentary Processes
4) Sedimentary Concentration Mechanisms:
Clastic processes involve transport and deposition:
 Sand and gravel (big $$) from old river channels,
glacial deposits, deltas
 Placer deposits of weathering-resistant and heavy
minerals (Au, Ag, diamond, garnet)

Gold nugget, California (2 cm) Placer diamonds, Namibia (3 cm across)

 Sedimentary Processes
4) Sedimentary Concentration Mechanisms:
Biological deposits:
 Phosphate = fish bones and teeth, guano
 fertilizers
 Diatomaceous earth & many limestones
Weathering:
 Bauxite = Al in zone of leaching in laterites (highly
leached tropical soils)
 Supergene enrichment of Cu
 Environmental Impacts of
Mineral Consumption, Mining,
and Processing


Processing of a typical
metal sulfide ore (copper,
lead, zinc, molybdenum...)
 Mining Pollution
Adverse effects include:
 Removal of soil
 Deforestation
 Polluting water
 Disrupting drainages
 Asthetics

Strip phosphate mine. Florida

Contaminated water from a strip coal mine, Illinois

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF MINERAL MINING.
• Many scientists and other observers fear that, as population
increases place more demands on mineral resources, the world will
face a resource crisis. Furthermore, this crisis will come at a time
when Earth may be close to the limit of its ability to absorb mineral-
related pollution of air, water, land, and biological resources.
• The environmental impact of mineral exploitation depends on
factors such as mining procedures, local hydrologic conditions,
climate, rock types, size of operation, topography, and many more
interrelated factors. Furthermore, the impact varies with the stage
of development of the resource. The exploration and testing stage
involves considerably less environmental impact than the
extraction and processing stages.
 IMPACT OF MINERAL EXPLORATION & TESTING
• Exploration and testing activities for mineral deposits vary from
collecting and analyzing data gathered by remote sensing to
fieldwork involving surface mapping, drilling, and gathering of
geochemical and geophysical data. In general, exploration has a
minimal impact on the environment, provided that care is taken in
sensitive areas, such as some arid lands, marshlands, and
permafrost areas (i.e., areas underlain by permanently frozen
ground). Some arid lands are covered by a thin layer of pebbles
over several centimeters of fine silt. The layer of pebbles, called
desert pavement, protects the finer material from wind erosion.
When the pavement is disturbed by road building or other activity,
the fine silts may be eroded, impairing physical, chemical, and
biological properties of the soil in the immediate environment and
scarring the land for many years. In other areas, such as marshlands
and the northern tundra, wet, organically rich soils render the land
sensitive to even light traffic.
 IMPACT OF MINERAL EXTRACTION AND PROCESSING
• Mining and processing mineral resources are likely to have a considerable
adverse impact on land, water, air, and biological resources. In addition to
their direct environmental effects, these activities can initiate adverse social
impacts on the environment by increasing the demand for housing and
services in mining areas. These effects are part of the price we pay for the
benefits of mineral consumption. It is unrealistic to expect that we can mine
our resources without affecting some aspect of the local environment, but
we must keep environmental degradation to a minimum. Minimizing
environmental degradation can be very difficult because, while the demand
for minerals continues to increase, deposits of highly concentrated minerals
are decreasing. Therefore, to provide more minerals, we are developing
larger operations to mine ever-poorer deposits.
• Large mining operations change the topography by removing material in
some areas and dumping waste in others. At best, these actions produce
severe aesthetic degradation; often they produce significant environmental
degradation as well. The impact of a single mining operation is a local
phenomenon, but numerous local occurrences eventually constitute a
larger problem.
 TYPES OF MINING AND THEIR IMPACT
• A major practical issue in mining is determining whether surface or
subsurface mines should be developed in a particular area. Surface
mining is more economical but has more direct environmental
effects.
• The trend, in recent years, has moved away from subsurface
mining and toward large, open-pit surface mines.
• Sometimes, leaching is used as a mining technique. Leaching is the
process of dissolving materials by percolating liquid through a
deposit. For example, some gold deposits contain such finely
disseminated gold that extraction by conventional methods is not
profitable. For some of these deposits, a process known as heap
leaching is used. Because cyanide is extremely toxic, the mining
process must be carefully controlled and monitored. If an accident
occurs, the process has the potential to create a serious
groundwater pollution problem.
 Environmental Impacts of Mineral
Consumption, Mining, and Processing
 Surface mining

Mining ruptures the weathered

barrier and exposes the interior
to the environment
 Environmental Impacts of Mineral
Consumption, Mining, and Processing
 Surface mining  open pits like Bingham
Canyon near Salt Lake (or Helena, MT)

Bingham Canyon
open pit Cu sulfide
mine, Utah
The World’s largest
hole in the ground
 Environmental Impacts of Mineral
Consumption, Mining, and Processing

Sub-surface
mining  less
impact on site,
but still exposes
ore to water
 WATER POLLUTION
• Water resources are vulnerable to degradation from mining.
Surface drainage is often altered at mine sites, and runoff from
precipitation may infiltrate waste material, leaching out trace
elements and minerals. Trace elements leached from mining wastes
and concentrated in water, soil, or plants may be toxic, causing
diseases in people and other animals that drink the water, eat the
plants, or use the soil. These potentially harmful trace elements
include cadmium, cobalt, copper, lead, molybdenum, and zinc.
Groundwater may also be polluted by mining operations when
waste comes into contact with slow moving subsurface waters.
Surface-water infiltration or groundwater movement through
mining waste piles causes leaching of sulfide minerals that may
pollute groundwater. The polluted groundwater may eventually
seep into streams and pollute surface water. Groundwater problems
are particularly troublesome because reclamation of polluted
groundwater is very difficult and expensive
 SOCIAL IMPACT
• The social impact of large-scale mining results from a rapid influx
of workers into areas unprepared for growth. Stress is placed on
local services, including water supplies, sewage and solid-waste
disposal systems, schools, and rental housing. Land use quickly
shifts from open range, forest, or agriculture to urban patterns.
More people also increase the stress on nearby recreation and
wilderness areas, some of which may be in a fragile ecological
balance. Construction activity and urbanization affect local
streams through sediment pollution, reduced water quality, and
increased runoff. Air quality is reduced as a result of more
vehicles, dust from construction, and generation of power to run
machinery and equipment.
• Adverse social effects may result when miners are displaced by
mine closures or automation, because towns surrounding large
mines come to depend on the income of employed miners.
 HEALTH IMPACT
• Itai-Itai Disease A serious chronic disease known as Itai-Itai has claimed many
lives in Japan’s Zintsu River basin. This extremely painful disease (itai-itai means
“ouch, ouch”) attacks bones, causing them to become so thin and brittle that
they break easily. The disease broke out near the end of World War II, when the
Japanese industrial complex was damaged and good industrial-waste disposal
practices were largely ignored. Mining operations for zinc, lead, and cadmium
dumped mining waste into the rivers, and farmers used the contaminated water
downstream for domestic and agricultural purposes. The cause of the disease
was unknown for years, but, in 1960, bones and tissues of victims were
examined and found to contain large concentrations of zinc, lead, and cadmium.
Measurement of heavy-metal concentrations in the Zintsu River basin showed
that the water samples generally contained less than 1 part per million (ppm)
cadmium and 50 ppm zinc. These metals were selectively concentrated in the
river sediment and concentrated even more highly in plants. This increase in
concentration from water to sediment to plants is an example of
biomagnification. Although measurements of heavy-metal concentrations in the
water, soil, and plants of the Zintsu River basin produce somewhat variable
results, the general tendency is clear: Scientists are fairly certain that heavy
metals, especially cadmium, in concentrations of a few parts per million in the
soil and rice, produce Itai Itai disease.
 MERCURY AND GOLD MINING
• Mercury has been used in gold mining since Roman times, several thousand years
ago. A native metal in its liquid state, mercury is useful in gold mining because the
gold particles cling to the liquid metal, making recovery of the gold easier. In the
United States during the gold rush in California, approximately 1.14 billion m3 (1.5
billion yd3 ) of gold-bearing gravels were processed by hydraulic mining from the
1850s to the 1880s. During that period, mercury was used to help recover the
gold, and it is estimated that about 4,500 metric tons of mercury was lost into the
environment. Much of that mercury is still working its way through the rivers and
floodplains from the mining areas in the Sierra Nevada to the San Francisco Bay
area. There is concern about this mercury because it is a toxic metal that, upon
exposure, may damage brain cells, resulting in neurological and nervous system
disease that includes fatigue and numbness of arms and legs. The major
environmental issues associated with mercury toxicity in California and other
mining areas include:
• Hot spots of mercury contamination at mining sites ,
• Contamination of the sediment with mercury and its transport down streams and
rivers
• Bioaccumulation of mercury from water to sediment to plants, animals, and
people
• Health issues resulting from exposure of mercury to people and other animals
 MINAMATA DISEASE
• Minamata disease (Japanese) is a neurological disease caused by severe mercury
poisoning. Signs and symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet,
general muscle weakness, loss of peripheral vision, and damage to hearing and
speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death follow within
weeks of the onset of symptoms.
• Minamata disease was first discovered in Minamata city in Kumamoto
prefecture, Japan, in 1956. It was caused by the release of methylmercury in the
industrial wastewater from the chemical factory, which continued from 1932 to
1968. It has also been suggested that some of the mercury sulfate in the
wastewater was also metabolized to methylmercury by bacteria in the sediment.
This highly toxic chemical bioaccumulated and biomagnified in shellfish and fish
in Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea, which, when eaten by the local
population, resulted in mercury poisoning. While cat, dog, pig, and human
deaths continued for 36 years, the government and company did little to prevent
the epidemic. The animal effects were severe enough
in cats that they came to be named as having
"dancing cat fever“.
 Environmental Impacts of Mineral
Consumption, Mining, and Processing

Materials are relatively toxic
when exposed at the surface
 Water  weathering, solution
 toxic metals + sulfuric acid
into surface & groundwater
environment
 Est. 550,000 abandoned mines
in USA contaminate 19,000
rivers and streams
 Collapse of old excavations
poses a serious threat as well
Acidic and Fe-rich water from an abandoned sub-
surface tunnel pours into Beartrap Creek, which
flows into the prime trout waters of the Blackfoot
River, Montana
White streaks of zinc
leached from a tailings
pile and redeposited
downslope. Colorado.
Mining Pollution
Smelting releases SO2 to the
atmosphere creating acid rain

Ducktown
TN

Sudbury, Ontario
 Mining Pollution
Strip Mining-
remove shallow
surface cover and
deposit such as coal,
Fe, Mn, or phosphate
that extends over a
broad area
Dredging- excavation, sifting, and redepositing of
sediment as remove placer minerals

Dredging rarely exposes fresh toxic

ore, but severely disrupts a river
 Keeping cyanide from entering the groundwater
system is of critical importance
Another example of severe environmental degradation occurred in
the Sudbury, Ontario, area. A century of smelting nickel ore in the
area produced an area of barren land of approximately 100 km2 (40
mi2 ). Another 350 km2 (135 mi2 ) of land was extensively
damaged by air pollutants from the smelters . The deposition of
mercury, arsenic, and cadmium, among other metals, caused
devastating effects on the land, water, and biological resources

Heap-leach pad extracting gold, Winnemucca, Nevada

MINIMIZING THE IMPACT OF MINERAL DEVELOPMENT
• Environmental regulation
– Most degradation is due to past mining practices that are now
illegal in 1st world

– US smelters have stringent air quality standards

– Water pollution containment and land reclamation plans. Most

of the serious environmental degradation associated with
mining in more developed countries is a relic of past practices
that are now forbidden or restricted by environmental laws.
 MINING RECLAMATION
1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA)
• Created the Office of Surface Mining and several branches in
mining states
• Establishes standards and funds federal and state agencies
• Coordinated federal and state efforts to regulate pollution,
subsidence, and restoration of affected lands for coal mining
– Non-coal still left to individual states
– Once states set up SMCRA standards they may apply
 Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act too, because these are public
commons (note Tragedy of…)
– USFS administers mining reclamation on National Forests
– Some abandoned mines are bad enough to qualify as Superfund
sites
– non-coal and use SMCRA funds as they see fit
 MINING RECLAMATION
STEPS IN SURFACE MINE RECLAMATION
Drainage control and diversion at disturbed
area

Add or replace topsoil and

immediate seeding with rapidly
growing species, such as rye grass
 Steps in Surface Mine Reclamation
• After initial grass dies back,
permanent species take over. Can
use as habitat, grazing, etc.
 Minimizing the impact of mineral
development
• Biotechnology
– Use microbes (some genetically engineered) to
oxidize, absorb, or leach pollutants
– Bioassisted leaching uses critters to liberate metals
for chemical leaching
– Also use microbes to neutralize acid mine drainage
 BIOTECHNOLOGY.
Several biological processes used for metal extraction and processing are likely
to have important economic and environmental consequences. Biotechnology,
using processes such a bio-oxidation, bioleaching, bio-sorption, and genetic
engineering of microbes, has enormous potential for both extracting metals
and minimizing environmental degradation.
Biotechnology is still in its infancy, and its potential uses are just beginning to
be realized by the mining and metals industries. One promising biotechnology
is bio-assisted leaching, or bioleaching, which uses microorganisms to recover
metals. In this technique, bacteria oxidize crushed gold ore in a tank, releasing
finely disseminated gold that can then be treated by cyanide leaching.
Although the cyanide is recycled during mining, it is very toxic and can
contaminate groundwater resources if it is accidentally released into the
environment.
Biotechnology developed and tested by the U.S. Bureau of Mines is being used
to treat acid mine drainage. Constructed or engineered wetlands at several
hundred sites have utilized acid-tolerant plants to remove metals and
neutralize acid by biological activity. Both oxidizing and sulfate-reducing
bacteria play an important role in the wetlands. Research is ongoing to develop
an improved wetland design that requires little maintenance
 RECYCLING OF MINERAL RESOURCES
• The primary environmental impacts of mineral resource utilization
are related to its waste products. Wastes produce pollutants that
may be toxic to humans, are dangerous to natural ecosystems and
the biosphere, are aesthetically undesirable, and may degrade air,
water, and soil. Waste and other minerals that are not recycled also
deplete nonrenewable mineral resources, with no offsetting benefits
for human society. Recycling of resources is one way to reduce these
wastes.
• Waste from some parts of the
mineral cycle may be referred to
as ore because it contains materials
that might be recycled and used again
to provide energy or useful products.
The notion of reusing waste materials
is not new, and such metals as iron,
aluminum, copper, and lead have been recycled for many years
 ENERGY SUPPLY
• Nearly 90 percent of the energy consumed today is produced
from coal, natural gas, and petroleum or oil. These energy
resources are sometimes called fossil fuels because of their
organic origin. These fuels are nonrenewable resources. The
remaining 10 percent of energy consumed originates mostly
from hydropower and nuclear power. We still have huge
reserves of coal, but major new sources of natural gas and
petroleum are becoming scarce. Few new large hydropower
plants can be expected, and the planning and construction of
new nuclear power plants have become uncertain for a variety
of reasons. More recently, alternative energy sources, such as
solar power for homes, farms, and offices, are becoming
economically more feasible and, thus, more common. Other
alternative energy sources are thermal power, wind energy and
tidal energy.
 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
• The use of geothermal energy—natural heat from Earth’s
interior—is an exciting application of geologic knowledge and
engineering technology. The idea of harnessing Earth’s internal
heat is not new:
• Geothermal power was developed in Italy, using dry steam in
1904 and is now used to generate electricity at numerous sites
around the world, including a few in the western United States
and Hawaii. At many other sites, geothermal energy that is not
hot enough to produce electrical power is used to heat buildings
or for industrial purposes. Existing geothermal facilities use only
a small portion of the total energy that might eventually be
tapped from Earth’s reservoir of internal heat; the geothermal
resource is vast. If only 1 percent of the geothermal energy in
the upper 10 km (6.2 mi) of Earth’s crust could be captured, it
would amount to 500 times the total global oil and natural gas
resource
THANKS FOR PATIENT LISTNING

ANY QUESTION ?