How does minerals affect society




















In preparation for the new assessment MRP is currently:. MRP expertise in mineral resource and mineral environmental assessments is recognized by the international community and by U. Mineral resource assessments of Afghanistan and Madagascar are examples of USGS mineral resource science aiding economic development of countries around the world.

The MRP has also provided expertise to assist with the identification of possible mine-related environmental issues in the Philippines. Commodities identified as being among the most critical included platinum-group metals and rare-earths.

Platinum-group metals are essential components of pollution control systems catalytic converters in both gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles, where they facilitate reduction in carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, and nitrogen oxide emissions. Rare-earths are used in the manufacture of high-strength magnets, lasers, high-temperature metal alloys, and refractory ceramics which are strategic to the defense industry. The USGS MRP conducts research on these commodities to better understand how they occur and to decrease uncertainty in estimates of future resources both in the U.

As with petroleum resources, the U. The NRC report concludes that "decision makers in both the public and private sectors need continuous, unbiased, and thorough mineral information provided through a federally funded system of information collection and dissemination" and recommends that "Federal agencies, …including the USGS…should develop and fund activities, including basic science,… to encourage U.

S innovation in the areas of critical minerals and materials and to enhance understanding of global mineral availability. The Mineral Commodity Summaries report, published annually, is the earliest Government publication to furnish estimates covering nonfuel mineral industry data.

As the global economy grows and evolves in the 21st century, emerging technologies will require mineral commodities on a greater scale and in a larger number of applications than ever before. Advances in alternative energy technologies, nanotechnology, telecommunications, and in the aerospace and defense industries have all been made possible by incorporating new applications of mineral materials.

Some mineral commodities used in emerging technologies are rare and their known resources limited. The USGS MRP is conducting research to better understand the character of known resources for these rare and scarce commodities and is developing criteria to assess the possibility of undiscovered resources required to sustain emerging technology industries. The next time you pick up that stainless steel fork, use your cell phone, replace the batteries in your remote control, or use your keys to start the car or open a locked door, take a moment to think about how important minerals are to your way of life.

The USGS Mineral Resources Program provides objective science and unbiased information at local to global scales so that the general public, government agencies, and industry can make informed decisions on minerals issues in land-use planning, national security, and economic policy, because mineral resources are vital to our nation.

On an ordinary Tuesday in , David Pineault, an economist at the Defense Logistics Agency DLA , reviewed his specialized reports and came to a startling conclusion: the United States needed to increase its stockpile of a basic manufacturing material with military applications—yttrium oxide, a material used in laser rangefinders. Skip to main content. Search Search. Thefts of mineral resources are becoming commonplace as demands drive up their value.

It gained further value as a means of preventing lithium-ion batteries from overheating, as well as for its role in medical diagnostic equipment. Its value surged more than percent between and Cobalt is just one of dozens of similarly critical elements. Indium, a soft metal generated during zinc ore processing, is considered critical to the U. Necessities most associated with modern society operate thanks to dozens of relatively obscure minerals.

Some of these materials are part of a coveted group of rare earth elements REEs located somewhere in the middle of the periodic table. Although not all REEs are scarce, their annual production is relatively low. They have an indispensable role in the high-tech industry because of unique characteristics that make them difficult to substitute. If you drive through Kern County, California, you might hear the distant hum of dozens of enormous wind towers sprinkled across the landscape.

They supply 1, megawatts of renewable energy to residents throughout Southern California. Two megawatts is enough to serve the momentary demands of 1, households.

Turning at the center of the large blades are powerful magnets that cause them to spin and generate electricity when the wind blows. The magnet in a wind turbine can hold as much as two tons of iron, neodymium and boron, says Price. Similar wind farms are cropping up in remote areas around the globe. In the U. As the trend progresses, mineral supplies will need to keep up with it.

Concern about climate change ratcheted up the desire for alternative sources of energy. The sudden demand for electric cars means automakers must compete with manufacturers of computers and phones for lithium. The case history below examines the environmental impact of mining and processing gold ore.

Providing sustainable solutions to the problem of a dwindling supply of a nonrenewable resource such as minerals seems contradictory. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to consider strategies that move towards sustainability even if true sustainability is not possible for most minerals.

The general approach towards mineral sustainability should include mineral conservation at the top of the list. We also need to maximize exploration for new mineral resources while at the same time we minimize the environmental impact of mineral mining and processing.

Conservation of mineral resources includes improved efficiency, substitution, and the 3 Rs of sustainability, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Improved efficiency applies to all features of mineral use including mining, processing, and creation of mineral products. Substituting a rare nonrenewable resource with either a more abundant nonrenewable resource or a renewable resource can help. Examples include substituting glass fiber optic cables for copper in telephone wires and wood for aluminum in construction.

Reducing global demand for mineral resources will be a challenge, considering projections of continuing population growth and the rapid economic growth of very large countries such as China, India, and Brazil. Historically economic growth is intimately tied to increased mineral consumption, and therefore it will be difficult for those rapidly developing countries to decrease their future demand for minerals.

In theory, it should be easier for countries with a high mineral consumption rate such as the U. Technology can help some with some avenues to reducing mineral consumption.

For example, digital cameras have virtually eliminated the photographic demand for silver, which is used for film development.

Using stronger and more durable alloys of steel can translate to fewer construction materials needed. Examples of natural resource reuse include everything at an antique store and yard sale. Recycling can extend the lifetime of mineral reserves, especially metals. Recycling is easiest for pure metals such as copper pipes and aluminum cans, but much harder for alloys mixtures of metals and complex manufactured goods, such as computers.

Many nonmetals cannot be recycled; examples include road salt and fertilizer. Recycling is easier for a wealthy country because there are more financial resources to use for recycling and more goods to recycle.

Additional significant benefits of mineral resource conservation are less pollution and environmental degradation from new mineral mining and processing as well as reductions in energy use and waste production.

We also may need to consider exploring and mining unconventional areas such as continental margins submerged edges of continents , the ocean floor where there are large deposits of manganese ore and other metals in rocks called manganese nodules , and oceanic ridges undersea mountains that have copper, zinc, and lead ore bodies.

Finally, we need to explore for, mine, and process new minerals while minimizing pollution and other environmental impacts. Regulations and good engineering practices are necessary to ensure adequate mine reclamation and pollution reduction, including acid mine drainage. The emerging field of biotechnology may provide some sustainable solutions to metal extraction.

Specific methods include biooxidation microbial enrichment of metals in a solid phase , bioleaching microbial dissolution of metals , biosorption attachment of metals to cells , and genetic engineering of microbes creating microorganisms specialized in extracting metal from ore.

Mineral resources are essential to life as we know it. A nation cannot be prosperous without a reliable source of minerals, and no country has all the mineral resources it requires. It imports a large percentage of its minerals; in some cases sufficient quantities are unavailable in the U.

Certain minerals, particularly those that are primarily imported and considered of vital importance, are stockpiled by the United States in order to protect against embargoes or other political crises. These strategic minerals include: bauxite, chromium, cobalt, manganese and platinum. Because minerals are produced slowly over geologic time scales, they are considered non-renewable resources.

The estimated mineral deposits that are economically feasible to mine are known as mineral reserves. The growing use of mineral resources throughout the world raises the question of how long these reserves will last. Most minerals are in sufficient supply to last for many years, but a few e. Currently, reserves for a particular mineral usually increase as the price for that mineral increases. This is because the higher price makes it economically feasible to mine some previously unprofitable deposits, which then shifts these deposits to the reserves.

However, in the long term this will not be the case because mineral deposits are ultimately finite. There are ways to help prolong the life of known mineral reserves. Conservation is an obvious method for stretching reserves. If you use less, you need less. Recycling helps increase the amount of time a mineral or metal remains in use, which decreases the demand for new production. It also saves considerable energy, because manufacturing products from recycled metals e.

Government legislation that encourages conservation and recycling is also helpful. It allows mining companies to purchase government land very inexpensively and not pay any royalties for minerals extracted from that land.

As a result, mineral prices are kept artificially low which discourages conservation and recycling. Gold is a symbol of wealth, prestige, and royalty that has attracted and fascinated people for many thousands of years see Figure Native Gold. Gold is considered by many to be the most desirable precious metal because it has been sought after for coins, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recorded history.

Historically its value was used as a currency standard the gold standard although not anymore. Gold is very dense but also very malleable; a gram of gold can be hammered into a 1 m 2 sheet of gold leaf. Gold is extremely resistant to corrosion and chemical attack, making it almost indestructible. It is also very rare and costly to produce. Today the primary uses of gold are jewelry and the arts, electronics, and dentistry. The major use in electronics is gold plating of electrical contacts to provide a corrosion-resistant conductive layer on copper.

Most gold is easily recycled except for gold plating due to combinations with other compounds such as cyanide. There are two types of gold ore deposits: 1 hydrothermal , where magma-heated groundwater dissolves gold from a large volume of rock and deposits it in rock fractures and 2 placer , where rivers erode a gold ore deposit of hydrothermal origin and deposit the heavy gold grains at the bottom of river channels.

As a result, some gold mining methods can have an enormous environmental impact. The first discovered gold ore was from placer deposits, which are relatively simple to mine. The method of extracting gold in a placer deposit involves density settling of gold grains in moving water, similar to how placer deposits form.

Specific variations of placer mining include hushing developed by the ancient Romans where a torrent of water is sent through a landscape via an aqueduct , sluice box where running water passes through a wooden box with riffles on the bottom , panning a hand-held conical metal pan where water swirls around and hydraulic where high pressure hoses cut into natural landscapes, see Figure Hydraulic Mining.

Hydraulic mining , developed during the California Gold Rush in the middle s, can destroy natural settings, accelerate soil erosion, and create sediment-rich rivers that later flood due to sediment infilling the channel.

The largest gold ore body ever discovered is an ancient, lithified i. To increase the efficiency of gold panning, liquid mercury is added to gold pans because mercury can form an alloy with gold in a method called mercury amalgamation. The mercury-gold amalgam is then collected and heated to vaporize the mercury and concentrate the gold.

Although mercury amalgamation is no longer used commercially, it is still used by amateur gold panners. Unfortunately, considerable mercury has been released to the environment with this method, which is problematic because mercury bioaccumulates and it is easily converted to methylmercury, which is highly toxic. Today most gold mining is done by a method called heap leaching , where cyanide-rich water percolates through finely ground gold ore and dissolves the gold over a period of months; eventually the water is collected and treated to remove the gold.

This process revolutionized gold mining because it allowed economic recovery of gold from very low-grade ore down to 1 ppm and even from gold ore tailings that previously were considered waste. Nickel is a silvery chemical element that is typically made from two mineral deposits, pentlandite and pyrrhotite. Since the 19th century, nickel has been a component of coins in the United States, India, Switzerland and Canada.

We now use nickel to make electric guitar strings, microphone capsules, jet engines, and power cells. Lithium is a soft chemical element that gained praise after being discovered to treat psychiatric diseases in the mids.

Today, lithium and its compounds have been used to: Make Li-Ion batteries Produce commercial electric vehicles Create underwater subsea electrification Power telecommunication devices Minerals are only one piece of a giant puzzle that helps us meet the demands of the modern world. Our products. What role does nickel play in electric vehicles? The potential of the platinum jewellery market.

Mining explained. Bulk ore sorting and coarse particle recovery — Using microwave technology to pre-condition rock. How spatial technology is changing the mining Semi-autonomous drill first for our Metallurgical De Beers Group successfully tracks first diamonds Which vehicle electrification method will win in How critical is innovation to the mining sector? Industry trends.

Mining and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Our blueprint for the future of sustainable mining. A day in the life of Nicinha: a local cheese



0コメント

  • 1000 / 1000