Glossary
For hundreds of definitions, see Infomine, The Northern Miner Online, or of course Wikipedia.
Abandoned Mine - While definitions vary, abandoned mines are most consistently defined as those mine sites where the miner operator or exploration company has ceased or suspended indefinately their activities, be that exploration, mining or mine production, without rehabilitating the site. Some parties make a distinction between abandoned mines, those being all mine sites in the condition just described, and orphaned mines, those being abandoned mines for which an owner cannot be identified.
Acid Mine Drainage - AMD is formed through a series of chemical and biological reactions that occur when a pyrite found in rock strata is disturbed and exposed to oxygen and moisture as a result of mining operations. AMD may contaminate surface and ground water.
Acid deposition or acid rain - Refers loosely to a mixture of wet and dry deposited material from the atmosphere containing a higher than normal amount of nitric and sulphuric acids. The precursors or chemical forerunners of acid rain formation result from both natural sources, such as volcanoes and decaying vegetation, and man-made sources, primarily emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides resulting from fossil fuel combustion.
Acid mine water - Mine water that contains free sulphuric acid, mainly due to the weathering of iron pyrites.
Active Mine - A mine is active if it has an owner and mining activities are carried out on the site.
Adit - A horizontal passage from the surface by which a mine is entered.
Amalgamation - The technique of using mercury to attract small particles of crushed gold and join with them in an amalgam, or alloy. Gold may be recovered by distilling off the mercury.
Aquifer - A water-bearing bed of porous rock, often sandstone.
Arrastra - (Spanish) A mill, consisting of one or more large stones dragged around on a circular bed, used to grind ore.
Backfill - Backfill is the material used to fill voids created by mining excavation.
Cage - In a mine shaft, the device, similar to an elevator car, that is used for hoisting personnel and materials.
Closed - A mine is closed if licensed mining activities are finished for the mine. The site can be non-, partly-, or fully-rehabilitated.
Comminution - The breaking, crushing, or grinding of ore, or rock.
Deposit - Mineral deposit or ore deposit is used to designate a natural occurrence of a useful mineral, or an ore, in sufficient extent and degree of concentration to invite exploitation.
Drainage - The process of removing surplus ground or surface water either by artificial means or by gravity flow.
Dredged - Aggregate- Aggregate generally comprised of sand, gravel and soil which has been removed by machine from under water, for example, from rivers, lakes and oceans.
Effluents - liquid discharged as waste. This liquid waste can take the form of tailings impoundment effluent, mine water, mill process water, smleter effluent, treatment pond or treatment facility effluent, seepage or surface drainage from a mining site.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) - Before a mine is constructed, an environmetnal impact assessment may be done to assess what impact the mine will have on the environment, and how environmental destruction can be avoided.
Extraction - The process of mining and removal of ore from a mine.
Excavation - Extraction of solid earth material from the ground for mineral mining.
Fill - Any material that is put back in place of the extracted ore to provide ground support.
Fissure - An extensive crack, break, or fracture in the rock.
In situ - In the natural or original position. Applied to rock, soil, or fossil when occurring in the situation in which it was originally formed or deposited.
Intake - The passage through which fresh air is drawn or forced into a mine or to a section of a mine.
Leaching - The use of chemical solutions to disolve minerals from an ore deposit.
Metamorphism - A pronounced change in the constitution of rock effected by pressure, heat, and water that results in a more compact and more highly crystalline condition.
Mining Concession - An area of land that is allocated for mining purposes.
Mine development - The term employed to designate the operations involved in preparing a mine for ore extraction.
Mineral - A substance which may, or may not, be of economic value, that occurs naturally in the earth. It is homogenous, has certain chemical makeup and usually appears in crystal or grain form.
Open Pit Mining - A form of operation designed to extract minerals that lie near the surface. Waste, or overburden is first removed and the mineral is broken and loaded.
Ore - Ore is a mixture of minerals, from which one or more metals may be extracted.
Overburden - all the materials that are located above the desired ore deposit, ie. Soil or vegetation such as trees, plants, and rock.
Pan - A shallow metal dish used for washing earth and stones to separate the gold.
Pits and Quarries - generally the depression left on the earth's surface from which aggregates have been taken out.
Reclamation - The restoration of land and environment after a mine is completed. The process includes restoring the land to its approximate original appearance by restoring topsoil and planting native grasses and ground covers.
Recovery - The proportion or percentage of ore mined from the original seam or deposit.
Refinery - A plant in which metal or valuable mineral is extracted from an ore or concentrate. Usually such a plant would be described as an extraction plant or chemical treatment plant. By comparison, refining is the purification of crude metallic products that produce a nearly pure metal product.
Selective mining - The object of selective mining is to obtain a relatively high-grade mine product; this usually entails the use of a much more expensive stoping (excavating) system and high exploration and development costs in searching for and developing the separate bunches, stringers, lenses, and bands of ore.
Shaft - A vertical entrance to a mine cut downward from the surface.
Smelter - Any metallurgical operation in which metal is separated by fusion from those impurities with which it may be chemically combined or physically mixed, such as in ores. The smelting process is distinct from roasting, sintering, fire refining and other pyrometallurgical operations. The two most important operations are reduction smelting which produces molten metal and molten slag and matte smelting which produces molten matte and molten slag. Slag is a waste product and matte is the resulting metallic sulphide mixture containing the valuable minerals (e.g., copper, lead, nickel, etc.), ready for refining.
Subsidence - The gradual sinking, or sometimes abrupt collapse, of the rock and soil layers into an underground mine. Structures and surface features above the subsidence area can be affected.
Tailings - Tailings are a ground rock waste product that remains after the desired minerals have been removed from the ore. The most reliable way to prevent Acid Mine Drainage with tailings is to submerge the tailings under water so that they do not come into contact with oxygen. However, this must be done forever.
Tailings Dam - A tailings dam is a structure constructed to create a tailings pond for storing mining tailings and process water.
Tailings Pond - A place for storing tailings resulting from ore processing.
Temporarily suspended - A mine is temporarily suspended if it has an owner but no mining activity is carried out at the present.
Underground Mining - Extraction of ores, rocks and minerals from below the surface of the ground. Generally access to the underground mine workings is through an adit, down a mine shaft or through some other tunnel configuration. Also known as a "deep" mine.
Waste Rock - Rock containing no ore but removed in the course of mining operations. Waste rock can be stored for further processing; the stored rock is called stockpile.
White damp - A gas that may be present in the afterdamp of a gas or coal-dust explosion, or in the gases given off by a mine fire; also one of the constituents of the gases produced by blasting. Rarely found in mines under other circumstances. The hemoglobin of the blood absorbs it. One-tenth of 1% (.001) may be fatal in 10 minutes.
For hundreds of definitions, see Infomine, The Northern Miner Online, or of course Wikipedia.
