Copy of `Liberty Star - Minerals glossary`

The wordlist doesn't exist anymore, or, the website doesn't exist anymore. On this page you can find a copy of the original information. The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.

Liberty Star - Minerals glossary Category: Agriculture and Industry > Minerals terms Date & country: 10/11/2016, USA Words: 619

Cone crusher
A machine, which crushes ore between a gyrating cone or crushing head and an inverted, truncated cone known as a bowl.

Concentrator
A milling plant that produces a concentrate of the valuable minerals or metals. Further treatment is required to recover the pure metal.

Concentrate
A fine, powdery product of the milling process containing a high percentage of valuable metal. In the case of Uranium

Column flotation
A milling process, carried out in a tall cylindrical column, whereby valuable minerals are separated from gangue minerals based on their wetability properties.

Common stock
Shares in a company, which have full voting rights, which the holders use to control the company in common with each other. There is no fixed or assured dividend as with preferred shares, which have first claim on the distribution of a company’s earnings or assets.

Complex ore
An ore containing a number of minerals of economic value. The term often implies that there are metallurgical difficulties in liberating and separating the valuable metals.

Collar
The term applied to the timbering or concrete around the mouth of a shaft; also used to describe the top of a mill hole.

Coalification
The metamorphic processes of forming coal.

Coal
A carbonaceous rock mined for use as a fuel.

Coal Mining
There are some significant differences between the processes used in the mining of coal, and those used for mineral mining. For a good introduction to coal and coal mining we highly recommend this report from the Colorado Geological Survey.

Closed circuit
A loop in the milling process wherein a selected portion of the product of a machine is returned to the head of the machine for finishing to required specification.

Clarification
Process of clearing dirty water by removing suspended material.

Classifier
A mineral-processing machine, which separates minerals according to size and density.

Clay
A fine-grained material composed of hydrous aluminum silicates.

Cleavage
The tendency of a mineral to split along crystallographic planes.

Chromite
The chief ore mineral of chromium.

Chute
An opening, usually constructed of timber and equipped with a gate, through which ore is drawn from a stope into mine cars.

Cinnabar
A vermilion-colored ore mineral of mercury.

Circulating load
Over-sized chunks of ore returned to the head of a closed grinding circuit before going on to the next stage of treatment.

Claim
A portion of land held either by a prospector or a mining company. In Canada, the common size is 1,320 ft. (about 400 m) square, or 40 acres (about 16 ha).

Chartered bank
A financial institution that accepts deposits and provides loans.

Charter
A document issued by a governing authority creating a company or other corporation.

Chip sample
A method of sampling a rock exposure whereby a regular series of small chips of rock is broken off along a line across the face.

Chalcocite
A sulfide mineral of copper common in the zone of secondary enrichment.

Chalcopyrite
A sulfide mineral of copper and iron; the most important ore mineral of copper.

Change house
The mine building where workers change into work clothes; also known as the `dry`.

Channel sample
A sample composed of pieces of vein or mineral deposit that have been cut out of a small trench or channel, usually about 10 cm wide and 2 cm deep.

Cesium magnetometer
A geophysical instrument that measures magnetic field strength in terms of vertical gradient and total field.

Cathode
A rectangular plate of metal, produced by electrolytic refining, which is melted into commercial shapes such as wire bars, billets, ingots, etc.

Carbon-in-pulp
A method of recovering gold and silver from pregnant cyanide solutions by adsorbing the precious metals to granules of activated carbon, which are typically ground up coconut shells.

Cash flow
The net of the inflow and outflow of cash during an accounting period. Does not account for depreciation or bookkeeping write-offs, which do not involve an actual cash outlay.

Captive stope
A stope that is accessible only through a manway.

Call
An option to buy shares at a specified price. The opposite of a `put`.

Capital stock
The total ownership of a limited liability company divided among a specified number of-shares.

Capitalization
A financial term used to describe the value financial markets put on a company. Determined by multiplying the number of outstanding shares of a company by the current stock price.

Caldera
A large, basin-shaped volcanic depression, more or less circular or cirquelike in form, the diameter of which is many times greater than that of the included vent or vents, no matter what the steepness of the walls or form of the floor.

Byproduct
A secondary metal or mineral product recovered in the milling process.

Cable bolt
A steel cable, capable of withstanding tens of tonnes, cemented into a drill hole to lend support in blocky ground.

Cage
The conveyance used to transport men and equipment between the surface and the mine levels.

Calcine
that is ready for smelting (i.e. the sulfur has been driven off by oxidation).

Bull market
Term used to describe financial market conditions when share prices are going up.

Bull quartz
A prospector’s term for white, coarse-grained, barren quartz.

Bullion
Metal formed into bars or ingots.

Bulk sample
A large sample of mineralized rock, frequently hundreds of tonnes, selected in such a manner as to be representative of the potential orebody being sampled. Used to determine metallurgical characteristics.

Brunton compass
A pocket compass equipped with sights and a reflector, used for sighting lines, measuring dip and carrying out preliminary surveys.

Bulk mining
Any large-scale, mechanized method of mining involving many thousands of tonnes of ore being brought to surface per day.

Break
Loosely used to describe a large-scale regional shear zone or structural fault.

Breast
A working face in a mine, usually restricted to a stope.

Breccia Pipe, Explosive-Fluidized Porphyry Copper Type
An explosive-fluidized porphry copper related geologic structure. [more info]

Broken reserves
The ore in a mine which has been broken by blasting but which has not yet been transported to surface.

Board lot
One hundred shares.

Bond
An agreement to pay a certain amount of interest over a given period of time.

Boom
A telescoping, hydraulically powered steel arm on which drifters, manbaskets and hydraulic hammers are mounted.

Box hole
A short raise or opening driven above a drift for the purpose of drawing ore from a stope, or to permit access.

Bleb
In petrology, a small usually rounded (but sometimes crystalline) inclusion of one material in another.

Block caving
A mining method suited for ore bodies that have a barren or low-grade capping too thick to strip away from the surface. In development, evenly spaced crosscuts are made below the bottom of the ore block to be caved, from which raises are driven up to the ore. The entire ore block is undercut so that it will begin caving into the raises. The weight of the capping and ore provides the force to crush and move the ore downward, where it is drawn from the raises beneath, trammed to the shaft or decline, and hoisted to the surface. As broken ore is removed, the capping will gradually descend until broken fragments of it coming from the raises indicate that all of the ore has been withdrawn. The surface over the worked-out mine is a gigantic collapse feature, not as deep as the height of withdrawn, because of the `swell factor` of the broken capping, but considerably larger in diameter than the area actually caved underground.

Blaster
A mine employee responsible for loading, priming and detonating blast holes.

Blast hole
A drill hole in a mine that is filled with explosives in order to blast loose a quantity of rock.

Bit
The cutting end of a drill frequently made of an extremely hard material such as industrial diamonds or tungsten carbide.

Black smoker
Volcanic vent found in areas of active ocean floor spreading, through which sulfide-laden fluids escape.

Blackjack
A miner’s term for sphalerite (zinc sulfide).

Blast furnace
A reaction vessel in which mixed charges of oxide ores, fluxes and fuels are blown with a continuous blast of hot air and oxygen-enriched air for the chemical reduction of metals to their metallic state.

Bentonite
A clay with great ability to absorb water and which swells accordingly.

Bessemer
An iron ore with very low phosphorus content.

Bio-leaching
A process for recovering metals from low-grade ores by dissolving them in solution, the dissolution being aided by bacterial action.

Biotite
A platy magnesium-iron mica, common in igneous rocks.

Beneficiate
To concentrate or enrich; often applied to the preparation of iron ore for smelting.

Bedding
The arrangement of sedimentary rocks in layers.

Batholith
A large mass of igneous rock extending to great depth with its upper portion dome-like in shape. Similar, smaller masses of igneous rocks are known as bosses or plugs.

Bauxite
A rock made up of hydrous aluminum oxides; the most common aluminum ore.

Bear market
Term used to describe market conditions when share prices are declining.

Basic rocks
Igneous rocks that are relatively low in silica and composed mostly of dark-colored minerals.

Basement rocks
The underlying or older rock mass. Often refers to rocks of Precambrian age that may be covered by younger rocks.

Banded iron formation
A bedded deposit of iron minerals.

Basal till
Unsorted glacial debris at the base of the soil column where it comes into contact with the bedrock below.

Basalt
An extrusive volcanic rock composed primarily of plagioclase, pyroxene and some olivine.

Base camp
Center of operations from which exploration activity is conducted.

Base metal
Any non-precious metal (e.g. copper, lead, zinc, nickel, etc.).

Background
Minor amounts of radioactivity due not to abnormal amounts of radioactive minerals nearby, but to cosmic rays and minor residual radioactivity in the vicinity.

Backwardation
A situation when the cash or spot price of a metal stands at a premium over the price of the metal for delivery at a forward date.

Balance sheet
A formal statement of the financial position of a company on a particular day, normally presented to shareholders once a year.

Ball mill
A steel cylinder filled with steel balls into which crushed ore is fed. The ball mill is rotated, causing the balls to cascade and grind the ore.

Back sample
Rock chips collected from the roof or back of an underground opening for the purpose of determining grade.

Backfill
Waste material used to fill the void created by mining an orebody.

Back
The ceiling or roof of an underground opening.

Autogenous grinding
The process of grinding ore in a rotating cylinder using large pieces of the ore instead of conventional steel balls or rods.

Authorized capital
see Capital stock

Audio-range magneto-telluric
see AMT

Assessment work
The amount of work, specified by mining law, which must be performed each year in order to retain legal control of mining claims.

Assay
A chemical test performed on a sample of ores or minerals to determine the amount of valuable metals contained.

Assay foot
(meter, inch, centimeter) The assay value multiplied by the number of feet, meters, inches, centimeters across which the sample is taken.

Assay map
Plan view of an area indicating assay values and locations of all samples taken on the property.

Anomaly
Any departure from the norm, which may indicate the presence of mineralization in the underlying bedrock.

Anthracite
A hard, black coal containing a high percentage of fixed carbon and a low percentage of volatile matter.

Anticline
An arch or fold in layers of rock shaped like the crest of a wave.

Apex
The top or terminal edge of a vein on surface or its nearest point to the surface.

Ash
The inorganic residue remaining after ignition of coal.

Anode
A rectangular plate of metal cast in a shape suitable for refining by the electrolytic process.

Annual report
The formal financial statements and report on operations issued by a corporation to its shareholders after its fiscal year-end.

ANFO
Acronym for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, a mixture used as a blasting agent in many mines.