This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Iron ore (Banded iron formation)

Manganese ore

Lead ore

Gold ore

Cart for carrying ore from a mine on display at the Historic Archive and Museum of Mining in Pachuca, Mexico.

An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element(s).

The grade or concentration of an ore mineral, or metal, as well as its form of occurrence, will directly affect the costs associated with mining the ore. The cost of extraction must thus be weighed against the metal value contained in the rock to determine what ore can be processed and what ore is of too low a grade to be worth mining. Metal ores are generally oxides, sulfides, silicates, or "native" metals (such as native copper) that are not commonly concentrated in the Earth's crust or "noble" metals (not usually forming compounds) such as gold. The ores must be processed to extract the metals of interest from the waste rock and from the ore minerals. Ore bodies are formed by a variety of geological processes. The process of ore formation is called ore genesis.

Ore deposits[link]

An ore deposit is an accumulation of ore. Now this is distinct from a mineral resource as defined by the mineral resource classification criteria. An ore deposit is one occurrence of a particular ore type. Most ore deposits are named according to either their location (for example, the Witswatersrand, South Africa), or after a discoverer (e.g. the kambalda nickel shoots are named after drillers), or after some whimsy, a historical figure, a prominent person, something from mythology (phoenix, kraken, serepentleopard, etc.) or the code name of the resource company which found it (e.g. MKD-5 is the in-house name for the Mount Keith nickel ).

Classification of ore deposits[link]

Ore deposits are classified according to various criteria developed via the study of economic geology, or ore genesis. The classifications below are typical.

Hydrothermal epigenetic deposits[link]

• Mesothermal lode gold deposits, typified by the Golden Mile, Kalgoorlie
• Archaean conglomerate hosted gold-uranium deposits, typified by Elliot Lake, Canada and Witwatersrand, South Africa
• Carlin–type gold deposits, including;
• Epithermal stockwork vein deposits

Granite related hydrothermal[link]

• IOCG or iron oxide copper gold deposits, typified by the supergiant Olympic Dam Cu-Au-U deposit
• Porphyry copper +/- gold +/- molybdenum +/- silver deposits
• Intrusive-related copper-gold +/- (tin-tungsten), typified by the Tombstone, Arizona deposits
• Hydromagmatic magnetite iron ore deposits and skarns
• Skarn ore deposits of copper, lead, zinc, tungsten, etcetera

Nickel-cobalt-platinum deposits[link]

• Magmatic nickel-copper-iron-PGE deposits including
  • Cumulate vanadiferous or platinum-bearing magnetite or chromite
  • Cumulate hard-rock titanium (ilmenite) deposits
  • Komatiite hosted Ni-Cu-PGE deposits
  • Subvolcanic feeder subtype, typified by Noril'sk-Talnakh and the Thompson Belt, Canada
  • Intrusive-related Ni-Cu-PGE, typified by Voisey's Bay, Canada and Jinchuan, China
• Lateritic nickel ore deposits, examples include Goro and Acoje, (Philippines) and Ravensthorpe, Western Australia.

Volcanic-related deposits[link]

• Volcanic hosted massive sulfide (VHMS) Cu-Pb-Zn including;
  • Examples include Teutonic Bore and Golden Grove, Western Australia
    • Besshi type
    • Kuroko type

Metamorphically reworked deposits[link]

• Podiform serpentinite-hosted paramagmatic iron oxide-chromite deposits, typified by Savage River, Tasmania iron ore, Coobina chromite deposit
• Broken Hill Type Pb-Zn-Ag, considered to be a class of reworked SEDEX deposits

Carbonatite-alkaline igneous related[link]

• Phosphorus-tantalite-vermiculite (Phalaborwa South Africa)
• Rare earth elements - Mount Weld, Australia and Bayan Obo, Mongolia
• Diatreme hosted diamond in kimberlite, lamproite or lamprophyre

Sedimentary deposits[link]

Close-up of Banded Iron Formation specimen from Upper Michigan. Scale bar is 5.0 mm.

• Banded iron formation iron ore deposits, including
  • Channel-iron deposits or pisolite type iron ore
• Heavy mineral sands ore deposits and other sand dune hosted deposits
• Alluvial gold, diamond, tin, platinum or black sand deposits
• Alluvial oxide zinc deposit type: sole example Skorpion Zinc

Sedimentary hydrothermal deposits[link]

• SEDEX
  • Lead-zinc-silver, typified by Red Dog, McArthur River, Mount Isa, etc.
  • Stratiform arkose-hosted and shale-hosted copper, typified by the Zambian copperbelt.
  • Stratiform tungsten, typified by the Erzgebirge deposits, Czechoslovakia
  • Exhalative spilite-chert hosted gold deposits
• Mississippi valley type (MVT) zinc-lead deposits
• Hematite iron ore deposits of altered banded iron formation

Astrobleme-related ores[link]

• Sudbury Basin nickel and copper, Ontario, Canada

Extraction[link]

Some ore deposits in the world

Some additional ore deposits in the world

The basic extraction of ore deposits follows the steps below;

1. Prospecting or exploration to find and then define the extent and value of ore where it is located ("ore body")
2. Conduct resource estimation to mathematically estimate the size and grade of the deposit
3. Conduct a pre-feasibility study to determine the theoretical economics of the ore deposit. This identifies, early on, whether further investment in estimation and engineering studies is warranted and identifies key risks and areas for further work.
4. Conduct a feasibility study to evaluate the financial viability, technical and financial risks and robustness of the project and make a decision as whether to develop or walk away from a proposed mine project. This includes mine planning to evaluate the economically recoverable portion of the deposit, the metallurgy and ore recoverability, marketability and payability of the ore concentrates, engineering, milling and infrastructure costs, finance and equity requirements and a cradle to grave analysis of the possible mine, from the initial excavation all the way through to reclamation.
5. Development to create access to an ore body and building of mine plant and equipment
6. The operation of the mine in an active sense
7. Reclamation to make land where a mine had been suitable for future use

Trade[link]

Ore and metal imports in 2005

Ores (metals) are traded internationally and comprise a sizeable portion of international trade in raw materials both in value and volume. This is because the worldwide distribution of ores is unequal and dislocated from locations of peak demand and from smelting infrastructure.

Most base metals (copper, lead, zinc, nickel) are traded internationally on the London Metal Exchange, with smaller stockpiles and metals exchanges monitored by the COMEX and NYMEX exchanges in the United States and the Shanghai Futures Exchange in China.

Iron ore is traded between customer and producer, though various benchmark prices are set quarterly between the major mining conglomerates and the major consumers, and this sets the stage for smaller participants.

Other, lesser, commodities do not have international clearing houses and benchmark prices, with most prices negotiated between suppliers and customers one-on-one. This generally makes determining the price of ores of this nature opaque and difficult. Such metals include lithium, niobium-tantalum, bismuth, antimony and rare earths. Most of these commodities are also dominated by one or two major suppliers with >60% of the world's reserves. The London Metal Exchange aims to add uranium to its list of metals on warrant.

The World Bank reports that China was the top importer of ores and metals in 2005 followed by the USA and Japan.^{[citation needed]}

Important ore minerals[link]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ore

• Economic geology
• Mineral resource classification
• Ore genesis
• Petrology

References[link]

Further reading[link]

DILL, H.G. (2010) The “chessboard” classification scheme of mineral deposits: Mineralogy and geology from aluminum to zirconium, Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 100, Issue 1-4, June 2010, Pages 1-420

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (May 2007)

Herbert Pagani (born in Tripoli, Libya on 25 April 1944; died Palm Beach, USA, 16 August 1988) was an artist and musician. Full name: Herbert Avraham Haggiag Pagani.

He comes from a family of Libyan Jews who were italianized by the Colonial Administration. He spent his childhood and adolescence between Italy, Germany and France. This nonstop wandering about different cultures drove him to seek out a personal language that enabled him to do without words, and at the same time to communicate with all, and he found drawing.

In 1964, Pagani at the age of twenty was introduced to the public and the Press at the Pierre Picard Gallery in Cannes, where he exhibited his Indian-ink drawings and engravings. Among his first Italian buyers were Giorgio Soavi for the Olivetti Collection, Federico Fellini and Bernardo Zapponi. Under the heading : "A twenty-year-old visionary", the French poet Jean Rousselot presented Pagani to a wider public from the pages of Planete. Shortly afterwards, he began to draw for that famous review edited by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, becoming one of the youngest exponents of the Realisme fantastique movement.

In 1965 Pagani illustrated Fantarca by Giuseppe Berto for Rizzoli, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for the Club des Amis du Livre.

The boat veers: "Engraving on stone, or vinyl, is the same thing. It is more important to establish one' s mental and emotional territory with all available means". Pagani, heir to an age-old history, but feeling rootless, decided to create his own homeland in the materials on which he would leave his mark. He was less interested in a single technique than in investigating the correlation among all the techniques he was to try out. He slipped from drawing to the word, written and then sung, from radio entertainment to creative publicity, from stage-designing to filming: and he realized that "all disciplines of communications are intercommunicating. "

His first Italian album was released in 1967. In 1969, the day after the coup d'état, the Libyan police broke into the family's house in Tripoli. A hundred and fifty canvases and drawings were destroyed. His first French album was released in 1970. Pagani designed the covers of his records, and the stage designs of his shows.

In 1971, Pagani's first one-man show opened at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, with Concerto d' Italie: he performed within his drawings, solarized and projected on a huge screen by Laser Graphics Group. This was the first Diaporama staged in Europe. Several other shows were to follow, each one enhanced by new visual techniques.

Using documentaries made available by the Italian Television Corporation, one of them bearing the name of the historian Indro Montanelli, Pagani produced and directed a 27-minute movie-pamphlet in 1973 entitled Venise, amore mio which Unesco defined as "the best vehicle of information on the dangers besetting Venice and its lagoon". French Television broadcast it twice, on Antenne 2.

In 1975, MEGALOPOLIS a total-opera, went on stage. The opera is based on Medioevo Prossimo Venturo (The near future middleages) by Roberto Vacca. In order to represent the congestion and collapse of the Energy Systems as described by this Italian futurologist, Pagani proceeded to clone on thousands of images of our civilization using the first two Rank Xerox colour duplicators installed in France and in Italy. These "xerographies" assembled on large plates were photographed, projected and animated in Multimage shows on giant screens. Megalopolis, selected by the French Ministry of Culture for the re-opening of Palais de Chaillot at the Trocadero was then invited to the Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto, in 1976. Megalopolis the album also obtained a large success in France from the public and the critics. It received the Grand Prize of Academy Charles Cros the same year.

The success obtained by this show warranted a vacation. Pagani spent it travelling into pure abstraction thanks to the video-synthetizers devised by the French electronics engineer Marcel Dupouy.

In 1978, thanks to the consistent use of these many different techniques, Pagani became an expert on communications, and a creative consultant of important brands such as Philip Morris.

For all that, in all these years, Pagani never neglected paper, pencils, paints and brushes, joined by scrap wood, plastic waste, and other artifacts of the Disposable Society gleaned from beaches and in dumps across Europe. He used them to make sculptures that have been seen in Exhibitions in Milan, Ferrara and Paris.

Herbert Pagani died of leukaemia aged 44.

External links[link]

• (Italian) Herbert Pagani
• (French) Quelques titres à écouter
• (French) Herbert Pagani

OLD PAGE:

• (Italian) and (French) http://www.megalopolis.it/old

NEW PAGE:

• (Italian) and (French) http://www.megalopolis.it