The history of mining is replete with controversy, but in recent decades there has been increasing pressure to improve the environmental performance of mining operations, following from greater awareness of global environmental issues. Although Rachel Carson’s 1962 ground breaking text, ‘The Silent Spring’, focused on pesticide damage, it brought attention for the fi rst time to the worldwide scale of environmental degradation associated with the development of an industrial civilization. This introductory chapter will examine the many facets of the relationship between mining and the environment which follow from the demands of that civilization.

The mountains and deserts of the West still hold the picturesque ruins of abandoned mines. The boarded tunnels, rough-hewn buildings, immense piles of yellow tailings, and narrow headframes that reach upward to the sky stand as silent witnesses to the vitality of men who once wrested minerals from the earth. But there are few ruins to remind a passerby of the smelters that bought the ores, reduced them to bullion and matte, and then drew out the gold, silver, copper, lead, and other metals. Here you might see bushes growing through a stone foundation; there you might note a mound of black slag. Here you might glimpse a small chimney rising amid the aspen; there you might notice a towering smokestack still piercing the western sky. But little else remains. The wreckers left few reminders of this industry that rose, flourished, and died in symbiosis with the mines. <...>

1338 радиоуглеродных датировок различных материалов VI—II тысячелетий до н.э. собраны и опубликованы авторами книги. Основная цель данной работы - установить корректную абсолютную хронологию Балкано-Карпатской и Циркумпонтийской металлургических провинций - центральных культурно-производственных систем древнейшей Евразии в Эпоху Раннего Металла. Чрезвычайно широк и территориальный охват собранных анализов: от Южного Урала до Адриатики и Эгеи, от Верхнего Поволжья вплоть до Леванта и Месопотамии. Все датировки калиброваны, систематизированы, картографированы, статистически обработаны и подразделены в работе по частным базам данных.

This book represents three years of intensive research and experimentation. Information from hundreds of sources has been collected, distilled, and illustrated. It is intended to be both a text and tool, a blend of instruction and reference. Like any tool, its value increases as you bring to it your own perceptions and skills. It is designed to make the information easily accessible, and built to stand up to years of bench-side use.

Mining and metallurgical engineering encompasses two major disciplines: mining engineering and metallurgical engineering. Mining engineering separates useful minerals from worthless minerals (often called gangue) or harmful minerals through processes such as mining and mineral processing, or separates multiple useful minerals to obtain raw materials for metallurgy, energy, chemical industry, building materials, and other industries. Mining in a broad sense also includes the extraction of coal, oil, and gas, but this volume mainly focuses on the mining of metal ores. Metallurgical engineering applies the principle of metallurgy to smelt, process, and ultimately obtain metallic materials necessary for human society’s production and human life from the raw materials obtained in mineral engineering.

Copper is the first metal which had really played a large part in human history. It is considered that Latin cuprus from which chemical name of copper originated was connected with the island of Cyprus, with the meaning ‘copper island’. But actually it is not so. The Greek word κύπρος has uncertain etymology. For copper the Greeks had a word ϗαλκός; the term “Chalcolithic” goes back to this word. Latin language had another word: aes. The combination aes cyprium meant “Cyprian copper”. Then cyprium was replaced by cuprum. All European words connected with it do not go back to a common Indo-European base. The Latin base is closer to them (Muhly 1973, p. 174, 175). <...>

Phase diagrams mean more to the metallurgist than mere graphical records of the physical states of matter. They provide a medium of expression and thought that simplifies and makes intelligible the otherwise bewildering pattern of change that takes place as elemental substances are mixed one with another and are heated or cooled, compressed or expanded. They illumine relationships that assist us in our endeavor to exercise control over the behavior of matter. These are no accidental by-products of a system devised primarily for the recording of physical data. They exist because the basic features of construction of all phase diagrams are dictated by a single natural law, the phase rule of J. Willard Gibbs, which relates the physical state of a mixture with the number of substances of which it is composed and with the environmental conditions imposed upon it. <...>

Copper is most commonly present in the earth’s crust as coppereironesulfide and copper sulfide minerals, such as chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and chalcocite (Cu2S). The concentration of these minerals in an ore body is low. Typical copper ores contain from 0.5% Cu (open pit mines, Fig. 1.1) to 1 or 2% Cu (underground mines). Pure copper metal is mostly produced from these ores by concentration, smelting, and refining (Fig. 1.2). Copper also occurs to a lesser extent in oxidized minerals (carbonates, oxides, hydroxy-silicates, sulfates). Copper metal is usually produced from these minerals by leaching, solvent extraction, and electrowinning (Fig. 1.3). These processes are also used to treat chalcocite (Cu2S).
A third major source of copper is scrap copper and copper alloys. Production of copper from recycled used objects is 10 or 15% of mine production. In addition, there is considerable re-melting/re-refining of scrap generated during fabrication and manufacture. Total copper production in 2010 (mined and from end-of-use scrap) was ~20 million tonnes. <...>

This book describes extraction of nickel, cobalt and platinum-group metals. The starting point is ore-in-place and the finishing point is high-purity metals and chemicals.
We have combined the description of these metals in one book because they very often occur together, are extracted together and have similar properties.
The objectives of the book are to:

(a) describe how these metals occur and are extracted;
(b) explain why these extraction processes have been chosen;
(c) indicate how the processes can be operated most efficiently, with minimal impact on the environment; and,
(d) suggest future improvements.

Extractive metallurgy is that branch of metallurgy that deals with ores as raw material and metals as finished products. It is an ancient art that has been transformed into a modem science as a result of developments in chemistry and chemical engineering. The present volume is a collective work of a number of authors in which metals, their history, properties, extraction technology, and most important inorganic compounds and toxicology are systematically described.