It's nickel, no it's zinc, no, it's nickel-zinc.. they do substitute to a degree. But I hate cooking with those galvanized pans. Tastes lousy. All those zinc fumes, I am getting woozy.. (zinc fumes are deadly, don't EVER use a zinced stove pipe inside a tent. I did one time and all the rats died. I thought the flour was poisoned..)
How about iron? Iron is the most profitable mineral when the going is good.. so what are the characters of the minerals and the mines? Let me emulsify you..
1. silver -- smaller, cheaper, will float, harder to find and harder to mine as it is discontinuous and poddy. Recovery not as good as gold. Eats cyanide like crazy, requires lots of leaching time. Small miner can do it. Found in lead veins. Can be done by float, or cyanide, but no sinecure often.
Silver-- Found in zinc veins. Not good all the time. Hard to get out. Have to sell to roaster. Wairzat?
2. gold -- next best for the small miner, independent. More widely done as its occurence at paying grade is more common than silver. Recovery higher by gravity and solution, more robust. Will float too. Orebodies are larger than silver, and more dollars per ton generally. Often less refractory (free gold is more common by 100 times than free silver although much finer in this mode.)
3. zinc -- associated with base metals like copper. very common. Uncommonly known to be associated with gold. some free gold mines run to 2% zinc, (and to 3% tungsten) both of which metals which for the last 100 years has never been recovered because of low zinc prices for most of that time.) Zinc is a larger miner's metal as it needs a roaster/smelter to operate or at least make money. Selling zinc cons has not been a good way to make money for the last 50 years. Zinc when wet is bad bad in the smelter. Zinc cons at ten cent zinc were break even of they got wet. Need to ship to roaster/smelter and that could cost the farm. Tidewater maybe. No way 1000 miles by rail. Recovery low .. 80%. Tails may run 1% in some operations. But blackjack is evrywhere. As common as grass in veins. But economics? Bad. Big lead zinc is good. But you need to be good. Many zinc strata in BC at 30 to 60 million tons are going unmined. I mean many. Things are changing rapidly with price. More zinc around than say, fine cheese, so market should open up. Don't expect small zinc headframes spring up like weeds as it is still a producers and big boy's metal. For little guys to make money with copper and zinc, they have to make metal out the back end. Need a process for that. Potter MLM, Hard Creek may have one. Offtakes or milling/smelting agreements with biggie boys may make smallish bucks.. but you have to figure 300 bucks a concentrate tonne at the smelter and what is your con ratio. Copper is about 5-10, nickel about ten, zinc is mabve ten, so if price is about 30 bucks a mined ton ... Not trivial in an open pit situation.. even underground...
newton.dep.anl.gov
4. Copper-Nickel. Hard to recover, expensive to smelt. Big boys game that has changed somewhat with the processes. Now it is a medium boys game that may need a medium to large scale Sherrit process to do. Doable now with moderate to large tons, and robust grade. Metals prices (nickel) once controlled by one company, Inco. Smallest ni-cu plant to metal ever in history was the Texmont in Timmins in 1978 with Pat Sheridan. Proves it can be done.
5. Pt-Pd PGMs. Whew hah! One guy did it on his own. North American Palladium. Pat Sheridan. Nobody else is fool enuff to try. Easy to find and very common, harder to assay, easy to recover however to just a con.. many small open pit ni-cu mines ran in AK. Hard to refine in back end to metal without the ammonia processes and a medium to large plant.
6. copper. cheapest metal to mine in an oxide. Sexy W. Not that cheap in a sulphide, but cheaper than a lot of others. Higher price than zinc and easier smelting made it more common to mine by itself. Often harboured gold, and is often found in gold mines in small quantities. Some copper mines like the lower H were actually gold mines. 90% of Canada's gold came from copper mines for years during the 35 dollar price days.
7. Uranium: As soluble as kool aid. Anyone should be able to do it with a kitchen table resin column and a rock hammer, but mines are often not good enuff grade and the stuff if hot like potato when high enuff grade to mine. More uranium on the surface of Ontario than anywhere else in the world, but nobody wants to mine veins and pegmatites. This may change. |
