Barnett and Morse’ examined the economics of natural resource availability using data on capital, labour and output for the USA between 1870 and 1957. They tested the hypothesis that the scarcity of natural resources was increasing by examining the trend of unit cost of extractive products in the agricultural, mineral, forestry and fishing industries. Working in terms of index numbers they defi...

Abstract: The huge consumption of iron ores in China has attracted much attention to utilizing low grade complex iron resources, such as high-aluminum hematite-limonite ore, which is a refractory resource and difficult to upgrade by traditional physical concentration processes due to the superfine size and close dissemination of iron minerals with gangue minerals. An innovative technology for a...

This paper introduces a neural network approach to the problem of ore grade estimation. The system under consideration consists of three neural network modules each responsible for a different area of the deposit, depending on the sampling density. Octant and quadrant search is used as a way of presenting input patterns to the modules. Both radial basis function networks and multi-layered perce...

The drum agglomeration of nickel laterite and gold ores has been optimized through the design of experiments (DOE) using a Taguchi L16 (45) orthogonal array to determine the optimum conditions for maximizing average agglomerate size and minimizing the amount of fines. The effects of controllable operating factors including moisture content (nickel laterite ore: 34-37%; gold ore: 7-10%), retenti...

the base (cu–pb–zn) and precious metals (ag±au) mineralization at the no. 4 anomaly of golojeh deposit occurred in volcanic and sub–volcanic eocene–oligocene host rocks, in the central part of the tarom–hashtjin zone. basic to intermediate volcanic, volcaniclastic and sub–volcanic rocks are dominated in the area and include andesite, basaltic andesite, trachy-andesite, dacite and tuff with affi...

The processing mineralogy characteristics of an oxidized lead-zinc ore from Sichuan were studied systematically using numerous modern instruments. Results showed that lead and zinc oxide content in the ore exceeded the minimum industrial grade, and also included a relatively high concentration of silver and iron. This ore is composed of many different minerals. Major zinc-containing minerals in...