Mineral Resources - a collection of all the minerals found in the bowels of the planet, available and suitable for use in industrial applications.This category includes not only the natural resources of land, but also those that are found on the ocean floor.
Mineral Resources - broad concept that has several aspects.In terms of geology - a set of fields in which chemical elements and consisting of these minerals are concentrated in the sharply higher doses than the average (clarke) their content in the earth's crust, which ensures the feasibility of their industrial development.If we look at the economic aspect, mineral resources - a source of raw materials for industry (fuel and energy sector, construction, metallurgy, chemical industry), as well as a possible object of international cooperation.
scientists have developed a classification of mineral resources on areas of use.From this perspective, the following groups:
1. Fuel and energy resources.Primarily, this is oil and natural gas, and coal, oil shale.Uranium ore steel industrial minerals only in the late 20th century.Now they, too, belong to this category.Historically, this group is, and peat, although it is now industrial significance it has.These minerals are of sedimentary origin.As a rule, they are confined to the covers of ancient platforms, their boundary and internal deflections.
2. Ores:
- ferrous metals.Primarily, the iron and vanadium, manganese and chromium;
- non-ferrous metal and alloy.This aluminum ore (bauxite, alunite, nepheline-apatite and so forth.), Copper ore, nickel, lead, zinc, tungsten, molybdenum, etc .;
- precious metals (gold-silver, platinum).
ores or accompanied by foundations and boards of ancient platforms, or are confined to the folded areas, where often form metallogenic belt, which owe their origin to the deep tectonic faults.
3. Precious and semi-precious minerals (diamond, corundum, and its variants, spinel, emerald, jade, quartz species and many others).
4. Mining and chemical mineral resources.This group includes rock, potash and magnesia salts, phosphates and apatite, sulfur and its compounds, barite, fluorite, boron ore and other minerals, which are the raw material for the chemical industry.
5. Industrial raw materials of non-metallic origin (quartz, graphite, asbestos, mica, talc, and others.).
6. Building materials (marble, clay, slate, granite, gabbro-diabase, limestone, glass and cement raw materials, etc.).
7. hydromineral resources (groundwater as fresh and saline, including thermal and used in spa treatment).
deposits of non-metallic minerals occur both on the platforms and in the folded areas.
This classification is rather conditional, since often different sectors can use the same raw materials.For example, apatite or limestone can be used both in industry and in the chemical industry as limestone - also in construction.
Mineral resources have been used by man since the dawn of civilization, which is reflected in the title of some periods (for example - the stone or bronze age).At the present time, in the words of Academician Fersman, at the feet of humanity, all the periodic system.In modern industry, involved more than 200 varieties of mineral resources.Almost all of them belong to the category of non-renewable, so one of the most important areas of modern ecology is the development of measures to prevent the resource crisis.
