What does economic minerals mean?

Answer 1

Sara,

An economic mineral is a mineral that has some commercial use that is also profitable to mine. In other words, there is a way to extract and process the mineral so that the profits that can be made from it outweigh the cost of mining it.

Answer 2

An "economic" mineral is any substance that can be mined, drilled for, or quarried at a profit.

Here, the term "mineral" does not necessarily have the connotation of a mineral in the geological sense of the word. Here, a mineral could be oil, limestone, gravel, gold, anything, even water, that can be obtained from the earth and make a profit.

Minerals, in the geological sense, are natually occurring inorganic substances with a definite crystalline structure and a constant (excepting impurities) chemical makeup. Geological minerals are not necessarily valuable commercially.

So, people talk of "mineral rights" when they purchase land. If the "mineral rights" are included in the purchase, then the owner of the mineral rights gets a profit if another person or a company mines anything from that land.

Answer 3

Economicr minerals are earth materials that can be utilized for economic and/or industrial purposes. These materials include precious and base metals, nonmetallic minerals, construction-grade stone, petroleum minerals, coal, and water. The term commonly refers to metallic mineral deposits and mineral .

Answer 4

Minerals that are economic to use and are of value in products or for there own worth.

When the Washington Monument was created the roof was covered in a rare valuable metal; aluminum. Now days we have easy access to electricity so making aluminum is easy to do.

The value of the metal depends on the market and the need. Pennies used to be made out of copper so when the copper content of a penny became worth more than one cent people started melting them down for the copper. Now days they are zinc with a copper cladding.

Copper is valuable and there is only so much that we can reach. A lot of it is tied up in bronze, so raw copper is getting rarer and rarer. In the last year a new from of crime has appeared in our area; copper theft. Thieves are stealing A/C units, house hold wiring in housing under construction, and the wiring in street lights. Copper thieves steal the copper to sell it for scrap. A A/C unit is expensive and useful, but thieves are cutting off the copper connections to sell because they are easier to get at and move.

The value of a mineral depends on how easy it is to work and what it can be used for. Gold has always been prized because it is a soft metal that can be easily worked, has a pretty color and shine. That is why it was used as the international standard for money. Alchemists were searching for a way to turn base lead into gold. If they could do that they would manufacture wealth. It can’t be done, but that didn’t stop people as smart as Isaac Newton try it.

When gold was first discovered its electrical conductive ability was unknown so it was only used for jewelry; now days the best electric instruments use gold contacts. Copper wire is the standard for all household wiring and the wires in most equipment. Once, when the price of copper became higher than the price of aluminum, builders tried to wire houses with aluminum wiring. It saved them money, but the increased heat, from aluminum’s increased resistance, became a fire danger and it is no outlawed by the housing code.

The value of a material goes up and down with the uses of it and the rarity of it. 40 years ago there were oil wells in Texas that shut down because it wasn’t economical to keep pumping them. It cost more to get the oil out than the oil was worth. Now days with the increasing price of oil some of those wells are being reactivated. Oil isn’t a metal, but it is a valuable and in the same place as valuable minerals.

The next great source of materials is going to be from space. Earth is running out of useable resources, and there is only so far we can dig down. China is the biggest consumer and at there rate of growth in 50 years they will require more copper than the rest of the world uses. So the prices are going to go up, and things are going to be harder to do until new copper resources can be found.

The Earth’s molten core has a lot of copper in it, but we can’t dig down that far, and we can’t did down that far on other planets. Asteroids though have a lot of heavy minerals. Soon it will be accepted practice to drag one to Earth Orbit so it can be mined for use in space and on Earth. The Moon only has light elements and mining on Mars will require a lot of digging. Venus is a sulfuric acid bath with unlivable temperatures, but asteroids have those metals right on the surface. They are small rocks that can be easily drilled into, even creating a space colony on them. A great idea for a space colony would be to get a large asteroid with lots of metal on it and then drill holes in it. Drill out and mine out the metal you need, put the waste outside as a radiation and micrometeor shield then use the minerals you mind to make what you need. Close off the empty space and live inside of it. Mine out large enough space and grind up some of that soil then import some earthworms, light the interior and you can have a space farm. Asteroids are the mines of the future.

Answer 5

Those with commercial value.