Why mining

At Mackay, our goal is to provide a student-focused and student-friendly atmosphere, a low student to faculty ratio, and summer job and internship opportunities. Internationally renowned for its academic programs in the earth, mineral and engineering sciences, and its diverse research activities, Mackay has earned its reputation for excellence by providing the mining, engineering and minerals industries with highly-trained graduates, by conducting cutting-edge research in its state-of-the art facilities and by its continuous offering of public service to Nevada and the nation.

While offering programs in geology, geography, geophysics, geological engineering, hydrogeology and mining engineering with options in underground and quarry mining , Mackay has expanded its scope to include research and degree programs in other critical earth science disciplines including seismology, environmental engineering and hydrology.

Our close ties with industry leaders provide students with exclusive opportunities for summer jobs and internships. This means hands-on industry experience, giving you the leading edge to jump-start your career.

What's more? Ninety-eight percent of recent Mackay graduates have job offers upon graduation! Most industrial minerals have a degree of price flexibility because international competition in the domestic market is limited.

Although some companies and plants are large, size is not always necessary for economic success. However, obtaining permits for new mines and quarries is often difficult, especially near urban areas, and this may favor larger operations and more underground mining in the future. A wide variety of other materials are also mined, such as limestone, building stone, specialty sand, clay, and gypsum for construction; phosphate rock, potash, and sulfur for agriculture 2 ; and salt, lime, soda ash, borates, magnesium compounds, sodium sulfate, rare earths, bromine, and iodine for the chemical industries.

Industrial materials also include a myriad of substances used in pigments, coatings, fillers and extenders, filtering aids, ceramics, glass, refractory raw materials, and other products. Competition from imports is generally unlikely, although exceptions can be found. Low production costs combined with low ocean transportation costs, allows cement clinker to be imported from Canada, Taiwan, Scandinavia, and China.

At one end of the spectrum, some materials, such as domestic high-grade kaolin, require extensive processing and are so valuable that the United States is a major exporter.

At the other end, materials such as natural graphite and sheet mica are so rare and domestic sources so poor that the United States imports percent of its needs. Nitrogen, once mined as sodium nitrate, has been extracted from the atmosphere by the Haber ammonia process for nearly a century. Unlike the aggregate industry, which is spread over most of the country, some industrial minerals are concentrated in certain parts of the country Figures a and b.

Newly mined sulfur comes from the offshore Gulf of Mexico and western Texas, but recovered sulfur comes from many sources, such as power plants, smelters, and petroleum refineries. The Carolinas and Georgia are the only sources of high-grade kaolin and certain refractory raw materials.

The United States has had only one significant rare-earth mine, located in the desert in southeastern California. Potash, once mined in New Mexico and Utah, now comes mostly from western Canada, where production costs are lower. The technologies used in the industrial-minerals sector vary widely, from relatively simple mining, crushing, and sizing technologies for common aggregates to highly sophisticated technologies for higher value minerals, such as kaolin and certain refractory raw materials.

Agricultural minerals, including phosphates, potash, and sulfur, are in a technological middle range. Uranium can be recovered from phosphate processing.

Some investments in new technologies for industrial minerals are intended to increase productivity, but most are intended to produce higher quality products to meet market demands. Coal is the most important fuel mineral mined in the United States.

With annual production in excess of a billion tons since , the United States is the second largest producer of coal in the world. Nearly 90 percent of this production is used for electricity generation; coal accounts for about 56 percent of the electricity generated in the United States EIA, b. In recent years coal has provided about 22 percent of all of the energy consumed in the United States.

Several projections show that coal will lose market share to natural gas, a trend that could be accelerated by concerns over global warming Abelson, Coal production may benefit in the short run, however, from electricity deregulation as coal-fired plants use more of their increased generating capacity.

With the price of natural gas increasing by more than percent in recent months, projections of future energy mix must be viewed with caution, at least in the short term. Coal is found in many areas of the United States Figure , although there are regional differences in the quantity and quality.

Anthracite is found primarily in northeastern Pennsylvania; bituminous coking coals are found throughout the Appalachian region; and other bituminous grades and subbituminous coals are widely distributed throughout Appalachia, the Midwest, and western states. Deposits of lignite of economic value are found in Montana and the Dakotas, as well as in Texas and Mississippi. Because lignite is about 40 percent water, it is ordinarily used in power plants near the deposits.

In recent years considerable research has been focused on making synthetic liquid fuels from lignite. Some Appalachian and most midcontinent coals have high sulfur contents and thus generate sulfur dioxide when burned in a power plant.

Under current environmental regulations effluent gases may have to be scrubbed and the sulfur sequestered. Many power producers have found it more economical to purchase coals from western states. These coals have less sulfur and are preferrable even though they have lower calorific power energy content. Therefore, the market share of large western mines is increasing.

Most western coals are mined from large surface mines, and delivery costs are low because of the availability of rail transportation. Because the capital costs of sulfur scrubbing are high, low-sulfur coal from Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado can be shipped economically by rail over long distances.

Concerns about mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants may also influence the future use of coal. Uranium is also mined in the United States. In the longer run, however, the use of uranium in power generation may increase, particularly if the United States seriously attempts to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

In a recent article in Science, Sailor et al. The three mining sectors metals, coal, and industrial minerals have some common needs for new technologies; other technologies would have narrower applications; and some would be for unique or highly specialized uses. Metal mining can include the following components: exploration and development, drilling, blasting or mechanical excavating, loading, hauling, crushing, grinding, classifying, separating, dewatering, and storage or disposal.

Separation may be by physical or. Storage of metal concentrates may be open or enclosed; disposal of waste products is ordinarily in ponds or dumps.

Treatment beyond crushing may be by wet or dry methods; if the latter, dust control is necessary. Classification is usually thought of as discrimination based on size, although with the use of a medium usually water or air particles can be differentiated to some degree by mass, or even by shape.

Mining of industrial minerals may include several of the unit operations listed above, but the largest sector of this type of mining the production of stone, gravel, and sand seldom requires separation beyond screening, classification, and dense media separation, such as jigging. Other industrial mineral operations require very sophisticated technologies, even by metal-mining standards, to obtain the high quality of certain mineral commodities.

The most common mining methods used by surface coal mines are open pits with shovel-and-truck teams and opencast mines with large draglines. In underground coal mining, the most common methods are mechanical excavation with continuous miners and longwall shearers.

Some coals, mostly coals mined underground, may require processing in a preparation plant to produce marketable products. Crushing and screening are common, as are large-scale gravity plants using jigs and dense-media separators, but flotation is not always attractive because of its costs and the moisture content of the shipped product.

Coal and coal-bed methane are combustible and sometimes explosive. Therefore, deliberate fine grinding is avoided until just before the coal is burned. Although a miner or explorer, say, 75 years ago might recognize some of the equipment and techniques used today, many important changes have occurred in equipment design and applications.

Trucks, shovels, and drills are much larger; electricity and hydraulic drives have replaced compressed air; construction materials are stronger and more durable; equipment may now contain diagnostic computers to anticipate failures; and such equipment usually yields. Although incremental improvements have driven much of this progress, major contributions have also come from revolutionary developments.

Some examples of revolutionary developments in mining are the use of ammonium-nitrate explosives and aluminized-slurry explosives, millisecond delays in blast ignition, the global positioning system GPS in surface-mine operations, rock bolts, multidrill hydraulic jumbos, load-haul-dump units, safety couplers on mine cars, longwall mining, and airborne respirable dust control. In plants there are radiometric density gauges, closed-circuit television, hydrocyclones, wedge-bar screens, autogenous and semiautogenous grinding mills, wrap-around drives, high-intensity magnetic separators, spirals and Reichert cones, high-tension separators, continuous assay systems, high-pressure roll grinding, computerized modeling and process control, and many more innovations.

The increase in productivity in the past several decades made possible by new technologies has far exceeded the average increase for the U. Conservation Land and Emissions. Coal Globally Coal globally What is coal? Future of coal Alternatives to coal Making steel without coal. Importance of Mining. Hotlinks Everyone uses minerals Mining and the NZ economy Economic benefits from a small footprint High-tech, future focused.

Everyone uses minerals Minerals are vital to the way we live — in homes, food production, transport and infrastructure, at work and play. Continue reading. Mining and the NZ economy In the same way that mining supports the way we live, it also underpins much of our economy.

Economic benefits from a small footprint Mining provides huge economic benefit from a small footprint. High-tech, future focused Mining today is a high-tech industry operating safely and responsibly, employing highly skilled people producing essential materials. Continue Reading. Unethical Consumers John Berry's opinion piece on ethical investing Fossil fuels, palm oil and animal testing in your KiwiSaver? Conservation Land Not all conservation land is high conservation value Existing world-class environmental safeguards Minerals and the low carbon economy Unintended consequences of a ban The footprint is tiny Modern mining rehabilitation is world class Economic Benefits Conservation Land and Emissions.