Process Mineralogy of Critical Metals

Dear Colleagues,

The production of some metals is critical for the development of society, especially for high technology applications such as smartphones, fibre-optic cables, personal computers and wireless devices. Critical metals are those of great economic interest and a high risk of supply because of their scarcity or geopolitical causes. There is a high interest in finding new mines to obtain these metals. In this way, low-grade deposits can be of economic importance if the obtained ores are processed using methods that are capable of achieving optimal recovery. This requires a detailed knowledge of the mineralogical characteristics of the ore and its evolution during processing. Process Mineralogy plays an important role during the development of different stages of mineral processing, such as gravity separation and flotation. It provides information of which type of mineral constitute the ores and associated gangue, their textures, distribution of the metals of interest and degree of liberation of ores. Additionally, to make mining a sustainable activity, we also have to know, in detail, the mineralogy of wastes generated from processing to management of them; process mineralogy gives us knowledge on the chemical and textures of minerals necessary to safely perform this activity, with respect to the environment. Recently, the development of automated quantitative mineralogy has highly increased the efficiency of Process Mineralogy, although more traditional techniques, such as powder X-ray diffraction or electron microprobes, are also important to achieve a complete mineralogical characterization. Papers on recent advances in Process Mineralogy applied to the different stages of obtaining critical metals are welcome to this Special Issue.

Dr. Pura Alfonso Abella
Guest Editor

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