in-situ recovery
A way of extracting minerals by pumping liquid down into the ore deposit, dissolving the useful minerals underground, and then pumping the liquid back up to the surface — no digging required.
तकनीकी रूप से: A method in which a lixiviant — a dissolving solution, most commonly an acid or alkaline solution — is injected into an orebody through boreholes, allowed to react with and dissolve the target minerals within the deposit, and then recovered through separate extraction boreholes as a pregnant solution for processing at surface. The method is most widely applied to sandstone-hosted uranium deposits and some copper deposits. It is often called in-situ leaching (ISL), and the terms are used interchangeably in practice; the key practical distinction from heap leaching is that in-situ recovery does not involve any mining or movement of rock.
Mining
indicated resource
A part of a deposit that geologists have a reasonable but not complete picture of, based on samples that are spread a bit further apart.
तकनीकी रूप से: An indicated resource is one for which quantity, grade or quality, densities, shape and physical characteristics can be estimated with sufficient confidence to allow a mine plan to be applied and for assumptions about technical and economic parameters to be made. Sample spacing is wider than for a measured resource, and geological continuity is assumed but not fully demonstrated. An indicated resource can support a pre-feasibility study and may convert to a probable reserve; it cannot directly support a proven reserve.
Markets
industrial mineral
A mineral or rock dug up not for the metal inside it but for its own physical or chemical properties — things like salt, gravel, potash or kaolin used directly in factories or construction.
तकनीकी रूप से: An industrial mineral is any non-metallic, non-fuel mineral or rock exploited for its inherent physical or chemical properties rather than as a source of extractable metal. Examples include potash, phosphate rock, kaolin, barite, silica sand and talc. The category is defined by end use and contrasts with both metallic ores and energy minerals; the same material, such as graphite, may appear on both industrial-mineral and critical-mineral lists depending on the analytical framework applied.
Materials
inferred resource
A rough estimate of ore that might be in the ground, based on limited information and a lot of geological guesswork.
तकनीकी रूप से: An inferred resource is one for which quantity and grade or quality are estimated on the basis of limited geological evidence and sampling, sufficient only to imply but not verify geological and grade continuity. The level of confidence is too low to apply many technical or economic parameters with reliability. Inferred resources cannot be converted directly to reserves and are excluded from economic analysis in feasibility studies; they are sometimes included in scoping or preliminary economic assessments with explicit caveats.
Markets
ion-adsorption clay
An ion-adsorption clay is a type of weathered rock in which rare earth elements are not locked tightly inside mineral crystals but instead cling loosely to the surface of clay particles, a bit like static-charged dust sticking to a screen, making them relatively easy to recover.
तकनीकी रूप से: Ion-adsorption clay deposits, also called in-situ leach rare earth deposits or weathered crust elution-deposited rare earth deposits, form by deep tropical or subtropical weathering of granitic or volcanic parent rocks, during which rare earth elements are released from primary minerals and adsorbed onto the surface of secondary clay minerals — principally halloysite, kaolinite, and smectite — rather than forming discrete rare earth minerals. Because the elements are electrostatically bound rather than structurally incorporated, they can be displaced into solution by treatment with ammonium sulfate or other electrolyte solutions at relatively low temperatures, which gives these deposits a processing advantage over hard-rock rare earth ores despite their typically low total rare earth oxide grades. They are the principal global source of heavy rare earth elements, which are preferentially enriched in them relative to the light rare earth elements that dominate most hard-rock deposits such as carbonatites.
Geology