REO
Short for Rare Earth Oxides — a way of measuring and reporting the total amount of rare-earth elements in a sample by expressing them all as their oxide forms added together.
技术层面: REO, or total rare earth oxide, is the standard reporting unit for rare-earth content in resources, concentrates and products, expressing the sum of individual rare-earth element oxides on a weight-percentage basis. Because each element is reported as its stoichiometric oxide rather than as the free metal, REO figures are systematically higher than total rare earth element (TREE) figures for the same material; the conversion factor differs for each element. REO is sometimes used interchangeably with TREO (total rare earth oxide), and both should be distinguished from TREE, REE and contained-metal figures, as mixing conventions without conversion produces material accounting errors.
Materials
rare earth element
A group of seventeen metals that share similar chemical behaviour and are used in small but important quantities in magnets, screens and many other technologies.
技术层面: The rare earth elements comprise the fifteen lanthanides (lanthanum through lutetium, atomic numbers 57–71) together with scandium and yttrium, which are grouped with them because of geochemical and chemical similarities. Despite the name, most are not especially scarce in Earth's crust; they are called rare partly for historical reasons and partly because concentrated, economically workable deposits are less common than crustal abundance alone would suggest. They are routinely divided into light and heavy subgroups, though the boundary used varies between sources.
Materials
recovery rate
Recovery rate is the share of a valuable mineral that is actually captured during processing, expressed as a proportion of the amount that was in the ore to begin with. If a lot of gold goes out with the waste, the recovery rate is low.
技术层面: Recovery rate, in mineral processing, is the proportion of the target element or mineral in the feed that is successfully extracted and reported to the product stream, typically expressed as a percentage. It is calculated from the assay grades and masses of the feed, concentrate and tailings streams and represents the efficiency of the processing circuit. Recovery rate must be distinguished from grade: a process achieving a high recovery may still produce a low-grade concentrate, and optimising one often involves trade-offs with the other. Metallurgical recovery is a key variable in the calculation of payable metal and in the economic evaluation of an orebody.
Mining
refractory metal
A metal that stays solid and strong even at temperatures hot enough to melt most other metals. Tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum and rhenium are the main ones.
技术层面: Refractory metals are conventionally defined as those with melting points above approximately that of platinum, a group that in practice centres on tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, niobium and rhenium. Their defining practical characteristic is retention of mechanical strength at elevated service temperatures where steels and most non-ferrous alloys would creep or fail. The term is sometimes extended loosely to chromium or vanadium, but in technical literature it is most reliably applied to the five metals listed above.
Materials
reserves
The part of a mineral deposit that a mining company has confirmed it can dig up and sell at a profit, given today's technology and prices.
技术层面: Reserves are that portion of a mineral resource for which sufficient study has been completed to demonstrate that extraction is technically feasible and economically viable under stated assumptions. The category sits beneath resources in the classification hierarchy and requires a completed feasibility or pre-feasibility study to support it; a resource does not become a reserve simply by being well-drilled.
Markets
resource nationalism
When a country's government decides it wants more control or a bigger share of the profits from the minerals found within its borders, sometimes taking over mines or changing the rules that foreign companies operate under.
技术层面: Resource nationalism describes a range of government actions through which a state asserts greater control over mineral resources or appropriates a larger share of the economic rents from their extraction. Measures include increased royalty or tax rates, mandatory local ownership or processing requirements, export restrictions on unprocessed ore, renegotiation or cancellation of existing concession agreements, and full or partial nationalisation. The term covers a spectrum of interventions rather than a single policy type, and its application to any specific government action often reflects the perspective of the party describing it. In supply-chain analysis it is treated as a category of political risk that can affect the availability and cost of supply from a given jurisdiction.
Markets
resources
A mineral deposit that geologists have found and measured, but where no one has yet proved it can be mined at a profit.
技术层面: A mineral resource is a concentration of material of potential economic interest in or on the Earth's crust, in a form and quantity that there are reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction. Resources are classified by the confidence of the geological estimate into measured, indicated and inferred categories. They are routinely confused with reserves, but the distinction is consequential: resources carry no guarantee of economic extractability, whereas reserves do.
Markets
roasting
Heating ore in air at high temperature to cause a chemical reaction — most often turning sulfur compounds into gases and leaving behind a solid that is easier to process.
技术层面: Roasting is a pyrometallurgical operation in which finely divided ore or concentrate is heated in a controlled atmosphere, most commonly air or oxygen, to achieve a specific chemical transformation of the solid feed — classically the oxidation of metal sulfides to oxides and sulfur dioxide. Unlike calcination, roasting is defined by the intentional reaction between the solid and the furnace atmosphere rather than simple decomposition. Several variants exist: oxidising, sulfating, magnetising and chloridising roast each target a different product phase, and the distinction between them is operationally significant when selecting downstream leach or smelting conditions.
Processing
room and pillar
An underground mining method where miners dig out sections of ore and leave behind regular columns of unmined rock, like pillars holding up the ceiling of a room.
技术层面: A method of underground mining in which ore is extracted from a grid of openings — the rooms — while regular columns of intact ore or rock — the pillars — are left in place to support the overlying strata. The method suits flat-lying or gently dipping, competent orebodies of moderate thickness, such as coal seams, potash beds, or tabular mineral deposits. It is sometimes confused with stope-and-pillar mining; the distinction is that room and pillar implies a systematic, near-regular pillar pattern designed from the outset, whereas stope-and-pillar arrangements may be more irregular and adapted to ore geometry.
Mining
royalty
A payment — usually a share of the value of what is mined — made to whoever owns the ground or holds a financial interest, every time metal is produced and sold.
技术层面: A mineral royalty is a periodic payment made to a rights holder — which may be a government, a landowner or a royalty finance company — calculated as a percentage of revenue, profit, or output value. Common structures include the net smelter return (NSR) royalty, which applies to the value of metal received at the smelter after deducting treatment and refining charges, and the gross overriding royalty, which applies to gross revenue before such deductions. Royalties differ from streaming agreements in that the royalty holder receives cash rather than metal, and differs from a working interest in that the royalty holder bears none of the operating costs. Governments typically impose statutory royalties separately from, and in addition to, any contractual royalties.
Markets
run of mine
Run of mine is the rock that comes straight out of the mine before anything has been sorted, crushed or processed. It is a mixture of valuable ore and worthless rock, just as it was blasted out of the ground.
技术层面: Run of mine (ROM) material is the total broken rock delivered from the mining face to the primary crusher or stockpile without any prior sorting or beneficiation. Its grade reflects the combined effect of the in-situ ore grade and the dilution introduced by mining, making ROM grade typically lower than the sampled resource grade. ROM grade and tonnage are the primary inputs to mill feed planning, and the gap between the sampled resource grade and the ROM grade as-received is a common measure of operational dilution performance.
Mining