What Is Involved in Molybdenum Mining,2013 - II
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- Category: Molybdenum knowledge
- Published on 01 April 2013
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The first step in strip molybdenum mining is using a dragline excavator. Thousands of tons in weight, the excavator looks like a giant moving crane with a bucket attached to the end of its boom. With the use of ropes and pulleys, the bucket is dragged along the ground picking up plants, topsoil, and eventually the bedrock. Once all ore has been retrieved, the excavator moves to a new location and repeats the process.
After the ore has been removed by the excavator bucket, it is dumped into nearby, large-diameter, hollowed-out wells. High-pressure water is forced over the ore to form a slurry of rock that is suctioned off by 2-foot (60.96 cm) diameter pipes and sent to the mill for processing. Chunks of bedrock removed from the site, on the way to the mill, may be as large as 9 inches (22.86 cm) in diameter.
The next process is benefication, in which the rocks are ground down, and then separated into ores and waste products. Benefication consists of three parts: washing, separation by density to remove magnesium oxides, and flotation. The ore debris is put through repeated cycles of rinsing, crushing with ball mills, and sizing through screens, until a concentrated batch is produced, which is made up mostly of molybdenite ore in the form of molybdenum disulfide. Molybdenite is the only molybdenum ore that separates readily through the floatation process, possibly because of how, as a fine particle, it repels, or is repelled by water molecules.
Molybdenum disulfide is changed to molybdenum oxide by heating it in air. The sulfur is removed as sulfur dioxide gas. Though molybdenum oxide is usually the export product from molybdenum mining, it can be changed into molybdenum by heating it in the presence of hydrogen gas. The oxygen, within the molybdenum oxide, bonds with the hydrogen to form a solution of water and pure molybdenum atoms.
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