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Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 23 11:12 am Post subject:

Does`nt this sound like fracking?

Professor Gawen Jenkin, a Cornish native who heads Leicester University’s Centre for Sustainable Resource Extraction, said new green solvents – based on materials including vitamin B4 – offer a more sustainable way of extracting minerals and mining companies are even seeking a “holy grail” of being able to pump state-of-the-art liquid solutions into seams to dissolve and remove metals without the need for direct mining.

He said: “There is a strong moral case for a country like the UK to take on some of the burden of producing the huge resources that we need for the green revolution. If done well, mining could benefit the national and local economies and we would not be off-shoring our carbon footprint. Mining technology is very different from the last time we were extracting large amounts of minerals in Britain 150 or 200 years ago.”

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 23 1:02 pm Post subject:

or 200000 tons in excess of the licence expiry

a bit like stone digger's bucket parked 57 feet in and 25 feet deep inside the area of an ancient monument?
no criminal, no insurance, no 3/4 mil £ digger

umm

my Th and thermal Pu suggestions are low carbon for the energy that could be harvested
i am not a nuke fan

the UK has enough Pu for about 300 yrs if it was under a kettle rather than in a safe as we can manage storage bunker

there are better ways

folk who can make machines work in a mine or quarry can make "clean machines"work

at the mo lithium is at a premium, plenty in kernow, mining by solution has issues, perhaps less than digging wormholes or strip mining

iirc over 100 named minerals just in the Botallack seams, they might need a bit of work to get them accessible
i knew the place and people before it was a heritage site, the Corpus Christy seam is barely explored and perhaps 10% exploited
imho if it is a rare mineral, gets some new pumps and head deep under St Just, it will be there when you find it
the Owl and Edward seams are the other direction
mining a rising and up and down slightly fractured seam, under rock and under the sea is not my idea of fun

the old boy i made friends with had some terrifying tales of firing and getting a wet surprise 3/4 of a mile towards america

for "rare" kernow is probably richer than the DRC

specifically, for lithium which might be last season's fashion before a new full scale pump mines are operational, kernow has loads of any element require(and perhaps a few we have not registered yet)

if you need an element look in kernow

well me hansom, one old to another
if you look into a wormhole anywhere on the planet, someone will be making pasties nearby

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 23 1:20 pm Post subject:
in mineral seams, aqua is less dangeroos for diggers, hopefully less messy than bashed and then hot extraction from broken rocks for a specific and dump the rest just for fun, some of the natural aqua extractions from bottom run off might be a lowish tech source of an interesting set of possibly valuable rare earth elements

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15993

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 23 6:52 am Post subject:

I don't think that it is exactly fracking but subsidence in some salt towns is a good reason why it has to be treated with care. If water containing the right solvents is sent down a tube, it will dissolve the materials you need, and if the surrounding rock is strong enough, it won't do any damage to the structure of the rock. If it isn't then the whole area sinks.

Yes, Cornwall is very rich in minerals, and they haven't been exploited properly. Perhaps even having a look at any spoil pits might be economic these days.

Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 23 12:08 pm Post subject:
Forcing something underground to force something out is exactly fracking,what if some of these elements get into the water table,not unlike the info that has come from the US fracking sites.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 23 12:33 pm Post subject:

The Yorkshire Potash mine is going ahead, Cornish Lithium also appears to be progressing.

Mineral extraction needs to be done, I guess it has to be much better in a well regulated (allegedly) regime. I would hope that the techniques are properly evaluated.

One of my biggest problems with fracking was (is) that we need as quickly as possible to move on from fossil fuels, the world is on fire!

I hope that Labour (if they win) force the ditching of the cumbria coal mine, and new oil exploration.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 23 8:58 pm Post subject:

Ty Gwyn wrote:

Forcing something underground to force something out is exactly fracking,what if some of these elements get into the water table,not unlike the info that has come from the US fracking sites.

to be brutal, if you saw the pretty colours of a derelict adit runoff deposition from solution or the stuff that was not target in the dumped spoil, kernow is a good place to mine by solution, if the target elements can be targetted and grabbed tidily

bulk lithium is a bit behind the demand curve, plausible though

the elements that are rare and are useful are just as common as tin silver arsenic and copper(and the odd bit of gold, but we never mention that)

in the past they have been recorded by science and ignored or shifted out of the way as waste rock

with coal there is one target of varied quality, elements

are a bit more varied

kernow has most of them, if they can be located and extracted without spreading the rest of them around it does make sense

magnets, electronics, batteries , what do you need
ask the piskies to find them, they will try to avoid or appease the tommyknockers

as i mentioned we have a splendid selection box

those are some of our minerals, there are many others still to be recorded as potential target ore for most of the periodic table

the lithium pump mine is a minor

aspect of the things available for high tech clever "greenish" use

the DRC has minerals, kernow has more, dont try sending wagner to secure them
even the romans were rather polite to the piskies and "the crown" did a deal that everything except gold was ours and untaxed, nobody ever found any gold, so it was never an issue

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 23 9:17 pm Post subject:

PS we invented the engines that made your carbon mines as practical as our mineral ones

almost a common language, very different geology and chemistry

hunting rare ones might be best started by regaining access to wormholes and galleries under interesting spoil to find where it came from

start with the spoil as a scoping exercise, use that learning to get deep on the target elements required

PPS plenty of uranium etc but probably best not do that

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8950
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 23 6:39 am Post subject:
It would be interesting to know what is in the moonscape that is Mynydd Parys ex- copper mine

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15993

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 23 7:14 am Post subject:

Ty Gwyn, I agree that fracking isn't the way to go, but some things like potassium and lithium are very water soluble so it might be possible to extract them without using high pressure to break the rocks. In many cases in these mining areas the water supply is a bit dubious anyway as the underlying rock is so rich in minerals, so it comes from safer places. Some areas forbid the growing of certain crops because of the natural soil containing so much arsenic for instance. I think the real locals have built up a natural resistance to these chemicals as they don't seem to die any younger, but they are unwise for anyone else to eat.

I agree that spoil heaps and existing run off are a good way to go; there must be any number of minerals in them.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 23 11:21 pm Post subject:

the places with the fascinating stuff are volcanic, ie hard rocks with intrusions of seems from extrusion of a variety of dry and wet magmas

the bits with the metamorphic and softer rocks are not a target for metals

google scholar is delightful, a bit light on cats playing tubas
=========================

B] The geology and mineralisation of the St. Just District with particular reference to Levant Mine
NJ Jackson - 1976
Cited by 5 Related articles All 2 versions
Cite
… town—and institute field-excursions. In the neighbourhood of Penzance, with such interesting geological and mineralogical localities as Botallack, St. Ives, Gurnard's …
IIINON BOOKS - Zeitschrift der deutschen geolog. Gessellschaft, 1865
Related articles All 2 versions
Cite
Almandine from Botallack, Cornwall
AR Alderman - Mineralogical magazine and journal of the …, 1935
Cited by 21 Related articles All 2 versions

==================================

not a bad start

re holes that close and the surface, i have felt a fairly strong eathquake from one about half a mile away and about a 250 ft down

When the earth stopped moving, i was about 15 vertical feet closer to the sea, the steepish slope i was on did not separate from the flatter bit above above fortunately, but the chunk that moved would tens of thousands of tons

the bit that did break to the surface was half a mile away (the pebble drop was a litte over 3 seconds and the thing got a very needed a stout fence at a respectful distance in a couple of days

fall through, not off, the landscape into a very old worm hole is not fun
the camera had less scratches and bruises than me

the tommyknockers can be lived with but they do get busy if nobody is still playing hide and seek with them

as a comparison with coal, at least the gas and dust dont explode and most of the time the rock matrix is fairly calm about reasonably sized holes, big chambers are quite rare and can be a bit moody after a couple of hundred years
the ancient ones near the surface and long forgotten climb a seam to near the surface ones do sinkhole a fair bit, drop shafts are often fairly stable although the old sticks and bit of spoil cap falls down quite a few Which surprises a few folk who did not know it was there

hydro extracting the soluble and interesting and nor removing the spoil and direct matrix to get at the interesting might suit that sort of geology

there are cathedrals of stuff, but the most interesting elements in this context are in rather tight seams

im not sure about the lithium plan, i reckon as i do not know that area well, the seams with the heavier metals are mostly in hard rock that has often been mined for millennia that could be an issue if there is breakthrough, but the virgin seems might be quite safe and tidy if it was done properly

i will try to find the patents, that is often educational

Last edited by dpack on Thu Jul 27, 23 7:36 am; edited 1 time in total

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 23 11:53 pm Post subject:

a rather dark side of "local humour" might include the second homers etc trying to be NIMSecondBY protesters while the locals are culturally comfortable with mineral extraction if they earn a few quid

fish and/or farm and dig a local hole of something was usual even until the 18th C and pumped mines with a specialist full-time workforce

at the my biggest concern is that most of the interesting stuff has other stuff around or among it, some of that stuff is not of much modern use and rather toxic

i recon adit run off waters would provide good hints as to what might be harvested easily and what might be troublesome from the corpus christy with no more than a bottle analytical chemistry
the fraction of they had so far has a lot of arsenic

Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 23 2:06 am Post subject:
I believe there is still exploration work going on in Crofty,i will check with a mate of mine who`s a Mines Rescue consultant who visits Crofty on a regular basis.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15993

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 23 6:48 am Post subject:

I seem to recall reading about the lithium mining and that did involve dissolving the lithium I think. Will be interesting to find out about the Crofty mine Ty Gwyn. Dpack, I think the run off waters might be worth exploiting on their own in some cases. Arsenic is a major component of some as that was what was being mined there, but there are other things too. Whether it is economically viable to extract them from the run off or spoil heaps is another matter.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46244
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Jul 27, 23 8:23 am Post subject:

[url= https://www.cornishmineimages.co.uk/cornish-mines/] target rich environment [/url]

in some ways i am beginning to rather like the idea

it need not be by solution, but scoping what is easy to see as a survey would be a splendid data set

boots bags bottles ropes mass spectrometer

there is a lot to look at, but it would be a basic sampling task

ps the amethyst vein is delightful, i only took a tiny sample of non gem quality, an honour to be shown it as a big thank you for something i did for him
tis a bit of a secret as to where that is, i have no obligation to share it

best crystal one i found was on the spoil between botallack and porthereas , half a small geode with quartz crystals with bright ruby red side branches , pretty rock me hansom

kernow is a bit fierce but it ain't twfcitw, i am warming to the idea of specific mineral targetting for rare stuff in kernow, bulk stuff has often been a bit untidy, done tidily it is unlikely to add too much more to the historic legacy chemical challenges

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