Every mineral carries a record of how it can be processed.

The idea

A deposit's geophysics, its bulk geochemistry, the phases actually present, their crystal structures, the chemistry of the surfaces those structures expose, and the electronic structure underneath all of it — together these determine whether a mineral separates cleanly or reports to the tailings.

That information exists today, scattered across instruments, theses, company reports and incompatible databases — and almost none of it is organized around the question a process engineer actually asks: what will this feed do in a separation circuit, and why?

Where the minerals are lost

Value leaves the flowsheet at every stage, and at each one the mechanism traces back to information that was never available when the decision was made.

• Mining

  Ore properties vary block to block. Grades have fallen for a century, so variability now dominates the answer.

• Separation

  Flotation reagents are selected for a mineral in general, not for the feed in front of the plant. Selectivity is where the losses concentrate.

• Extraction

  Ligands and extractants must discriminate between chemically near-identical ions. Stage counts and reagent loads follow directly.

• Purification

  Impurities carried from upstream set the cost of the final product — and the volume of waste alongside it.

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