Nigeria is a vast country with considerable wealth in natural resources. This book provides a detailed description of Nigeria's geology and mineral resources with the aim of promoting sustainable ...economic development of Nigeria's mineral and petroleum sectors.
For twenty-five years, Kendall Brown studied Potosí, Spanish America's greatest silver producer and perhaps the world's most famous mining district. He read about the flood of silver that flowed from ...its Cerro Rico and learned of the toil of its miners. Potosí symbolized fabulous wealth and unbelievable suffering. New World bullion stimulated the formation of the first world economy but at the same time it had profound consequences for labor, as mine operators and refiners resorted to extreme forms of coercion to secure workers. In many cases the environment also suffered devastating harm. All of this occurred in the name of wealth for individual entrepreneurs, companies, and the ruling states. Yet the question remains of how much economic development mining managed to produce in Latin America and what were its social and ecological consequences. Brown's focus on the legendary mines at Potosí and comparison of its operations to those of other mines in Latin America is a well-written and accessible study that is the first to span the colonial era to the present.
4-Nitrophenol (4-NP) is considered a priority organic pollutant with high toxicity. Many authors have been committed to developing efficient, green, and environmentally friendly technological ...processes to treat wastewater containing 4-NP. Here, we investigated how the addition of Casup.2+ affects the catalytic degradation of 4-NP with AgInSsub.2 when exposed to light. We synthesized AgInSsub.2 (AIS) and Casup.2+-doped AgInSsub.2 (Ca-AIS) with varying amounts of Casup.2+ using a low-temperature liquid phase method. The SEM, XRD, XPS, HRTEM, BET, PL, and UV-Vis DRS characteristics were employed to analyze the structure, morphology, and optical properties of the materials. The effects of different amounts of Casup.2+ on the photocatalytic degradation of 4-NP were investigated. Under visible light illumination for a duration of 120 min, a degradation rate of 63.2% for 4-Nitrophenol (4-NP) was achieved. The results showed that doping with an appropriate amount of Casup.2+ could improve the visible light catalytic activity of AIS. This work provides an idea for finding suitable cheap alkaline earth metal doping agents to replace precious metals for the improvement of photocatalytic activities.
This book examines the exploitation of minerals and mineral products and the implications for sustainability of the consumption of finite mineral resources and the wastes associated with their ...production and use. It provides a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates the physical and earth sciences with the social sciences, ecology and economics. Increasingly, graduates in the minerals industry and related sectors will not only require a deep technical and scientific understanding of their fields (such as geology, mining, metallurgy), but will also need knowledge of how their industry relates to and can contribute to the transition to sustainability.This book is an important reference for students of engineering and applied science and geology; practising engineers, geologists and scientists; students of economics, social sciences and related disciplines; professionals in government service in areas such as resources, environment and sustainability; and non-technical professionals working in the minerals industry or in sectors servicing the minerals industry.
Mongolia was one of the East Asian economies hardest hit by the global downturn, as copper prices collapsed and external demand fell. This Economic Retrospective highlights the key economic, ...financial and policy developments in the country during the crisis and recovery over 2008 to 2010. In particular, it offers a closer look at the weaknesses in the economic structure and policy environment that lay at the heart of downturn, and which amplified the external shock due to the collapse in global commodity prices from mid-2008. The Retrospective offers valuable insights into how an inappropriate policy mix can culminate in macroeconomic instability. In Mongoliaâ??s case, a combination of expansive fiscal and monetary policy during the boom years, a de facto peg to the US dollar, and an overheating financial sector triggered a loss of confidence in the banking sector, large reserve losses and deposit flight, and caused a large fiscal and balance of payments shock that necessitated assistance by the IMF and other donors. Although the economy has rebounded since the end of 2009 and the successful negotiation of the Oyu Tolgoi (OT) mining project has helped transform the medium to long-term outlook, there remain sizeable policy challenges. In particular, the looming mining boom brings the risks of â??Dutch diseaseâ? effects and a return to the profligate populism of the past. In the near term significant fiscal financing risks remain until revenues from OT are realized. In particular, this Retrospective discusses the need for continued fiscal consolidation and how the adoption of the planned fiscal stability law should help manage the upcoming mining boom. Meanwhile, ongoing solvency problems in the banking sector need to be resolved quickly and transparently to prepare the sector for the upturn in economic activity.
In this paper, the dynamic model of the rigid space stepped-pipe strings system is derived with Lagrangian method to represent the system dynamic behaviors which enriches the analysis method of ...longitudinal vibration of stepped-pipe strings. The stepped-pipe strings is constructed of pipes with different diameters and lengths, the physical properties of which mainly depends on the axial force and the depth of deep-sea mining. Based on lumped element method, the heave compensation system with dynamic vibration absorber is designed for longitudinal vibration suppression of the stepped-pipe strings. The analytical solution is obtained by modal analysis method when the mining ship is subjected to sea breeze excitation. The proposed method is easily implementable for rigid space stepped-pipe strings system with complex multi-degree-of-free deep-sea mining dynamic model. Furthermore, the optimal combination of mass ratio, spring coefficient and damping ratio is shown to have a better vibration suppression performance. Finally, numerical simulations on the stepped-pipe strings system with or without dynamic vibration absorbers are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Minerals are part of virtually every product we use. Common examples include copper used in electrical wiring and titanium used to make airplane frames and paint pigments. The Information Age has ...ushered in a number of new mineral uses in a number of products including cell phones (e.g., tantalum) and liquid crystal displays (e.g., indium). For some minerals, such as the platinum group metals used to make cataytic converters in cars, there is no substitute. If the supply of any given mineral were to become restricted, consumers and sectors of the U.S. economy could be significantly affected. Risks to minerals supplies can include a sudden increase in demand or the possibility that natural ores can be exhausted or become too difficult to extract. Minerals are more vulnerable to supply restrictions if they come from a limited number of mines, mining companies, or nations. Baseline information on minerals is currently collected at the federal level, but no established methodology has existed to identify potentially critical minerals. This book develops such a methodology and suggests an enhanced federal initiative to collect and analyze the additional data needed to support this type of tool.
The deep-sea is rich in mineral resources, and deep-sea polymetallic nodules are considered to be the most likely resource for commercial exploitation. Since the discovery of polymetallic nodules by ...mankind, researchers around the world have made long and arduous explorations in the exploitation of deep-sea polymetallic nodules and have proposed various mining methods, such as the dragging bucket type, the continuous bucket rope type, the automatic shuttle boat type, and the pipeline -lifting type, and have carried out technical verification accordingly. In the collection of seabed polymetallic nodules, the development and testing of towed type, spiral-driven type, crawler self-propelled type, and suspended type technologies have been carried out, basically realizing the mining technology verification of seabed polymetallic nodules and providing technical support for commercial development. However, according to the demand for commercial development, there are still many technical difficulties in polymetallic nodule-collecting technology, and more focus needs to be placed on the efficiency, environmental protection, intelligence, safety, and reliability of the collecting system in the future. This paper compares the existing progress in collection technology and equipment, and provides ideas and references for the research and development of deep-sea polymetallic nodule-mining technology and equipment.