The mining industry is now clearly defined. This is the totality of all industries that are engaged in the extraction of fuel or minerals from the bowels of the Earth, from water, forests, etc. Minerals are rocks that have any properties and can be used for various needs. A rock that does not have value is considered empty. Accumulations of useful substances are considered a deposit.
Places of production. Mining engineering
To date, there are many diverse industrial enterprises, but the main ones that relate to the mining industry, only three are a mine, a mine and a quarry.
Mines are enterprises related to mining, and mining is carried out underground. It also includes some ground structures and mine workings. Next is the mine, which is also intended for mining ore, but, in addition to the underground method, an open mine can also be used. The last mining enterprise is a quarry that is used for mining only by open-pit mining.
Stages of development
It is worth noting that mining has existed for a very long time and today it is one of the main economic centers of many countries. The development of this industry is conditionally divided into four major stages.
The first stage was called bioenergetic, and the work was built on the principle of man - tool - the subject of labor. In other words, the muscle power of man and animal was used to extract minerals. The next stage is called machine. A machine was added to the chain after the man. This is due to the fact that at that time engineering was developing quite well and the steam installation was invented. The third stage is electrification. This process has significantly improved the efficiency of the mining industry, since the efficiency of mining machines has been greatly increased. The last and modern stage is automation. Its main feature is related to the fact that the mining equipment control functions were transferred to special equipment.
Business Cycles
Today, the mining industry is distinguished by the fact that its enterprises have a technological and life cycle. As for the first cycle, this is the moment from the start of operation of a technology to its change to another. The second cycle is the time period from the creation of the enterprise project until its closure.
Any object has a certain period of operation, which is determined based on the amount of resource that it produces per year. For example, if a mine is being built with a mining capacity of 1-2 million tons per year, then the approximate service life should be equal to 25-30 years. In the mining industry, several stages of the production cycle are also distinguished. The first is the search and exploration of a mineral deposit. The second is the creation of a project and the construction of a mining enterprise. The third is the direct exploitation of a mineral deposit, that is, their extraction.
Information about the industry in Russia
The mining industry in Russia is developed in almost all directions, but some industries stand out more than others. So, the country is richest in such natural resources as:
- petroleum products;
- natural gas;
- ore containing ferrous, non-ferrous and precious metals;
- diamond deposits;
- oil shale deposits;
- mineral waters, as well as ores containing other precious or semiprecious stones.
If we talk about the largest enterprises in the Russian Federation, then we can distinguish Rosneft, Lukoil, Tatneft, Gazprom and several others. In the Russian Federation there is federal legislation that protects the market from monopoly. Special licenses for mining are granted. The main requirement is that the company must ensure environmental and labor safety.
It is worth mentioning that among various industries there are those that work with liquid, and in order to produce it, it is necessary to use various reliable and powerful pumps to pump this liquid. The most common are such devices in the oil industry. There are three main types of pump used for this.
The first type is mud pumps, which are plunger and piston units. The main goal is flushing and squeezing in the process of drilling new oil wells.
At the second stage, downhole centrifugal, rod or screw devices are used to pump out the formation fluid. The last type of pumps are surface and borehole. Their main purpose is the injection of formation fluid.
Basic mining methods
Depending on the form in which the required natural resource is contained, there are several ways to extract it. If we talk about production methods in the territory of the Russian Federation, then only 2 - the open and underground ones - are most widely used here. The open method is also called career. It provides for the extraction of minerals from the ground through the use of special equipment such as excavators, tractors, etc. Before proceeding to this type of obtaining the necessary ore, it is necessary to carry out blasting operations, as well as crush the rock, since in this form it easier to mine and transport.
As for the second method, it is used if the rock lies deep underground, in other words, the construction of a mine is required.
In the end, it is worth adding that there are emblems of the extractive industry, according to which it becomes quite simple to determine what exactly an enterprise is doing.