Mineral and Ore

Mineral. A mineral is any naturally occurring substance, obtained by mining, that contains a metal either in the free state or combined as a compound (an oxide, sulphide, carbonate, silicate, etc.). A given metal is typically found in many different minerals -- for instance, iron by itself is present in around 800 different minerals -- but in most of these minerals the metal of interest is present only in small, uneconomic amounts.

Ore. Some minerals, however, contain the metal of interest in a high enough percentage that it can be extracted CONVENIENTLY and ECONOMICALLY; such minerals are called ores. Hematite and magnetite, for example, are minerals that carry a high percentage of iron and are the ones actually used industrially to extract iron, even though iron occurs combined in hundreds of other minerals as well. Every ore is therefore a mineral, but not every mineral is an ore -- the distinction is purely about whether commercial extraction is practical, not about the chemistry of how the metal is combined.

A clear illustration is aluminium. Both bauxite (Al2O3.nH2O) and china clay (kaolinite, Al2Si2O5(OH)4, sometimes written Al2O3.2SiO2.2H2O) are natural minerals of aluminium. Aluminium CAN be extracted commercially and profitably from bauxite, so bauxite is classed as an ore of aluminium. Extraction of aluminium from china clay, by contrast, is not commercially profitable with current technology, so china clay remains merely a mineral of aluminium, not an ore. …