Mining and Fracking
Types of mining
Surface Mining
Surface mining has three categories, Strip mining, open-pit mining, and mountain top removal. All these types of surface mining have the soil and rocks that overlay the mineral deposit removed.
The 3 types
Strip mining- The practice of mining a seam of mineral, by first removing a long strip of overlying soil and rock. It is most commonly used to mine brown coal.
Open-pit mining- Open-pit mines are used when deposits of useful minerals or rock are found near the surface.
Mountain top removal- Involves the mining of the summit or summit ridge of a mountain, usually for coal.
Subsurface mining is the extraction of minerals from underground. One downside would be that the mines make a lot of hazardous acid mine drainage. there are three types.
three types
Slope mining- involves a method of sending shafts underground and then back up, usually involves mining for coal or ore.
Drift mining- coal and ore is accessed by adits driven into the surface outcrop of the coal bed.
Shaft mining- the method of excavating a vertical tunnel from the top down, where there is initially no access to the bottom- (Example is below)
What about Fracking????
Fracking is a technique in which rock is fractured by a hydraulically pressurized liquid.