Why is water important to the mining of cassiterite (and other rocks)?
I worked at a Tin (cassiterite) mine for 4 years. the actuall mining of it does not require water however, the processing of it does. raw material is passed through a trommel which has high pressure water sprays inside to wash the sand and gravel apart allowing the heavy rocks to pass on through, the finer material is pumped with the water to further processing in a cone, again with high pressure sprays which washes the even finer material out leaving the heavier stuff and Tin (concentrates) behind , the really fine material from thios process is then pumped out and away to a tailings dam. a further process also uses water to seperate any other foriegn material leaving just the heavy Tin fines behind. Most of this water can be recirculated.
