/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>21478809
You just got done trying to tell me that mining companies only care about extraction, and don't touch refining, which suggests you don't realize that any mine working at scale is handling its own ore refining. Literally no one is claiming that it magically costs more to dig silver bearing ore out of a base metal mine than non-silver bearing ore. The difference in operating costs comes in when base metal mines that know they're also pulling PM in the ore, and they want to pay for the additional refining costs associated with PMs due to their low concentrations. I get that your excited to be a freshman and all, but its clear you don't know the first thing about separations, and why you can't just use a single, blanket approach to get 4 distinct metals off of one ore source.

Capital costs are higher for processing gold/silver out of base metal ore than just getting the base metal from it. That's unavoidable and a product of their concentration and unique inertness. If you somehow need proof of that I guess I can start uploading PDFs of my old Sep. Process Eng. and Process Design texts. If you need proof that gold and silver are hard to concentrate I can through in Chemical Kinetics. You have the transport background to get use out of it, I'm sure.