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Recovery (mineral processing)

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In mineral processing, recovery or recovery rate is the mass fraction of a valuable mineral that is carried over in a beneficiation process from the ore feedstock to the concentrate:

In cases where a valuable metal, for example iron (Fe) is being recovered from a range of minerals, such hematite (Fe₂O₃), goethite (FeO(OH)) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) from iron ore, the definition is broadened:

In such cases, terminology like iron recovery or 'recovery (%Fe)' is used.

The term weight recovery (also referred to as yield) is also applied, and refers to ratio of the mass of concentrate to the mass of feed:

Recovery features in grade-recovery curves that communicate how 'upgrading' an ore often comes at the cost of decreasing recovery.

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