Minerals and Energy Resources

What minerals and ores are, where India’s main minerals are found, the kinds of coal, and conventional and non-conventional energy.

Key ideas

An ore is a mineral concentrated enough to be worth mining.
Ferrous minerals contain iron (iron ore, manganese); non-ferrous minerals do not (copper, bauxite).
Minerals occur in veins and lodes, in beds of sedimentary rock, as weathered residual masses (bauxite) and as placer deposits in river sands (gold).
Magnetite is the finest iron ore, with up to 70% iron; hematite, with 50–60%, is the most used.
Gondwana coal lies in the Damodar valley (Jharia, Raniganj, Bokaro); younger tertiary coal is found in the north-east.
Conventional energy (coal, petroleum, firewood) is mostly non-renewable; non-conventional energy (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, biogas, nuclear) is cleaner.
Minerals are finite and take millions of years to form, so they must be conserved.

Remember

Coal, lowest to best	peat → lignite → bituminous → anthracite
Bauxite	the ore of aluminium
Limestone	the basic raw material of cement
Petroleum	Mumbai High, Gujarat (Ankleshwar), Assam (Digboi)
Geothermal	Parvati valley near Manikaran; Puga valley, Ladakh
Monazite sands, Kerala	rich in thorium

Watch out

Calling bauxite a ferrous mineral: it has no iron.
Ranking lignite above anthracite: anthracite is the best coal.
Placing nuclear energy with coal: the book lists it as non-conventional.

Worked example

The first HVJ gas pipeline was 1,700 km long. Suppose the network is now 23,000 km. How many km longer is it, and about how many times as long (to one decimal place)?

Working: 23,000 − 1,700; ÷ 1,700

Answer: 21,300 km longer; about 13.5 times