Mining & metallurgy, a Contaminated mine water is generated when rock containing sulphidic minerals is exposed to water and oxygen, resulting in the production of acidity and high concentrations of metals and sulphate in the water. Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore and refining the extracted raw metals into a purer form. The subjects you may touch on include Mineral Processing, Hydrometallurgy, Pyrometallurgy, and Engineering Mathematics among many courses. There are four main methods of mining: underground, surface, placer and in-situ. The type of mining method used depends on the kind of resource that is being targeted for extraction, the deposit's location below or on the Earth's surface and the capacity of each method to profitably extract the resource. What is Solution Mining? SMRI views solution mining as mining of underground, water-soluble minerals, usually using one or more drilled wells to dissolve the minerals with water (not by using acids used in metal ore leaching). The minerals are then recovered from the saturated fluid by recrystallization.