Enrichment factor
Enrichment factor is used to describe bodies of mineral ore. It is defined as the minimum factor by which the weight percent of mineral in an orebody is greater than the average occurrence of that mineral in the Earth's crust. It can be used to compare the necessary enrichment of different types of minerals for their recovery to be economically viable.
Determining enrichment factors
Enrichment Factors that relate to the economic viability of an orebody are largely determined by the following:- The value of the mineral
- The level of the technology available to recover the mineral
- The cost of refining the mineral once recovered
- Other macro-economic factors
Other applications of enrichment factor
- The enrichment factor can also be used to talk about the level of radioactive isotopes in uranium, or the level of minerals in soil.
- The same concept is used in Bioinformatics for gene analysis, to measure the added value of a search tool over another one or over the homogeneous distribution in the genome population.