Recovery (mineral processing)

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. For example, 90% recovery of a metal indicates that 10% were "rejected", sent by the ore mill into the tailings along with the gangue:
In cases where a valuable metal, for example iron is being recovered from a range of minerals, such hematite, goethite and magnetite from iron ore, the definition is broadened:
In such cases, terminology like iron recovery or 'recovery ' is used.
The term weight recovery 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.