Ores and other useful minerals

Tungsten ore

Tungsten ore is mined quite a bit in Portugal and Portugal was one of the worlds largest tungsten miners for much of the last 100 years. There are three major tungsten ores mined in Portugal; scheelite, ferberite, and hübnerite.

Scheelite

Scheelite is a tungsten ore with the formula Ca(WO4), it can have many colours but in Portugal it is usually found as a yellow-orange crystal such as this.

Ferberite

Credit: Ivar Leidus
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Hübnerite

Hübnerite and ferberite are commonly grouped together as wolframite and are also commonly found together but they are not the same mineral. Hübernite is MnWO4 and ferberite is FeWO4, together they make up a very large part of mined tungsten.

Tin

Portgal also has significant amount of tin mining. Tin ore is almost all cassiterite.

Cassiterite

Credit: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com
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As you can see cassiterite looks quite similar to the wolframite ores but its chemical formula is very different, SnO2.

Uranium

The main uranium ores found in Portugal are Uraninite, Torbernite, and Autunite.

Uranite

Uraninite is the main ore of uranium with the formula UO2, though in Portugal some other uranium minerals are more commonly found.

Torbernite

Credit: Géry PARENT
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Torbernite is personally one of my favourite minerals, its quite common in Portugal. It has the formula Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2 · 12H2O.

Autunite

Autunite is another uranium miniral that is used as ore and quite common in Portugal, it has the formula Ca(UO2)2(PO4)2·10-12H2O.

Gold

There are quite a lot of places in Portugal with gold, much of it found in rivers but some found underground many times in quartz veins.

Pyrite

Another useful mineral Portugal has quite a lot of is pyrite, the Iberian Pyrite Belt is the largest sulfide deposit in the world. Pyrite and many other ores have been mined there since roman times and still are. Pyrite has the formula FeS

Credit: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com
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Many of the images on this page where not from Portugal as it is very difficult to find images of certain ores from Portugal that I am legally permitted to use.