The mining industry is in a state of flux, and while some may say this has been the norm for many centuries, even the most cursory examination will reveal that the storm waves are real and the need for change within some areas is long overdue. Indeed, the industry is currently facing some serious challenges, including regulatory interference, social isolation, and/or untenable commercial purgatory. However, it warrants recognition that the current waves of opposition ultimately may be only temporary. The industry—and indeed humanity in general—has always adapted to and overcome the challenges of a particular moment, whether measured in the evolution from pig iron to mini-mills or handcarts to electrically driven autonomous haulage.

Amazingly, 18 years after the commercialization of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), less than 4000 systems have been installed worldwide. If you compare this number with another rapid multielement technique, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), first commercialized in 1974, the difference is quite significant. In 1992, 18 years after ICP-OES was introduced, more than 9000 units had been sold, and if you compare it with the same time period that ICP-MS has been available, the difference is even more dramatic.

This book represents three years of intensive research and experimentation. Information from hundreds of sources has been collected, distilled, and illustrated. It is intended to be both a text and tool, a blend of instruction and reference. Like any tool, its value increases as you bring to it your own perceptions and skills. It is designed to make the information easily accessible, and built to stand up to years of bench-side use.

Milestones mark great events: walking on the moon, analyzing rocks on Mars, flying a self-propelled, heavier-than-air machine, using a Bunsen burner for flame atomic spectrometry, and perhaps employing an atmospheric pressure plasma mass spectrometry as an ion source for solution mass spectrometry. Yes, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) ranks among the milestone inventions of spectrochemical analysis during the 20th century.

The borates are among the most interesting of the world's industrial minerals, having been known and used since the earliest recorded history, first for precious metal working and later in ceramics. They are an unusually large grouping of minerals, but the number of commercially important borates is limited, and their chemistry and crystal structure are both unusual and complex. There are only a few large deposits, with many smaller formations, and the number of noncommercial occurrences in other rocks or brines is very large.

Lithium is one of the most interesting of the industrial minerals, occurring primarily in the unusual lithium pegmatites or in the very few high-lithium brine deposits. Many of the lithium pegmatites contain separate masses of different minerals (i.e. they are highly zoned), with the crystal size often being very large, such as up to 1–14 m long. There may be as many as 13 distinct and separate massive zones of single predominant minerals in the pegmatite, including up to six different lithium mineral zones, and several zones with other rare elements such as tantalum, niobium, tin, tungsten, cesium and rubidium.

1.2 Prior to September 1999 the estimation and reporting of Coal Resources and Coal Reserves in Australia were prescribed by the "Australian Code for Reporting Identified Coal Resources and Reserves (February 1986)". This code was ratified by the Government Geologists’ Conference in April 1986 and appended to the "Australasian Code for Reporting of Identified Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves" (The JORC Code), prepared by the Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC) in February 1989. The JORC Code was subsequently revised in 1992 and 1996.

At the start of the twenty-first century, the demand for clean potable water is increasing at a greater rate due in part to a growing population. Additionally, societies are being forced to evaluate impacts on current and future water supplies as a result of energy and mineral development and climate changes. These evaluations include a determination of the quantity and quality of the groundwater resource.