Bauxite in the context of Pisolith

Africa has a large quantity of natural resources, including diamonds, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, natural gas and cocoa beans, but also tropical timber and tropical fruit.

Recently discovered oil reserves have increased the importance of the commodity in African economies. Nigeria, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and South Sudan are among the largest oil producers in Africa. The United States and European countries took most of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) oil production. Oil is provided by both continental and offshore productions. Sudan's oil exports in 2010 are estimated by the United States Department of State at US$9 billion.

Aluminium (the Commonwealth and preferred IUPAC name) or aluminum (North American English) is a chemical element; it has symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has a great affinity towards oxygen, forming a protective layer of oxide on the surface when exposed to air. It visually resembles silver, both in its color and in its great ability to reflect light. It is soft, nonmagnetic, and ductile. It has one stable isotope, Al, which is highly abundant, making aluminium the 12th-most abundant element in the universe. The radioactivity of Al leads to it being used in radiometric dating.

Chemically, aluminium is a post-transition metal in the boron group; as is common for the group, aluminium forms compounds primarily in the +3 oxidation state. The aluminium cation Al is small and highly charged; as such, it has more polarizing power, and bonds formed by aluminium have a more covalent character. The strong affinity of aluminium for oxygen leads to the common occurrence of its oxides in nature. Aluminium is found on Earth primarily in rocks in the crust, where it is the third-most abundant element after oxygen and silicon, rather than in the mantle, and virtually never as the free metal. It is obtained industrially by mining bauxite, a sedimentary rock rich in aluminium minerals.

Aluminium oxide (or aluminium(III) oxide) is a chemical compound of aluminium and oxygen with the chemical formula Al₂O₃. It is the most commonly occurring of several aluminium oxides, and specifically identified as aluminium oxide. It is commonly called alumina and may also be called aloxide, aloxite, ALOX or alundum in various forms and applications and alumina is refined from bauxite. It occurs naturally in its crystalline polymorphic phase α-Al₂O₃ as the mineral corundum, varieties of which form the precious gemstones ruby and sapphire, which have an alumina content approaching 100%. Al₂O₃ is used as feedstock to produce aluminium metal, as an abrasive owing to its hardness, and as a refractory material owing to its high melting point.

Mount Parnassus (/pɑːrˈnæsəs/; Greek: Παρνασσός, Parnassós) is a mountain range of Central Greece that is, and historically has been, especially valuable to the Greek nation and the earlier Greek city-states for many reasons. In peace, it offers scenic views of the countryside and is a major international recreational site with views of mountain landscapes. Economically, its rolling foothills and valleys host extensive groves of olive, a cash crop marketed world-wide since prehistory. The mountain is also the location of historical, archaeological, and other cultural sites, such as Delphi perched on the southern slopes of the mountain in a rift valley north of the Gulf of Corinth.

Parnassus has an abundance of trails for hiking in the three warm seasons. In the winter, the entire range is open to skiing, especially from the resorts of Arachova. Its melting snows are a source of municipal water for the surrounding communities. The mountain is composed of limestone, but also contains bauxite aluminum ore, which is mined and processed. In war, Parnassus has been a center of resistance if need be, providing cover and refuge to partisans.

Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around 500 km (310 mi) from the territorial capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Company captain Willem Joosten van Colster (or Coolsteerdt) sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape Arnhem is named after his ship, the Arnhem, which itself was named after the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands.

The area covers about 97,000 km (37,000 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 16,000, of whom 12,000 are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Two regions are often distinguished as East Arnhem (Land) and West Arnhem (Land). The region's service hub is Nhulunbuy, 600 km (370 mi) east of Darwin, set up in the early 1970s as a mining town for bauxite. Other major population centres are Yirrkala (just outside Nhulunbuy), Gunbalanya (formerly Oenpelli), Ramingining, and Maningrida.

Les Baux-de-Provence (French pronunciation: [le bo də pʁɔvɑ̃s]; lit. "Les Baux of Provence"; Provençal: Lei Bauç de Provença (classical norm) or Li Baus de Prouvènço (mistralian norm)), commonly referred to simply as Les Baux, is a rural commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southern France.

It is located in the Alpilles mountains, northeast of Arles, atop a rocky outcrop that is crowned with a ruined castle overlooking the plains to the south. Its name refers to its site: in Provençal, bauç is a rocky spur. From the village name the word bauxite was coined for aluminium ore when first discovered there by geologist Pierre Berthier in 1821. Until 13 August 1958, the commune was officially named Les Baux.

Pará (Brazilian Portuguese: [paˈɾa] ) is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana and Suriname, to the northeast of Pará is the Atlantic Ocean. The capital and largest city is Belém, which is located at the Marajó bay, near the estuary of the Amazon river. The state, which is home to 4.1% of the Brazilian population, is responsible for just 2.2% of the Brazilian GDP.

Pará is the most populous state of the North Region, with a population of over 8.6 million, being the ninth-most populous state in Brazil. It is the second-largest state of Brazil in area, at 1.2 million square kilometres (460,000 sq mi), second only to Amazonas upriver. Its most famous icons are the Amazon River and the Amazon rainforest. Pará produces rubber (extracted from rubber tree groves), cassava, açaí, pineapple, cocoa, black pepper, coconut, banana, tropical hardwoods such as mahogany, and minerals such as iron ore and bauxite. A new commodity crop is soy, cultivated in the region of Santarém.

In metallurgy, non-ferrous metals are metals or alloys that do not contain iron (allotropes of iron, ferrite, and so on) in appreciable amounts.

Generally more costly than ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals are used because of desirable properties such as low weight (e.g. aluminium), higher conductivity (e.g. copper), non-magnetic properties or resistance to corrosion (e.g. zinc). Some non-ferrous materials are also used in the iron and steel industries. For example, bauxite is used as flux for blast furnaces, while others such as wolframite, pyrolusite, and chromite are used in making ferrous alloys.

The mining industry in India is a major economic activity which contributes significantly to the economy of India. The gross domestic product (GDP) contribution of the mining industry varies from 2.2% to 2.5% only but going by the GDP of the total industrial sector, it contributes around 10% to 11%. Even mining done on small scale contributes 6% to the entire cost of mineral production. Indian mining industry provides job opportunities to around 700 individuals.

As of 2012, India is the largest producer of sheet mica, 2015 the fourth largest producer of iron ore, alumina, chromite, and bauxite in the world. A coal and iron ore project is in the fifth largest reserve in world. India's metal and mining industry was estimated to be $106.4 billion in 2010.

Gibbsite, Al(OH)₃, is one of the mineral forms of aluminium hydroxide. It is often designated as γ-Al(OH)₃ (but sometimes as α-Al(OH)₃). It is also sometimes called hydrargillite (or hydrargyllite).

Gibbsite is an important ore of aluminium in that it is one of three main phases that make up the rock bauxite.

Boehmite or böhmite is an aluminium oxide hydroxide (γ-AlO(OH)) mineral, a component of the aluminium ore bauxite. It is dimorphous with diaspore. It crystallizes in the orthorhombic dipyramidal system and is typically massive in habit. It is white with tints of yellow, green, brown or red due to impurities. It has a vitreous to pearly luster, a Mohs hardness of 3 to 3.5 and a specific gravity of 3.00 to 3.07. It is colorless in thin section, optically biaxial positive with refractive indices of nα = 1.644 – 1.648, nβ = 1.654 – 1.657 and nγ = 1.661 – 1.668.

Boehmite occurs in tropical laterites and bauxites developed on alumino-silicate bedrock. It also occurs as a hydrothermal alteration product of corundum and nepheline. It occurs with kaolinite, gibbsite and diaspore in bauxite deposits; and with nepheline, gibbsite, diaspore, natrolite and analcime in nepheline pegmatites. Industrially, it is used as an inexpensive flame retardant additive for fire-safe polymers.

Pierre Berthier (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ bɛʁtje]; 3 July 1782, Nemours, Seine-et-Marne – 24 August 1861) was a French geologist and mining engineer.

Pierre Berthier was born in Nemours. After studying at the École Polytechnique, he went to the École des Mines, where he became chief of the laboratory in 1816. In 1821, while working in the village of Les Baux-de-Provence, in southern France, he discovered the rock bauxite, named for the place of its discovery.

Rio Tinto Group is a British-Australian multinational company that is the world's second largest metals and mining corporation. It was founded in 1873 when a group of investors purchased a mine complex on the Río Tinto, in Huelva, Spain, from the Spanish government. It has grown through a long series of mergers and acquisitions. Although primarily focused on extraction of minerals, it also has significant operations in refining, particularly the refining of bauxite and iron ore. It has joint head offices in London, England and Melbourne, Australia.

Rio Tinto is a dual-listed company, traded on both the London Stock Exchange, where it is a component of the FTSE 100 Index, and the Australian Securities Exchange, where it is a component of the S&P/ASX 200 index. American depositary shares of Rio Tinto's British branch are also traded on the New York Stock Exchange, giving it listings on three major stock exchanges. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, it was ranked the world's 114th-largest public company.

Aluminium hydroxide, Al(OH)₃, is found as the mineral gibbsite (also known as hydrargillite) and its three much rarer polymorphs: bayerite, doyleite, and nordstrandite. Aluminium hydroxide is amphoteric, i.e., it has both basic and acidic properties. Closely related are aluminium oxide hydroxide, AlO(OH), and aluminium oxide or alumina (Al₂O₃), the latter of which is also amphoteric. These compounds together are the major components of the aluminium ore bauxite. Aluminium hydroxide also forms a gelatinous precipitate in water.

The Gove Peninsula is at the northeastern corner of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The peninsula became strategically important during World War II when a Royal Australian Air Force base was constructed at what is now Gove Airport. The peninsula was involved in a famous court case known as the Gove land rights case, when local Yolngu people tried to claim native title over their traditional lands in 1971, after the Australian Government had granted a mineral lease to a bauxite mining company without consulting the local peoples. Today the land is owned by the Yolngu people.