How silver ore is mined
Most silver is a side effect of mining something else, usually lead or copper.
- stations
- 4
- things downstream
- 64
The short version
Silver rarely appears in pure form, so it is mostly recovered alongside lead, copper and zinc. The ore is crushed to powder, floated in frothing tanks to concentrate the metal-bearing minerals, and then treated chemically with a cyanide solution to pull out the silver. Some mines are dedicated silver mines.
-
Mine the mixed ore
Silver-bearing ore holds very little silver and much more copper and lead. Silver turns up inside chalcopyrite and galena, and only rarely as native nuggets, in placer deposits and in veins.
-
Crush to powder
The ore is ground fine so that individual grains are exposed to the chemicals that come next.
-
Float the sulfides
Where silver rides along with lead and copper, froth flotation lifts the metal-bearing grains out of the waste rock. The concentrate then goes to a leach, or sometimes to a smelter first.
-
Leach out the silver
After flotation, silver is extracted with a cyanide process similar to the one used for gold. Sometimes the concentrate is smelted before the cyanide treatment.
Worth repeating
- Silver mining goes back to about 3,000 BC in Anatolia.
- Some galena carries up to 0.5% silver, so lead mines can end up earning more from silver.
- Silver is also made as a by-product of the electrolytic refining of copper.
Where it comes from
- Mexico18.7% of world output, 5,000 metric tons
Silver mined in 2014, out of 26,800 tonnes worldwide; the Wikipedia article gives no newer ranking.
Where it goes next
Silver ore feeds 1 line directly and reaches 64 things in total.
Further down the line
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How silver ore is mined." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/silver-ore