User talk:Tigran999

Edits on List of countries by copper production
Hi Tigran999. I see that your account is very recent so, first of all, let me have the pleasure of welcoming you to Wikipedia :)

I'm writing to you regarding your recent edits on List of countries by copper production. They obviously were good-faith contributions, but I've reverted them because they provided mistaken information.

According with the World Mining Data (check the XLSX file named 6.6.Production of Mineral Raw Materials of individual Countries by Countries.xlsx here → ), Armenia's copper production was:
 * 2015 → 51765 tons
 * 2016 → 95080 tons
 * 2017 → 95793 tons
 * 2018 → 68928 tons
 * 2019 → 91214 tons

These values differ from the ones that you wrote (2015 → 316k tons, 2017 → 429k tons), so I checked the reference that you provided ( page 249/309). According to EY/EITI's report, the values that you provided correspond to "Copper concentrate export, thousand tons".

Copper concentrates are the result of Mineral processing copper ores like Chalcopyrite, through methods like Froth flotation (for example). These processes allow for the selective recovery of a high percentage of the copper present in the ore (originally with grades in the magnitude of 0.5% to 3% of the ore's mass). While still not perfectly separating the recovered copper from the remaining mineral particles, these processes rise the grade of the concentrate to around 15% to 35% copper. By definition, as the remaining mass corresponds to other metals and minerals, the mass of the concentrate is higher relative to its copper content.

For this reason, the values of kilotons of copper concentrate that you provided are correct for concentrate production, but are not directly comparable to the values of kilotons of copper production, and so should not be in that article's tables.

As a curiosity, I crossed the numbers from both sources, just to see what were the approximate values for the copper grades of the exported concentrates from Armenia: And they are within the margin of what I expected them to be. I don't know why Armenia's 2015 production of copper was lower, but could be related with 2015's drop in copper price.
 * 2015 → 51765/316k ≈ 16.4%
 * 2016 → 95080/389k ≈ 24.4%
 * 2017 → 95793/429k ≈ 22.3%

I hope my intervention doesn't discourage you to continue to contribute on this wonderful project that is Wikipedia and I hope to see you editing more mining-related articles.

Happy Wikipediting. ACLNM (talk) 00:12, 11 May 2021 (UTC)