Grade is a measure of quality and it captures concentration levels (i. e., how pure a certain fraction is). if grade captures quality, then recovery is a measure of quantity: it describes how much of a certain material in the input stream is made available for reprocessing. a recovery of r% means that (100 - r)% of the material going into the process is lost, ending up either in mine tailings or as a contaminant in one or more fractions. by weight, copper wire contains about 70% copper and 30% pvc. suppose we process 1 ton of wire per hour into a copper fraction of 0.74 ton/hour, of which 0.69 is copper and 0.05 is pvc. what is the weight and composition of the tailing? and what are the grade and recovery of the copper?