Recovery/development of low grade copper ore

[Astronuc]

(Bloomberg) -- The warnings keep getting louder: the world is hurtling toward a desperate shortage of copper. Humans are more dependent than ever on a metal we’ve used for 10,000 years; new deposits are drying up, and the type of breakthrough technologies that transformed other commodities have failed to materialize for copper.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/copper-biggest-mystery-finally-cracking-000007509.html

Of course, commodities like copper are cyclical.

In what could prove a game changer for global supply, a US startup says it’s solved a puzzle that has frustrated the mining world for decades. If successful, the discovery by Jetti Resources could unlock millions of tons of new copper

At its simplest, Jetti’s technology is focused on a common type of ore that traps copper behind a thin film, making it too costly and difficult to extract. The result is that vast quantities of metal have been left stranded over the decades in mine-waste piles on the surface, as well as in untapped deposits. To crack the code, Jetti has developed a specialized catalyst to disrupt the layer, allowing rock-eating microbes to go to work at releasing the trapped copper.

BHP Group, the biggest mining company, is already an investor and has now spent months negotiating for a trial plant at its crown jewel copper mine, Escondida in Chile, according to people familiar with the matter. US miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc. began implementing Jetti’s technology at an Arizona mine this year, while rival Rio Tinto Group is planning to roll out a competing but similar process.

new discoveries in copper are increasingly unlikely, given the long history of mining – evidence of copper usage has been traced back to at least 8,000 BC in what is now Turkey and Iraq. That means most of the world’s great deposits have already been found and exploited; more than half the world’s 20 biggest copper mines were discovered more than a century ago.

Over the past decade alone, an estimated 43 million tons of copper have been mined but never processed, worth more than $2 trillion at current prices, creating huge opportunities for anyone who can successfully recover those riches.

Extractive metallurgy is still a hot topic.

There are two main kinds of copper-bearing rock. The most common type, sulfide ores, are typically crushed, concentrated, and then turned into pure copper in a fire-refining process. But that method isn't suitable for oxidic ores, and the industry's last big innovation came in the mid-1980s when it adapted an electro-chemical process to extract copper from oxide ores, providing a major boost to supply.

Now, Jetti aims to apply its technology to recover copper from a common type of sulfide ore that couldn’t be economically processed via either route — the copper content is too low to justify the cost of refining, while the hard, non-reactive coating prevented the copper from being extracted in the lower-cost electro-chemical or "leaching" process.

Jetti worked with the University of British Columbia to develop a chemical catalyst that breaks through the layer, so that the copper can be released using leaching without the need for high temperatures.

Rio Tinto has a similar process, Nuton, which is being offered to smaller mining companies in which Rio invests; if the smaller firms successfully develop their mining projects, then Rio will deploy the Nuton process to boost profitability.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I need some copper for magnet coils. The bosses complained, so I asked them to use silver instead.