I keep getting amazed at the innovation I’m seeing around copper these days, with a recent breakthrough boosting efforts to rethink conventional mining.
A new “key-hole surgery” method to extract copper from the earth without first digging it up could be revolutionary by not being actually groundbreaking.
It speaks to the power of smart partnerships too. Australia’s University and Western Australia and the CSIRO joined with the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Exeter to make the discovery.
The new mining technique uses electric fields to extract metals from hard rock ore, potentially replacing the traditional method of digging.
Digging is used pretty much in all mining and can have a big environmental impact. Not only does it mean underground or open cut mines that generate huge quantities of solid waste—much of it also containing impurities that need to be dealt with—but the whole process is very energy and water intense.
By installing electrodes within the ore body and applying electric currents the partners proved it was possible to dissolve and then recover copper in situ from the ore. Of course it also has huge potential right across the mining industry.
It’s this sort of collaboration and technological innovation that we are also hoping to tap in our own Zero Emissions project to create sustainable copper mining.
I believe we are at the tipping point. Clearly the world wants cleaner, greener mining, but I know mining companies and government want that too.
As the technologies and science improve I look forward to a world where mines operate with the lightest touch.
Cheers, John Fennell
Study: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eabf9971