Copper miners have long been on a quest to find cleaner & greener ways to process ore as its dug up. And it just got a lot closer I’m happy to say.
A ‘one step’ processing breakthrough using electricity could soon produce high-purity copper from sulfide mineral ore, the main source of copper.
The molten sulfide electrolysis process eliminates sulfur dioxide, a noxious byproduct of traditional copper extraction methods. With the option of the electricity all coming from renewables of course.
The U.S. Government just funded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-MIT-to start testing the new method.
The hope is that the high quality copper could go directly into making copper wire, eliminating many of the environmental, efficiency and energy issues current ore processing can create.
According to ICA’s Director of Technology Development and Transfer, Hal Stillman, the completely new approach has “the potential to produce copper rod in a single operation while separating unwanted impurities and recovering valuable byproducts that are also in the concentrate.”
It’s an exciting vision. In fact the MIT has said it may be possible to cut the energy needed for making copper by 20 percent.
That’s not only good news for miners who face rising energy costs, but for a world trying to not only meet a growing demand for electricity, but do it as sustainably as possible.
More affordable copper is also big news. World demand for the red metal keeps going up, especially for electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines which depend on it for top performance.
More information: https://mrl.mit.edu/index.php/155-doe-funds-one-step-copper-extraction