Native Copper and copper ore
Since copper is relatively unreactive lumps of pure copper can be found under the ground. 400 tones of pure copper was the most anyone has found but native copper usually isn’t mined as it is too hard to find and won’t make enough of a business. Copper is found all over the world but mostly in ores such as chalcopyrite, malachite and covellite. Chile, USA, Peru, China and Australia are all big contributors of copper.
Extraction process
There are ranges of different methods of extracting copper from different ores. The process below will examine a sequence of procedures to effectively extract as much copper from sulfide ores also known as Chalcopyrite (pyrites).
Mining
Sulfide ores contain roughly 34% of copper
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Source: http://www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/metals/copper.html
Previous page, Chalcopyrite ore (sulfide ore) that is made up of copper iron and sulfur (CuFeS2). Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Min_chalcopyrite.jpg
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A pure copper sheet (99.9% pure) is placed on the other side if the tank that acts as the cathode (the negatively charged electrode). When the power supply turns on, the copper sulfate poured in the tank acts as an electrical conductor that allows copper to transfer from the positively charged anode to the negatively charged electrode and copper particles slowly build up on the cathode (see diagram on page 5). About 14 days later the anode disappears since the copper was deposited on the cathodes making 99.9% copper. The impurities that were on the anode don’t become ions in the copper sulfate but rather fall as a slimy material that contains small amounts of gold and silver. These precious metals are extracted and result in a more effective way to utilise the byproducts rather then discarding them. Thanks to the fact that copper is highly unreactive the metal remains pure for a very long
For example, gold mines could be found in places like Macedonia while copper mines could found on the islands of Delos or Eretria. Also, it is important to note that bronze is a mix of tin and copper so it can not be mined directly from the earth. These metals were primarily used for the production of arms and currency during this time period. These metals were often found through underground mining, also known as deep vein mining. This type of mining was tedious and could only be done through excavation and tunnel building. These tunnels eventually emptied into galleries where ore was obtained, washed and melted. There was often a “relay of miners carrying ore out on their shoulders” while other times wheeled carts were used. Another type of mining was surface mining where ore surfaced in streams or on the ground and collected. An example of surface mining is placer deposits where streams broke up the ore and the dense pieces would settle at the bottom. The Greeks were very intelligent and could tell the “affinity for one type of metal for another” or would follow the placer deposits to the source. Because of the presence of water previously, sometimes the mine was forced to be abandoned because of the lack of control of the water. The Romans attempted to counteract this by digging drainage adits to divert water and filtering the water by percolation. Slaves would often carry the water away with
In the 79 years the mines were open 1.7 million metric tons (3.75 billion pounds) of lead and 8.8 million metric tons (19.4 billion pounds) of zinc were withdrawn from the mine (2). The entire area around Tar Creek is known as the tri-state mining area. This tri-state area is a massive source of metals. This area accounted for 35% of the worldwide metal market for a decade. It also provided the majority of metals the United States used in World wars I and II (3).
Aluminum is the most abundant metallic constituent in the crust of the earth; only the nonmetals oxygen and silicon are more abundant. Aluminum is never found as a free metal; commonly as aluminum silicate or as a silicate of aluminum mixed with other metals such as sodium, potassium, iron, calcium, and magnesium. These silicates are not useful ores, for it is chemically difficult, and therefore an expensive process, to extract aluminum from them. bauxite an impure h...
Introduction: The Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott Copper Mine, is an open-pit mine specializing in the mining of an extremely large porphyry copper deposit. Located in the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, the deposit itself is the result of a quartz monzonite porphyric intrusion into the sedimentary rocks in the area. Since the opening of the mine in 1906 it has produced more than 19 million tons of copper, making it the largest copper mine in the world as well as the largest man-made excavation. ADD THESIS.
One of the first attempts to locate and mine this copper was back in 1771 when the first mining expedition was organized. English miners were sent to the New World to locate and mine the copper heard of in Indian tales that had been passed along by the French. These miners had begun their excavation in a clay bank where they had previously seen trickling green copper-containing water with pieces floating in the water nearby. Unfortunately, the frozen roof of the tunnel had thawed and lead to a cave in resulting in the first failed attempt at mining copper in Michigan.
the iron ore to iron. In the other cases of metals the most common way
Mr. Cronstedt discovered nickel in a mineral called niccolite. He originally planned to extract copper from this new mineral but got none at all. This is why nickel, at first, was called "false copper". Instead, Cronstedt got a silvery-white metal, which was eventually used for other things.
Due to the natural processes of magma flow, hydrothermal gradients, sedimentation, and evaporation, minerals are concentrated in various areas of the Earth’s crust. Obtaining these minerals for human use involves four general steps. • Locating the minerals • Then, extracting the minerals from the Earth in the form of ore or rock Then, processing (smelting) the ore to separate the impurities from the desired mineral. Finally, creating a useful product from the minerals. Procedure 1.
Cadmium is a naturally occurring element in the earth’s crust. Pure cadmium is a soft silver-white metal, but this form is not common in the environment. Rather, cadmium is most often encountered in combination with other elements such as oxygen (cadmium oxide), chlorine (cadmium chloride), or sulphur (cadmium sulphide). These compounds are all stable solids that do not evaporate, although cadmium oxide is often found as part of small particles present in air.
This happens at the cathode: Cu2+ +2e- = Cu And oxygen is produced at the anode. Increasing the concentration is more affective than increasing the voltage but in order to gain more copper, you will need the highest
Lower quality coal is used for generating electricity. To generate electricity they burn the coal in a power plant to produce steam. The steam then travels through a turbine and generates power. The higher quality coal is used for making iron and steel. Coal is retrieved from nature by mining, either from an underground mine or from an aboveground mine. Due to the difficulty of underground mining coal from underground mines sells for more money. After the coal is mined it is processed to remove impurities from it. Lastly it is transported, “The cost of shipping coal can be more than the cost of mining it.” (US Energy Information Administration, 2013). Transportation methods include, truck, barge, train, and pipeline.
These deposits contain the second largest amount of copper resources, after porphyries. They are diagenetic in origin, and are often found in basins after porphyry copper deposits have been eroded from ore bearing mountain ranges. Some of these deposits can be found in Corocoro, Bolivia, as well as the Central African Copper Belt. The largest production of stratabound copper ore is in the Central African Copper Belt. Copper also has an affinity to sulfur. The two main types of copper ores are oxides and sulfides. Supergene oxide minerals consist of malachite, azurite, atacamite: CuCl(OH)3, and chrysocolla. Secondary enrichment sulfides consist of bornite, chalcocite, pyrite, and chalcopyrite CuFeS2. Chalcopyrite is the primary copper ore mineral, with more than 70% of producing copper mines exploiting chalcopyrite ore (Pohl, 2011). From 2007 to 2009, the United States competed back and fourth with Peru as the second and third leading global producers of copper, following Chile. There are large amounts of copper resources available on the land and sea floor. According to the U.S.G.S. in 2004, there were about 1.6 billion metric tons of copper available from known land-based
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
ores of most of the heavy metals are sulphur-based minerals, therefore there are lots of
Left behind are tailings, which are large piles of crushed rock left over when minerals have been extracted from rocks that once contained them. These tailings are then left prone to wind dispersion and water erosion. This wind dispersion occurs since the sand-like tailings are easily swept up by the atmosphere by wind and spread throughout the environment as dust particles. Figure 1 shows the wind erosion of a mine tailings pile being blow up into the air, creating dust. These tailings contain metal contaminants like arsenic, lead, and cadmium, which creates a problem for the environment and they can persist for decades due to the low pH levels and can cause problems in soil stabilization (arizona.edu, 2008).