How to Extract Copper Ore
- 1). Blast the ores from the copper mine and transport them to the crusher.
- 2). Crush the ores and take the fine sulfide ores to a flotation tank and the coarser ores to a heap leach system.
- 3). Mix the crushed sulfide ore with chemicals and water into a slurry containing about 25 percent copper.
- 4). Obtain copper concentrate, or copper particles, which will float to the surface while the waste slag will sink to the bottom.
- 5). Smelt the copper concentrate to separate it from the iron and sulfur. Obtain copper in the form of an anode, or electrode.
- 6). Purify the anode at an electrolytic refinery until it is 99.9 percent pure.
- 7). Pile the oxide ores onto a leach pad and spray them with an acidic leaching solution via a sprinkler system. Leach the copper out of the ore as the solution percolates through the heap to extract about 70 percent of the copper contained in it.
- 8). Recover the runoff at the bottom of the heap, which you will then subject to a solvent extraction process.
- 9). "Electrowin" the copper by treating and electrically charging the runoff solution so the copper ions migrate to a cathode and collect there.
- 10
Use the pure copper cathodes for a variety of industrial uses, including billets, cakes, ingots and alloys.
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