Talk:Copper extraction techniques

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Removed the following maesde up section from article:

===Orebody discovery===
<!-- I'm just making this up, feel free to correct me-->
Geologists discover copper ore deposits by examining rocks on the surface. If they are green, that means copper oxides and a deposit below. Drilling is undertaken to determine the size of, and proportion of copper in (the grade), the orebody zones. If the copper ore deposits is typical, it will be described in terms of the number of tonnes (and the grade) of ore in each of the oxide, secondary and primary zones. The tonnes and grade can be multipled together to determine the amount of copper in the deposit, and the processing costs for each zone can be used to determine mine profitability.

Geologists don't just look for green rocks. We can do a bit better than that:-) Maybe I'll give it a go later, but for now let's leave out the fictitious green rock bit. Vsmith 02:20, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I'm unsure how to make changes to the original article, so if you are able, then please put this in there;

In the Concentration section there is the following statement;

"Ground ore is mixed with xanthate reagents (for example, pine oil)"

This is true, however reagents other than xanthates are commonly used. Another common class of collector are dithiophosphates. Also used are thionocarbamates.

I can't figure out how to edit the photo caption "The El Chino open-pit copper mine in New Mexico" This should read "Chino open-pit copper mine in New Mexico" or "The Chino..." Note that it's correctly-captioned on the blowup page. Pete Tillman, 18:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Fixed that for ya. saimhe 21:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pyro section

I'm sorry, I'm in a complaining mood tonight: What happened in 2005 to make roasting so unpopular? This answer is nothing, and I'm being silly. But why say "as of 2005" as if there was some sort of change then? Anyway... partial roasting was done upstream of reverberatory furnaces or submerged arc electric furnaces to control the matte chemistry. Reverbs had environmental and thermal inefficiency problems. Electric furnaces are subject to electricity prices, and it's economics that hurt there. Flash smelting is now preferred because you essentially partial roast in the feed section, and the roasting reactions(sometimes helped out with fuel oil combustion) provide the heat for smelting. In a way, the flash smelter is simply a design that combines a roaster and a smelter in the same furnace. I'm not very familiar with the El Teniente furnace, but isn't that considered a converter, rather than a smelting furnace? And finally (you thought this gripe would never end), defining an anode furnace as a furnace that makes anodes is not very instructive. Besides, the anodes are "made" on the casting wheel outside the furnace. Just complaining tonight, I'll try and make some corrections soon. (I need to refresh my memory on the El Teniente converter, and maybe get some info on the Noranda reactor to throw in for good measure.) BSMet94 06:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name change

This article is a little unwieldy and far-reaching to my mind. Copper extraction obviously involves a lot of things related to many wide and varied subjects, a lot of which actually have nothing to do with the extraction per se, of copper. This, sadly includes;

  • All of the geology and formation of copper orebodies

In essence, copper extraction is a process involving a subset of other processes, chief amongst them being two things;

  • Mining - which can be covered elsewhere, c.f. open cast mine
  • Metallurgy - the bulk of the page.

I would therefore propose that "copper extraction" could be renamed "copper refining" or similar, and the sections on the geology and primary/secondary/oxide ore classification moved off and left as links to other subjects/topics. After all, the nature of the ore only matters for extraction as far as the refining or metallurgy is concerned - they are almost always mined (aka "extracted" from the Earth in exactly the same two ways. Rolinator 01:48, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed and removed the fromation/mining sections. Do we need a name change? Copper extraction from ores? Vsmith 03:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)