SiTration and BHP launch Arizona pilot to trial copper recovery tech at historic site
As demand for copper accelerates, SiTration and BHP have announced the launch of two pilot deployments to trial SiTration’s valorisation technology in the historic Globe-Miami mining district of Arizona, in the US, at BHP’s Copper Cities site.
The initiative begins this month with an initial small-scale pilot designed to validate the continuous, autonomous production of copper from legacy mining water over one month. A larger deployment planned for later this year will seek to produce up to 2 t of commercial scale copper cathodes over a two-month period.
The historic Copper Cities site produced nearly 400,000 t of copper between the 1950s and early 1980s. Today, SiTration and BHP see an opportunity to recover value from legacy mining assets, with the potential to create new pathways for increasing domestic US copper supply, they say.
Building on momentum for mineral recovery at Copper Cities, SiTration and BHP have executed an agreement establishing a framework for collaboration on the pilot program and evaluation of future opportunities that may arise from successful pilot outcomes.
Through bench-scale testing using real feedstock from the site, SiTration has already demonstrated LME Grade A copper production. Without using any chemicals or generating new waste products, preliminary tests have yielded energy consumption below 3-4 kWh/kg to recover copper from the diluted legacy mining water.
“The American Southwest houses legacy mining water containing billions of dollars’ worth of copper,” Brendan Smith, CEO and Co-founder of SiTration, said. “With global copper demand projected to grow by around 70% by 2050 to support the rapid build-out of energy infrastructure and data centres, tapping into these resources is an excellent pathway to bolster domestic supply chains while producing copper at the bottom of the global cost curve.”
Jessica Farrell, BHP North American President, said: “The Copper Cities pilot provides an opportunity to evaluate an innovative approach to recover copper from mining-impacted water while generating valuable technical and operational insights. We are excited to work with SiTration to test this technology under real operating conditions and better understand its potential to recover value from legacy mining water sources.”
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