WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE COPPER RECOVERY PROCESS WHEN A NEW GENERATION OF COPPER ORE GETS INTO MINING PROGRAMS?

摘要

The current high price of cooper opens the door to several mining projects kept until now under extremely special precautions. Nowadays those resources in-situ become base reserves which can be economically demonstrated. The question is what kind of collateral effect can be expected when the so named reserves will be fed to the processes. Current information is diffuse and here will be treated as general information. Since this is a general analysis, it is not focused to any particular project. The reader should take this work as warning of potential future problems in the processes of copper recovery. That is the reason why this work should result interesting for the entire cooper industry, from those who produce to those who define the availability of resources to become reserves. Potential problems are described, defined and presented. Potential general effects are as well defined and presented. All the unitary operations will be analyzed one by one in order to discover what would be the problem and what the possible solution could be. What should we look for the future of the cooper industry? That is a question widely discussed in this work. A new answer must be developed and the field of innovation as well as the research resources should be focused on this target. This is a warning message but is also the inevitable future of cooper recovery processes. That is why it is better to start finding solutions now. Waiting is a waste of time.