Bingham Canyon (Kennecott) Copper Mine
It is the world's deepest man-made open pit excavation.
Bingham Canyon (Kennecott) Copper Mine |
Location: Salt Lake County, Utah, United States.
Products: Copper.
Owner: Rio Tinto Group.
Ore Type : Porphyry copper deposit.
The history of the Mine:
Bingham Canyon was settled in 1848
by the Bingham brothers, Thomas and Sanford, who were ranchers with no mining
experience. In 1863, soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City
explored the canyon and discovered lead ore. Utah’s first mining district was
created in the Bingham Canyon area that same year. In 1893, Daniel Jackling, a
metallurgical engineer, and Robert Gemmell, a mining engineer, studied the
deposit and recommended developing the ore body through a revolutionary open-pit
mining method and processing the ore on a large, industrial scale. The miners
and their families lived near Bingham Canyon in places called Highland Boy,
Copper Heights, Copperfield, Carr Fork, Heaston Heights, Telegraph, Dinkeyville,
Terrace Heights, Greek Camp and Frog Town. At one point, the population in the
area approached 20,000 people. In 1903, the Utah Copper Company was formed to
develop the mine, based on the recommendations of Mr. Jackling and Mr. Gemmell.
In 1906, the first steam shovels began mining away the waste rock that covered the
ore body. The ore was found in a part of the mountain that divided the main
canyon.
Geology of the Mine:
Every deposit of ore in the world is
unique. There are no two ore bodies that are alike. Geologic forces were at work
in the Oquirrh Mountains between 260 and 320 million years ago (Late Paleozoic
Period). About 30 to 40 million years ago, molten, metal-bearing rock deep
within the earth’s crust began to push toward the surface and formed Bingham’s
ore deposit. Volcanoes erupted above the evolving ore body. This particular ore
body contains primarily copper, gold, silver and molybdenum.
Tiny grains of ore minerals, mostly
copper and iron sulfides, are scattered within what is called “host rock.”
Because there is far more host rock than there are minerals, it is known as a
low-grade ore deposit. Because this is a low-grade deposit, a ton of ore
contains only about 10.6 pounds of copper. For every ton of ore removed, about
two tons of overburden must first be removed to gain access to the ore.
How big is the Bingham Canyon Mine?
Kennecott Utah Copper’s (KUC)
Bingham Canyon Mine has produced more copper than any mine in history— about
18.1 million tons.
The mine is 2¾ miles across at the
top and ¾ of a mile deep. You could stack two Sears Towers (now known as the
Willis building), on top of each other and still not reach the top of the mine.
The mine is so big it can be seen by space shuttle astronauts as they pass over
the United States. By 2015, the mine will be more than 500 feet deeper than it
is now. If you stretched out all the roads in the open-pit mine— some 500 miles
of roadway — you’d have enough distance to reach from Salt Lake City to Denver.
KUC mines about 55,000,000 tons of copper ore and 120,000,000 tons of overburden
per year.
The mining process:
Bingham Canyon Mine This is where
the mining process begins. Every day, Kennecott Utah Copper mines about 150,000
tons of copper ore and 330,000 tons of overburden. The ore containing copper,
gold, silver and molybdenum is hauled and deposited in the in-pit crusher and
sent to the Copperton Concentrator.
Copperton Concentrator From the
mine, ore is transported on a five-mile conveyor and stockpiled at the
Copperton Concentrator. There the ore is ground into fine particles. The
smaller pieces are then combined with air, water and chemical reagents to
separate the valuable minerals from the waste rock. The mineral bearing
concentrate is then transported to the smelter through a pipeline.
Tailings: Are the leftover rock
material that have had most of the valuable metals removed. Tailings are sent
through a pipeline from the Copperton Concentrator to the tailings impoundment
north of the town of Magna where they are stored.
Smelter: At the smelter, the copper
concentrate is transformed into liquid copper through a flash smelting process.
The copper matte is processed in the furnace to produce 98.6 percent blister
copper. From there, the 720 pound copper plates, called anodes, are sent to the
refinery.
Refinery: At the refinery, anodes are lowered into
electrolytic cells containing a stainless steel blank and acidic solution. For
10 days, an electric current is sent between the anode and the cathode, causing
the copper ions to migrate to the steel sheet. The other impurities, including
gold and silver, fall into the bottom of the cell and are recovered in the
Precious Metals plant. This process forms a plate of 99.99% pure copper. The
copper is separated from the steel sheet and sent to market.
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