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MIT-spinout SiTration and BHP announced Thursday the launch of two pilot deployments to trial SiTration’s valorization technology in the Globe-Miami mining district in Arizona at BHP’s Copper Cities site.
Copper Cities is a historic former copper mine that operated from the 1950s to the early 1980s, producing nearly 400,000 tonnes of copper.
The initiative will begin in August 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 two tonnes of commercial scale copper cathodes over a two-month period, SiTration said, adding that the companies see opportunity to recover value from legacy mining assets, with the potential to create new pathways for increasing domestic US copper supply.
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 said it 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,” SiTration CEO Brendan Smith said in a news release.
“With global copper demand projected to grow by around 70% by 2050 to support the rapid buildout of energy infrastructure and data centers, tapping into these resources is an excellent pathway to bolster domestic supply chains while producing copper at the bottom of the global cost curve,” Smith 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,” BHP North American president Jessica Farrell added.
“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.”
