On 24 July 2018, the Arizona Mining Review team joined Dan Johnson, Vice President & General Manager of Florence Copper, and Stacy Gramazio, Manager of Communications & Public Affairs, for an early morning tour of the pilot in situ copper recovery (ISCR) facility outside of Florence.
Florence Copper is in the final stage of deploying a $25M production test facility, designed to harvest 1.5M pounds of copper annually for several years. Following successful proof of concept, Florence Copper has plans for a larger plant to recover 55M pounds of copper annually for the first 6 years, and 85M pounds annually for another 14 years. Over a 20-year lifespan, Florence Copper estimates the recovery project will yield ~$3.4B in revenue.
In situ copper recovery is a three-phase process:
- Phase 1 — injection of the active fluid (99.5% water with 0.5% sulfuric acid) with a pH similar to household vinegar
- Phase 2 — extraction of the pregnant, copper-rich solution
- Phase 3 — using electrowinning, a process first pioneered in the Globe-Miami area in the late 1960s, to produce ~100-pound copper cathodes that are 99.999% copper
The Arizona Mining Review is funded in part by the Mining Foundation of the Southwest.
For more info, visit the AZGS web site.