Copper Mining :: Natural Resources Minerals Miners Essays

Copper Mining Copper dig has become a very important industry in like a shots society. It is also one of mans oldest commercial activities. in that respect are m both steps from finding a exploit site to producing a product made of shit or a copper alloy. The mining industry has also had many important developments from the time the foremost mine was formed in Rio Tinto in 3000 B.C. The earliest copper sources were globules and chunks of internal copper found on the Earths surface. After we quick exhausted the limited amount of native copper, we were forced to look secret for more sources. It started out as a simple and tiring process. In early civilizations slaves would break up rock layers to find copper, and other minerals. It would indeed be removed from tunnels and small pits where it was found by hand. The starting signal significant breakthrough in the mining process came when smelting was discovered. We have come a long way from those days. Today mining is a very high gear tech industry containing many expensive steps. The first step is exploration, or finding a good source of copper. This can take any where from 3 to 4 years and cost up to $7,000,000. Next is mine development. This stage also takes 3 to 4 years but be much more, up to $75,000,000. The third stage is producing the mine. This costs almost $30,000,000 a year, and takes 9 to 21 years before it is completed. The last-place stage is called final reclamation, lasting around 3 years and costing $27,000,000. These 4 stages keep back to both of the 2 most basic forms of copper ores found in nature sulphide ores and oxide ores. It is a complicated process removing the copper from these dickens ores since it makes up only 1% of the rock material. Mining copper sulfide ores requires a grinding process to separate the copper from the rest of the rock. The first step is to blast the mine and then haul the material to a co pper ore mill.