Adverse Effects of Copper Extraction on the Environment and Living Things

Abstract

The extraction procedures are known as heap and situ leaching; throughout these procedures, particles react with one another to produce acidic mists that not only hurt people’s skin, eyes, and lungs but also ruin crops, degrade the quality of the land, and injure surrounding structures. It tastes awful and stinks like acid dust. The ore typically needs to be beneficiated as with all mining processes. The methods of processing are determined by the type of ore. The ore is crushed and milled to separate the valuable minerals from the unwanted minerals if the ore is predominantly composed of sulphide copper minerals. Mineral flotation is then used to concentrate it. Even while some sizable mines have smelters close by, the concentrate is normally sold to far-off smelters next. When smaller smelters could be profitable, this collocation of mine and smelters was more common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Only a minor portion of copper is present in the majority of copper ores. Gangue, which has no commercial value, makes up the remaining ore typically; exploration and extraction gangue contains oxides and silicate minerals. The technology for retrieving copper has advanced, and in certain cases, these tailings have been retracted. The typical copper content in copper ores nowadays is less than 0.6 percent copper, and minimum of 2% of the entire volume of the ore rock is made up of economically valuable ore minerals including copper. The separation of ore minerals from rock gangue minerals is a crucial goal in the metallurgical processing of any ore.