Kennecott Bingham Canyon copper mine operations

The deepest copper mine in the world, mining sub-1% copper ore. Used to illustrate why copper energy cost is rising — we've depleted the rich (6%) Belgian Congo ores from the 1950s and now overcome entropy to get copper out of dispersed deposits.

Copper is very high and it's going even higher. Does anyone know why? Something called entropy. Copper ores are not very concentrated. Anyone know the largest copper mine in the world, or actually the deepest one in the world? You fly over it sometimes as you go out of Salt Lake City Airport. It's about two and a half miles deep. It's Bingham Canyon. Kennecott Copper owns it. It's been mined for a hundred years — they just keep digging it deeper and deeper. The ore there is less than one percent copper — I think it's like a half percent. There were ores in the Belgian Congo, in the 1950s, that were six percent copper. We've depleted all those rich copper ore reserves, so copper takes lots of energy. We essentially mine for copper. We get bauxite that's very rich, we can get iron that's essentially pure iron oxide. Copper is dispersed at very low concentrations, and therefore you've got to overcome a lot of entropy to get it.

Used as the U.S. exemplar of declining copper ore grade — less than 0.5% Cu, contrasted with the historical 6% Belgian Congo ores. Visible from approach into Salt Lake City; "world's deepest pit."

Copper at that time was 100, rising to about 500. That's because we've used up most of the good copper ores in the world. The really good copper ores came out of the Belgian Congo — what's now Zaire, or whatever the name is, central Africa, right where they're having all the wars all the time. They used to have 6% copper ores. The largest copper mine still in operation in the United States is the Bingham mine right outside Salt Lake City. If you've ever flown the right way into Salt Lake City, you look down at the world's deepest pit. The Bingham mine is now less than half a percent copper in the ore. We mine gold out of ores even less than that, in parts per million, but gold is 10,000 times as valuable per atom as copper. So there's a lot of energy content in the copper just in the mining. In aluminum it's basically getting the oxygen out of the aluminum oxide. Plastics — the energy content is basically what you would get if you just burned it as a barrel of oil, plus the processing of the plastic.

World's deepest open-pit mine, visible from Salt Lake City flights. 0.5% copper ore (1 lb per ton of rock). Used to explain why copper has high energy content despite easy reduction chemistry — beneficiation cost dominates. 80 years of operation at sub-1% ore grades.

Anyone fly out of Salt Lake City and go over the Bingham mine? The world's deepest open-pit mine. Depending on how the plane takes off, you'll look down and see this big hole in the ground that goes down over a mile deep. It's the Kennecott copper mine. They're mining ore there that's only about a half percent copper. You get one pound out of a ton of rock. That's why it's so energy intensive.