Electricalwiring,electronicequipment and industrialmachinery.
A metal ore contains enough metal to _____?
Make it economical enough to extract it.
What is happening to copper ores?
They are becoming scarce, meaning we have to extractcopper from low-gradeores.
What are low-grade ores like?
Contain a very small amount of copper meaning it’s harder to extract the coppereconomically from these ores.
What happens in phytomining?
Plants are grown on land which contain the metalcompound we want, these plants absorb the metalcompound and they concentrate it in their tissue. The plants are then harvested and burned, at the end, the ash contains a relatively highconcentration of the metalcompound.
What happens in Bioleaching?
Bacteria are mixed with the low-gradeore, the bacteria carry out chemicalreactions and produce a solution called a leachate which contains the metalcompound we want.
Once you've collected the copper compound from either phytomining or bioleaching, how do you extract the metal from the compound?
For copper, we displace it using iron as it is more reactive than copper, we typically use scrapiron which is cheaper. We can also extract the copper using electrolysis.
What does phytomining and bioleaching allow us to do?
Allow us to economicallyextract metals from low-gradeores which is important as the Earthsresources of metalores are limited. Also these methods do not involve digging, transporting/disposing of large amounts of rock unlike in traditional mining.