ELECTROMETALS Technologies has announced it plans to trial its copper extraction technology in early 2008.
According to the company, its EMEW system will be useful due to increasing demand for metal supplies. The technology is designed to safely extract copper from the bleed streams of copper refineries.
A current concern in the copper production industry is the increasing amounts of arsenic contamination in the primary copper concentrate sourced from mines. The company claims the amount of arsenic in concentrate has more than doubled since 2003.
The system is said to control the build up of toxic arsenic by producing stable copper-arsenate powder which can then be reprocessed through a smelter.
The company claims its process minimises the amount of toxic arsine gas through a closed-system design. Automated harvesting is said to reduce potential safety hazards.
Copper refineries are typically the final stage in the process of mining, smelting and refining copper, before the production of high-grade copper cathode.
Most of the impurities in copper are removed during mining and smelting, but some are dealt with by the refineries in a process known as electrorefining.
The impurities are tapped off into a bleed stream, which channels away build-ups of impurities to guarantee the quality of the final copper product.
The EMEW technology is said to extract high-grade copper from the bleed stream. It can also recover high grade nickel metal or nickel-cobalt in the process.

Key contact:
Electrometals Technologies
kevin@electrometals.com.au

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