Ref.

Ares(2017)13347 - 03/01/2017

Clean Tech, Critical Minerals and

the Circular Economy:
New approaches to recover critical clean-tech
minerals and recycle e-waste in the copper
smelting process

Colin Nexhip, PhD

November 2016
Rio Tinto: our product group organization
Aluminum
• Industry-leading bauxite position
• Alumina refineries provide
competitive security of supply for
our smelters
• Sector-leading primary aluminum
metal EBITDA margins
Energy & Minerals
• Australian producer of thermal,
semi-soft and hard coking coal
• Supplier of uranium
• Flexible product portfolio in
titanium dioxide and zircon
• Leading supplier of salt and
borates
Copper & Diamonds
• Significant producer of copper from
our assets in the US, Mongolia,
Chile and Indonesia
• Diverse diamonds business
Iron Ore
• Leading producer of iron ore
• Australian Pilbara business
supplies our premium Pilbara
Blend lump and fines products
 Rio Tinto: where we operate

At July 2016

North
America Europe

Asia

Key
Mines and mining projects

Smelters, refineries, power Africa

facilities and processing
plants remote from mine

Aluminium
South
Copper & Diamonds America
Energy & Minerals
Iron Ore

Australasia
 Rio Tinto in North America: making our way of life
possible

Light weight aluminum in

Ford trucks

Steel in bridges and

infrastructure

North
America

Copper critical in iPhones

Silver and gold used in
Titanium for aerospace
Olympic medals,
trophies and jewelry
 Rio Tinto Kennecott
(40km of operations, in Utah USA)
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Recovery of co-products from anode copper slimes

Autoclave
• Used to de-copperize ‘slimes’ from tank house
Chlorination leach
• Separate 2 main by-products gold & silver (golddissolves,
silver remains solid)
Gold recovery
• Solvent extraction - removes gold from solution
• Gold reduction - extracts and precipitatesgold from organic
from SX
• Gold casting - converts gold sand into high purity bar and
removes minor impurities such as oxygen
Selenium recovery
• Precipitates selenium and minor amounts of gold and PGMs
Lead recovery
• Dissolves silver using ammonia, converts leadsulfate to lead
carbonate and then removes lead solids, ion exchange to
remove any soluble lead
Silver recovery
• Precipitates silver by evaporating ammonia andwater
• Silver casting - converts silver sand into high purity bar and
removes minor impurities such as oxygen
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
RTK Refinery co-products

Gold Bars
• 400 oz. bars
• Purity 99.99%Au
• ~300,000 oz. peryear
• Sold to Banks, Traders, Jewelry

Silver Bars
• 1000 oz. bars
• Purity 99.95%Ag
• ~3 million oz. per year
• Sold to Banks, Traders, Jewelry

Crude Selenium Lead Carbonate

• Selenium sand • Lead carbonate sand
• Contains minor amounts of Au andPGMs • Contains minor amountsAg
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Molybdenum recovery from copper ores

• Molybdenum production (as MoS2)

at RTK has typically averaged
~25,000 tonnes per year
• Molybdenum is recovered through
flotation processes (as is copper),
then concentrated, filtered, and
bagged before being shipped to
domestic and international
molybdenum roasters
• Typical downstream Molybdenum
products, after roasting, include
molybdenum oxide briquettes,
powders, and ferromolybdenum
• US, Japan and Europe are key
value-add markets for RTK’s
Molybdenum products
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Copper smelting technology

• Major modernization of RTK Smelter in 1990’s (and is still the

worlds’ cleanest smelter)
• Captures 99.9% SO2 off-gas from copper smelting & converting
• Double contact absorption acid plant produces ~1Mtpa sulfuric
acid co-product (sold mostly to local fertilizer manufacturers)
• Heat recovery system generates ~60% of Smelters’ energyneeds
• Smelter currently recycling post consumer scrap copper – and
exploring concepts around electronic scrap/e-waste recycling
Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Recover, Refine, Reuse
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Recovery of copper from acidic mine water

• Copper dissolves due to meteoric (rain) water contacting mine waste

dumps
• Advanced Copper Cementation (ACC) plant commissioned to recover
copper from acid mine water (containing 500 mg/L Cu)
• ACC process utilizes iron media charged to vibration mills; retention
time ~2 min to ‘cement’ copper metal from mine water solution
• Current copper recovery ~80%, and ~2t/day of copper fines produced
in form of 98% pure copper powder
• Product collected and transported to RTK Smelter where it is charged
to anode refining furnaces to supplement copper production
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Learning to use the full range of metals &
minerals in a deposit

hank you…
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Rhenium recovery from smelting furnace gases

• RTK smelts copper concentrate

containing trace amounts of Re
• Re volatilizes in flash smelting
process off-gas and is recovered in
Acid Plant Blow-down (APB)
solution
• Continuous Ion-Exchange
technology, potential yield of ~1
tonne per annum of recoverable Re
• Example of high value by-product
being recovered (not ‘lost’ to tails)
• Re is a strategic co-product used
mainly in aerospace applications
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Tellurium recovery at RTK refinery (proposed)
Autoclave
leach filtrate Key Parameters

Steam Tellurium 20 tpa

Copper Chips 100 tpa
Cycle Time 12 h
Reaction Temp 205 oF

Steam Consumed 12 tpd

Precious
Metals
Effluent

Intermediate CuTe product – further refining required

 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Bismuth production at RTK refinery (proposed)

• Se reduction solution
contains 30-40 g/l of Bi
• Bi readily forms a product
precipitate:
− Bi(HSO4)3 for SuperLig® 83
− BiOCl or Bi(OH)3 for SuperLig®240

• Recovery of Bi >95%
• Bi production ~1,000 lbs/d
• Commercial systems
already exist (eg copper
refinery in Korea)
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Rare earth elements (REE) at RTK

• RTK has undertaken preliminary studies regarding potential recovery of

REE from Bingham Canyon ores
• Drill core samples from open pit ore, ‘skarns’ and caves show presence of
Sc, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Ge, In, Ga, Y, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb & Lu
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Rare earth elements (REE) at RTK

• Mineralogical and other studies needed

to characterize REE’s in feed and
product streams
• Determine REE deportment behavior in:
• Ores, concentrates, tailings, acidic
mine water
• Furnace dusts, anode slimes, Germanium
smelter scrubber blowdown
solutions, refinery bleed streams
• Technology selection for commercial
recovery and production of saleable
REE concentrates
• Product market intelligence

Indium

(Spatial plot examples)

Rio Tinto and US Department of Energy recently announced
research partnership through Critical Materials Institute

Increasing recovery rates of rare

minerals and metals in the copper
production process
Potential for increased recovery of
valuable metals by blending
electronic waste into smelter feed-
stocks

Focusing on efficient extraction of critical materials from copper smelting process,

the research will have three core work-streams:
1. Improving recovery rates of critical minerals and metals from copper ores
(rhenium, tellurium, scandium, PGM’s etc.) sourced from the RTK Mine in Utah
and Resolution Copper Mine (RCM) in Arizona.
2. Explore potential for increasing recovery rates of rare earth metals through
processing concentrate and waste tailings from RTK and other tailings sources
like at RCM.
3. Examine process improvements that would facilitate blending of processed
electronic waste (‘e-waste’) with copper concentrates to materially increase
recovery of critical and valuable metals from copper smelting processes.
Copper drives economic development in the US

Source: National Mining Association

Copper will play a role in future innovation and
development

Copper will play a role in future innovation and development

Wind and renewable energy Copper alloy fishing nets Medical equipment

Copper indium gallium Rural electrification

Urbanization
selenide solar cells (CIGS)
Copper and the green economy
 Critical minerals and national security…

Got copper? New pentagon report

spotlights key role of critical metals
“Close the door on copper production, and you’re making
a difficult situation far worse for national defense
planners tasked with securing reliable supplies of critical
metals.”

• Copper is the second most used metal by the US Department of Defense.

• It is widely found in modern naval vessels, U.S. Coast Guard ships, Air Force
aircraft, military gear, weapon systems and other defense technologies.
 Critical Minerals & the Circular Economy:
Future opportunities…
Rio Tinto is a diversified mining company producing many products that
help power the circular economy and meet the material needs of our
society. Copper is increasingly becoming critical to the future of clean
energy and other smart technologies, and is 100% recyclable.

RTK’s Bingham Canyon mine ore body in Utah contains many critical
metals that can be recovered as co-products from copper production;
synergies also exist with Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper Mine project.
Rio Tinto Kennecott, in partnership with US DoE’s CMI Program, aims to
recover a range of critical minerals from our copper ore bodies in the US.
Key to unlocking future value of co-products will be more extensive ‘Ore
Body Knowledge’ (knowing what lies beneath), and developing new
methods to recover critical minerals efficiently and economically (whilst
continuing to earn our ‘privilege’ to operate within our communities).
Smelting of post-consumer electronic scrap (eg computers and cell
phones) offers an attractive pathway for ‘second pass’ recovery of
valuable co-products, given diminishing quality of mine ore bodies.