Bingham Canyon Mine
| Bingham Canyon Mine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| Mining technology | Open pit | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Rio Tinto | ||
| Start of operation | 1906 | ||
| End of operation | 2030s (estimated) | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Copper , molybdenum , silver , gold | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 40 ° 31 '23 " N , 112 ° 9' 4" W | ||
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| Location | Salt Lake County | ||
| confederacy | United States of America | ||
| Country | United States | ||
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The Bingham Canyon Mine , also known locally as the Kennecott Copper Mine , is an open pit mine utilizing one of the largest porphyry copper deposits in the world in the Oquirrh Mountains , southwest of Salt Lake City , Utah . The open pit is one of the largest man-made mines in the world. It belongs to the Rio Tinto Group , an international mining company with headquarters in London. The copper production is carried out with the help of the Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation , which in addition to the open pit also operates a smelting works, a processing plant and a copper refinery. The open pit has been in operation since 1906 and covers 770 hectares. It is 970 m deep and 4 km wide. The Bingham Canyon Mine was listed as a site on the National Register of Historic Places in November 1966 . Associated with this was the recognition as a National Historic Landmark under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine on the same day . In April and September 2013 landslides occurred .
history
Copper ore was first discovered in Bingham Canyon in 1848 by the two brothers Sanford and Thomas Bingham, who grazed the cattle of their father Erastus Bingham, a Mormon settler, here. They reported their find to their leader, Brigham Young , who decided not to mine the ore, as survival and consolidation of their new settlement seemed more important to him at the time. The brothers followed this decision and made no claim . In 1850 the Bingham family moved to what is now Weber County, but the canyon retained its name.
It was not until September 17, 1863 that mining of the ore began and one became more and more aware of the potential of the deposit in the canyon. This was when George B. Ogilvie and 23 others staked out the West Jordan Claim, followed shortly after by the Vidette Claim. At first, mining was limited to gold soaps and lead-silver-copper rich ores . Porphyry copper deposits require processing and good transport options for use, which only existed when the railroad reached the site in 1873.
The deposit was better investigated by Enos Andrew Wall from 1887; its extensive test pits and tunnels on its 200 hectare claim indicated ores with an average of two percent copper.
The shafts in the 19th century were relatively small and it took until the end of the century for the deposit to be used extensively by an opencast mine. In 1896, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir bought the Highland Boy Mine, which was rich in copper, silver and gold. Together with investors from England they founded the Utah Consolidated Gold Mines, Ltd. ; the Boston Consolidated Gold and Copper Co., Ltd. founded in order to use the poorer ores of the surrounding properties.
Another significant development took place in 1903 when Daniel C. Jackling and Enos A. Wall founded the Utah Copper Company , which immediately began building an ore processing facility in Copperton , which was located directly at the exit of the canyon.
The success of the Utah Copper Society in mining the large ore body in Bingham Canyon was due to Jackling's decision in 1904 to use an open pit, and above all the intensive use of steam excavators and railways. The opencast mine became a prime example of the "railroad opencast mining operation" and the industrial complex - consisting of the opencast mine and the ASARCO steelworks - became the largest industrial mining complex in the world in 1912.
Utah Copper and Boston Consolidated merged in 1906 when the two open pit mines approached. The Kennecott Copper Corporation , which operated the rich copper mines in Kennecott , Alaska , bought 25 percent of the shares in this company; by 1923 this proportion was increased to 75 percent.
The Bingham Canyon Mine expanded rapidly, and from the 1920s it was an important economic factor in the region. Up to 15,000 people of various ethnicities lived in the canyon in workers' settlements that were built on the steep slopes. When the settlements were swallowed up in the course of the expansion, the population rapidly decreased. In 1980 Lark was demolished, only Copperton at the exit of the Bingham Canyon with a population of 800 remained.
The 21 separate mining companies of 1911 consolidated into two in 1970, namely Kennecott and The Anaconda Minerals Company. In 1985 the Kennecott's Utah Copper open pit mine was stopped for the first time and in 1986 Kennecott discovered gold in nearby Barney's Canyon, which was mined there for a few years.
Kennecott Copper Corporation was bought by Sohio in 1981 and the open pit mine was reopened in 1987 by BP Miners. In 1983, the Rio Tinto Group bought the open pit mine, modernized it, the processing and the iron and steel works.
The new owners switched the opencast mine from track to conveyor belt. This led to a cost reduction of 30 percent and made the mine profitable again.
Landslides
On April 10, 2013, a landslide occurred in the open pit at 9:30 p.m. This was the largest non-volcanic and non-earthquake landslide in modern North American history. Around 65 to 70 million cubic meters of rock slipped into the open pit. As it was recognized that the steep slopes of the opencast mine pose a high risk of landslides, an interoferimetric radar measurement system was set up to monitor the stability of the subsoil. As a result of warnings from the monitoring system, work in the opencast mine was stopped the day before the landslide, so there were neither injuries nor deaths. The massive landslide is expected to reduce copper production by 100,000 tons. A second landslide on September 11, 2013 led to the evacuation of 100 miners.
geology
The Bingham Canyon ore body lies in Bingham ceiling . This is a porphyry copper deposit , by a quartz - monzonite - intrusion was formed in sedimentary rocks. The ore body shows a concentric alteration pattern and mineralogical zonation around the Bingham intrusion. These zones contain a central core containing magnetite , which is followed by a molybdenite zone poor in copper, this merges into a highly copper-bearing boronite - chalcopyrite- gold zone, followed by a pyrite- chalcopyrite zone, then a pyrite -Zone and, as the outermost, a zone rich in lead and zinc ores.
Structurally geologically, late Paleozoic rocks were pushed over the Precambrian craton during the Sevier orogeny in the Cretaceous period . Granitoids later intruded into these rocks ; this intrusion event is responsible for the formation of the ore deposits.
Sulphide minerals containing copper and molybdenum are finely distributed in the intrusion body and in the adjacent skarn . The stratigraphically most important rock in Bingham Canyon is the Bingham Mine - formation of the Oquirrh Group, consisting of sandstones , quartzites and limestones from the Upper Pennsylvania . The origins of the ores in the central zone are hydrothermal solutions of the intrusion body itself, while the ores of the surrounding ore veins and deposits in the sedimentary rock were precipitated when the igneous hydrothermal solutions and meteoric waters met .
Production history
Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the largest man-made pits in the world and is considered to be one of the few human-made structures on earth that are unaided visible from the space station ISS. It employs around 1,800 workers and employees as well as hundreds of subcontractors. Around 400,000 tons of ore are mined every day; This is achieved with the help of electrified shovel excavators, which can load 89 t of excavation into one of the 231 t dump trucks in one work step . A fleet of 64 dump trucks is in use. They dump the ore onto conveyor belts that take it to the processing plant in Copperton , 5 miles away .
In 2010, Kennecott Utah Copper was the second largest copper producer in the United States, covering 13-18% of the US annual copper demand. With an annual output of 17 million tons, the open pit mine is one of the most productive copper mines in the world. Each year Kennecott produces approximately 270,000 tons of copper, 9,100 tons of molybdenum, 12.4 tons of gold, and 124 tons of silver.
The current operating plan will expire in 2019. Rio Tinto has carried out studies on the enlargement of the open pit mine. It is to be enlarged 300 m to the south, this would extend its life into the 2030s. This plan must be approved by the Rio Tinto Board of Directors and still requires at least 25 environmental approvals.
Further facts worth knowing about the production history
By 2004, more than 15 million tons of copper, 386,000 tons of molybdenum, 5,900 tons of silver and 715 tons of gold had been extracted from the ores extracted here. The value of the metals extracted from the Bingham Canyon Mine is greater than that of the Comstock Lode , Klondike and California gold rushes combined. Mines in Chile , Indonesia , Arizona and New Mexico are now exceeding production rates at the Bingham Canyon mine. The value of the metals extracted from the Bingham Canyon mine in 2006 was $ 1.8 billion.
Processing process of ores
The ore extracted is processed in the Kennecott Smelter in nearby Magna, Utah . The ore runs through an ore concentrator, where it is ground into powder in large ore mills. The dead rock is separated from the metal by flotation , which floats on the flotation bath as a 28 percent copper concentrate with a low content of silver, gold, molybdenum, platinum and palladium. In a further step, selective flotation separates the molybdenum minerals from the copper minerals.
The filtered concentrate suspension is led through a 27 km long pipe to the ironworks, where it is dried and then blown into a flash smelting furnace together with oxygen so that the iron and sulfur contained in the sludge oxidizes and precipitates. While the oxidized iron is being skimmed off, the gaseous sulfur dioxide is sent to another plant, where it is processed into sulfuric acid .
What remains is molten copper sulfide - also called copper stone. The 70% copper stone is quenched with water until sand-sized particles are formed, which in turn are injected with oxygen into the flash smelting furnace, which produces 98.6% pure copper. This copper is cast into anode plates weighing 320 kg and transported to the refinery.
In the refinery, the anode plates are rolled flat and then alternately pressed together with stainless steel cathode sheets. Robots place the connected plates in a basin filled with acidic electrolyte . As these basins are energized, the anodes slowly dissolve; in the process, copper ions are released, which are deposited on the cathodes as highly pure (99.99%) copper.
Impurities and precious metals collect at the base of the electrolyte cells as "anode sludge". Gold and silver are extracted by leaching with chloride solutions and processed in induction furnaces.
Impact on the environment
According to ecologists, open pit mining has a detrimental impact on fish and wild animal habitats through both air and water pollution and is a threat to public health. Various federal authorities that care about the environment have introduced strict legal requirements so that the various companies in the operating group comply with environmental protection requirements. Since the 1990s, the operating group has spent more than 400 million dollars cleaning up the affected areas so that they do not end up on the list of Superfund National Priorities (NPL), which would result in stricter and, above all, more expensive measures.
In 1990 it was discovered during the construction of houses on former floodplains that the soil was heavily contaminated with lead and arsenic. Efforts to clean up the spills that have accumulated over 100 years began in the 1990s and continue to this day under the supervision of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and federal agencies.
The EPA lists Kennecott South Zone / Bingham on its Superfund website because it was proposed as a possible Superfund site in 1994. The South Zone contains the Bingham Mining District in the Oquirrh Mountains , which includes the open pit mine, the spoil heaps, the Copperton smelter and several historic mines. The mining company avoided listing on the National Priority List by voluntarily cleaning up polluted land . The 2008 South Zone listing proposal was withdrawn by removing 25 million tons of overburden and concentrating and capping the sulfur-bearing slag from the open pit mine.
Period from 1900 to 1909
In 1904 there were three copper smelters and one lead smelter in the Salt Lake Valley; their exhaust gases caused severe damage to agricultural production in the surrounding lands. The following winter, the farmers in the area who appeared together sued the smelters for the first time in the federal court of Utah. As a judgment of this lawsuit, the smelting works were forbidden by the federal court in 1906 to smelt ore with more than 10 percent sulfur, which meant the out of these smelters.
Period from 1910 to 1979
Kennecott Copper Mines was formed from the merger of the Utah Copper and Kennecott copper mining companies in 1910. As early as 1912, environmental protection organizations objected to the massive use of asbestos by the mining company. When asbestos is used in the melting process, the finest particles are created which get into the air and harm the environment and people.
The Kennecott Corporation was also held responsible for the emission of heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury . In 1940, for example, the environmental protection authorities expressed concern about the arsenic and mercury emissions from the mining complex, since large quantities of both metals are highly toxic.
Period between 1980 and 1989
| year | Quantity (1 gal = 3.78 l) | Released substances | reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 100,000,000 gal (estimated) | Industrial water rich in arsenic | Unknown |
Investigations in the 1980s revealed pollution of the groundwater by mining and the release of dangerous substances. In October 1986, Utah brought legal action against Kennecott seeking compensation for the loss and destruction of natural resources, particularly groundwater.
There is also a danger from the embankment of the sedimentation basin , which overlooks the Magna settlement . An engineering report from 1988 indicates that it could break in an earthquake , releasing the immense amount of toxic sludge and sewage accumulated there. Kennecott responded with various strategies to avoid it, such as buying up the surrounding land and investing $ 500 million to strengthen the dam; The company also conspired with representatives of the federal authorities so that the population would not be aware of this report.
Period between 1990 and 1999
| year | Quantity (1 gal = 3.78 l) | Released substance | reason | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 100,000,000 gal (estimated) | Industrial water rich in arsenic | Unknown | |
| 1998 | Unknown | Acid wastewater | Clogged pipe | Unknown |
| 1997 | Unknown | Copper sulfate | Clogged drain pipe | Unknown |
| 1997 | Unknown | Industrial water with a pH value of 2.5–4.0 | Broken pipeline | Unknown |
| 1993 | 45,000 gal | Sewage | Broken transfer line | |
| 1991 | 30,000 gal | Industrial wastewater | Line break |
In 1995, after scientific research proved that mining had polluted groundwater , the Kennecott companies were forced to spend $ 37 million on water pollution control.
As a result of runoff from mine waters rich in selenium and arsenic compounds - selenium is particularly toxic to birds, fish and amphibians - 30% of the surrounding fish population died in the early 1990s. In 1995, a contract between Kennecott, the EPA and the state of Utah stipulated that the Kennecott companies would undertake to further purify the wastewater.
Period from 2000 to 2014
In the period between 2000 and 2011, the Bingham Canyon mine leaked harmful chemicals several times.
| year | Quantity (1 gal = 3.78 l) | Released substance | root cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 145,424 gal | Copper overburden | Equipment malfunction |
| 2011 | 100,000-290,000 gal | Copper tailings | Unknown |
| 2011 | 160,000 gal | Overburden | Unknown |
| 2010 | 4,000-5,000 gal | sulfuric acid | Unknown |
| 2007 | 1,240,000 gal | Industrial water rich in arsenic | low temperatures |
| 2006 | 270,000 gal | Domestic water | Pump failure |
| 2006 | 660,000 gal | Industrial water rich in arsenic | Broken drain pipe |
| 2006 | 1,000,000 gal | Domestic water | Failed sensor |
| 2004 | 4,000,000 gal | Industrial water rich in arsenic | Broken drain pipe |
| 2004 | 2,000,000 gal | Industrial water rich in arsenic | Broken domestic water pipe |
| 2004 | 202,000 gal | Domestic water | Broken pipeline |
| 2003 | 70 tons | Copper concentrate | Unknown |
| 2003 | 10.27 tons | Copper concentrate rich in arsenic and lead | Broken pipeline |
| 2003 | 240,681 tons | Copper , arsenic and lead | Breakage of the copper concentrate pipeline |
| 2002 | 5,800 gal | Process water of the slag basin | Clogged drain pipe |
| 2000 | 110 tons | Ore sludge | Leak in ore pipeline |
| 2000 | 18,000 tons | sulfuric acid | Breakage of a seal |
The EPA estimates that numerous runoffs and accidents over the years have created a 72-mile plume of polluted groundwater . In the long term, this could mean that the population of the Salt Lake Valley will have to look for superficial solutions for their water supply, since the usable groundwater reserves are becoming scarcer due to increasing pollution.
In 2007, Kennecott Utah Copper LLC considered expanding its property south to Rose Canyon Ranch in the Oquirrh Mountains and Yellow Fork Canyon in Salt Lake County . Kennecott has mining rights there based on the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916.
In 2008, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service sued Kennecott after several dangerous substances ( selenium , copper , arsenic , zinc , lead, and cadmium ) were released. Biologists from this federal agency pointed out that these chemicals caused great damage to the various ecosystems and affected the populations of migratory birds around the Great Salt Lake.
In the northern zone of the open-cast mine near Magna , the extensive southern sedimentation basin has been collecting the overburden since the start of large-scale mining. Kennecott Utah Copper LLC has requested approval to increase the volume of this 1.8 billion tonne sedimentation basin and add 721 acres in the wetlands south of the Great Salt Lake . After closer observation, the operating company had doubts about the stability of the sedimentation basin. The Salt Lake Tribune published a report in 2007 which showed that the operating company was unable to provide information on possible damage in the event that the sedimentation basin should collapse as a result of a major earthquake . In the period between 2001 and 2009 there were six noticeable earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.3 to 3.4 within a radius of only three miles (about 5 kilometers) from Magna.
Popular culture
The Bingham Canyon opencast mine was the location of the 1973 TV movie Birds of Prey , in which the protagonist, helicopter pilot Harry Walker (played by David Janssen ) steers his Hughes 500 into the open pit in order to kill the bad guys in their Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama hiding behind large opencast mining equipment .
Individual evidence
- ^ Sheena Mcfarland: Kennecott Copper Mine recovering faster than predicted . The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved April 28, 2015.
- ↑ Jasen Lee: Kennecott laying off 200 workers . Retrieved March 6, 2016.
- ↑ Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine on the National Register of Historic Places , accessed February 24, 2020.
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Utah. National Park Service , accessed February 24, 2020.
- ↑ Second landslide hits Rio's Bingham Canyon mine, 100 workers evacuated ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 16th September 2013
- ^ Scott Crump: Bingham Canyon . In: Allan Kent Powell (Ed.): Utah History Encyclopedia . University of Utah Press , Salt Lake City, Utah 1994, ISBN 0-87480-425-6 ( uen.org ). Bingham Canyon ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Descendants of Erastus Bingham and Lucinda Gates , Ogden, Utah: Bingham Family Corp, 1970. pp. 3-4.
- ↑ a b c d e Edwin W. Tooker: Gold in Bingham District, Utah in USGS Bulletin 1857 Gold in Copper Porphyry Copper Systems . United States Government Printing Office, 1990, p. E2.
- ^ A b c d e f Charles Caldwell Hawley: A Kennecott Story . The University of Utah Press, 2014, pp. 37-40.
- ↑ Frederick K. Lutgens, Edward J. Tarbuck; illustrated by Dennis Tasa: Essentials of geology , 11th. Edition, Prentice Hall, Boston 2012, ISBN 978-0321714725 , p. 57.
- ↑ Sizing up the Landslide at Bingham Canyon Mine . In: Earth Observatory . NASA.
- ↑ Massive landslide stops production at Bingham Canyon Mine . In: Deseret News , April 11, 2013.
- ^ Bingham slide could cut output by 110,000 ST . In: Mining Engineering , April 17, 2013.
- ↑ http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865586245/Movement-at-Bingham-Canyon-Mine-stops-operation-evacuates-100-employees.html?pg=all
- ↑ a b Bingham Canyon . Global InfoMine. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
- ↑ Steve Voynick: Bingham Canyon Copper: Finding Chalcopyrite at "The Richest Hole on Earth" . Archived from the original on June 30, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
- ↑ National Energy Foundation's Out of The Rock (PDF (2.1MB)) Rio Tinto. Retrieved May 6, 2010.
- ↑ a b Kennecott Utah Copper's Bingham Canyon Mine . Utah.com. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
- ^ "Bingham Canyon extension could extend life of mine to mid-2030s by moving south wall." Mining Engineering , October 2010, p. 10.
- ^ RL Bon, KA Krahulec: Utah, Mining Engineering May 2006, p. 117.
- ^ RL Bon, KA Krahulec: Utah, Mining Engineering May 2007, p. 120.
- ↑ Bingham Mining crushing and conveying the ore ( s ). Mining World Company, January 1, 1911.
- ^ Fred G. Bell and Laurance J. Donnelly .: Mining and its Impact on the Environment. . CRC Press, 2006.
- ^ Kennecott Utah Copper's South End Removed from the National Priorities List . Kennecott. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ Kennecott South Zone / Bingham . EPA. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
- ^ Kaitlin Butler: When the copper is gone, our children will get the pit . In: The Salt Lake Tribune , April 11, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
- ↑ EPA withdraws proposal to list Kennecott South Zone as Superfund site . In: Region 8 superfund . EPA. September 3, 2008. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
- ↑ EPA Superfund Program: Kennecott South Zone, Copperton, UT EPA, April 26, 2016
- ^ Leonard J. Arrington and Gary B. Hansen: The richest hole on earth: a history of the Bingham copper mine. . In: Utah State Univ Pr . 11, No. 1, 1963.
- ↑ United States Investor . In: Volume 17, Part 2 .
- ^ A b Deanna J. Richards: The Industrial Green Game: Implications for Environmental Design and Management . National Academies Press, 1997.
- ↑ George Miller and Scott Spoolman: Living in the environment: principles, connections, and solutions. . Cengage Learning, 2011.
- ↑ Miglietta v. Kennecott Copper Corporation. . In: Appellate Division of Supreme Court of the State of New York. . 25 AD2d 57, 266 NYS2d 936, 1966. Retrieved June 10, 2014.
- ↑ Robert Frosch & Gallopoulos, N: ecology Towards an industrial. The treatment and handling of wastes . Chapman & Hall., 1992, pp. 269-292.
- ^ Robert Eppinger: Environmental Geochemical studies of selected Mineral Deposits . In: US Geological survey professional paper. . 2000.
- ↑ Kennecott Copper Mine . he Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance at Mesothelioma.com. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ↑ a b EPA Superfund Record of Decision . EPA. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ Kennecott Utah Copper Company: Natural Resource Damage Claim and Settlement . Southern Utah University. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ A b Problems with Bingham Canyon Mine . EARTHWORKS. Archived from the original on September 26, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ A b Special Report: How Kennecott concealed warnings of a possible disaster from the people of Magna , Salt Lake Tribune. March 24, 2008. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ Victor E. Archer: Air pollution and fatal lung disease in three Utah counties. . In: Archives of Environmental Health . 45, No. 6, 1990, pp. 325-334. doi : 10.1080 / 00039896.1990.10118751 .
- ↑ a b THE TRACK RECORD OF WATER QUALITY IMPACTS RESULTING FROM PIPELINE SPILLS, TAILINGS FAILURES AND WATER COLLECTION AND TREATMENT FAILURES . EARTHWORKS. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ↑ Kennecott eyes land in canyon , Deseret News. September 19, 2008. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
- ^ Scoping Summary Report: Kennecott Utah Copper LLC Tailings Expansion Project . August 2011. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
Further literature
- Charles Caldwell Hawley (Sep. 15, 2014): A Kennecott Story: Three Mines, Four Men, and One Hundred Years, 1887-1997. University of Utah Press, ISBN 1607813696 , 336 pages
Web links
- Kennecott's Home Page
- Kennecott Copper Mine. Utah Teacher Guide
- John Hollenhorst Kennecott Begins Major Expansion Project , Nov 17, 2005, ksl.com
- To Move A Mountain: A History of Mining and Railroads in Bingham Canyon
- Photo gallery
- Visiting the mine utahoutdooractivities.com
- Panoramic View of the Bingham Canyon Mine 3d-exposure.com
- Photos of the 2013 landslide ksl.com