Due to the increase in electric and electronic equipment (EEEs), high-purity silver continues to be in high demand. For the past 4 years, silver demand has exceeded silver mining production, but the global supply has nearly met the demand each and every year – thanks to silver recovery and silver refining. Silver recycling will also be critical to meet future demand, especially as we see the general demand of metals increase across the globe, in relation with technological growth. High-purity silver can be produced from silver refining and silver recycling by utilizing a series methods and processes, such as silver electrowinning and electrorefining. I’d like to delve into how these processes are carried out, and the outlook for silver production.

Topics: metal recycling, electrowinning, emew, Refining, metal powders

Thanks for joining me today for this discussion on emew advanced liberators. Let's start by looking at a simplified copper refining process flow diagram. Copper Concentrate is fed to the smelting process where fire-refined copper is produced. Next onto anode casting, where 99% anode copper is formed followed by electrorefining of copper to produce LME grade copper cathode. But we aren’t done there, the refinery bleed is then sent to copper liberators to control the copper concentration and impurities in the process. It is at this step, where we will focus our time today.

Topics: electrowinning, mining, emew, Refining, Refinery Optimization

What pops into your mind when you see the word, "liberation"?

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The word liberation comes from the latin word, liberatus, which literally means "to set free" or "to deliver", and can easily apply to myriad of different topics from politics and religion to science and industry.

Particularly in the copper industry, the word liberation applies to the act of freeing copper specifically from refinery bleed electrolyte. The process that starts with mining and carries on through smelting and electrorefining is complex with many process operations.  Let's take a closer look at the story of 'liberating copper'.  

On average, mined ore contains about 1% copper and in order to recover this copper from the rock it requires several physical and chemical processing and refining steps in order to produce market ready copper metal.

Topics: copper, nickel, Refining, Refinery Optimization