BHP, SiTration Team Up on Arizona Copper Recovery Pilot

BHP and MIT spin-out SiTration are working together on a pilot program to extract copper from legacy mining wastewater in Arizona. The initiative is located at BHP's Copper Cities facility, which previously produced nearly 400,000 tons of copper between 1954 and 1975.

The process used by SiTration has shown promise in bench-scale testing, yielding London Metal Exchange Grade A copper without using chemicals or generating new waste. The pilot program will test continuous, autonomous copper recovery over a one-month period before moving on to commercial-scale production of up to two tons of copper cathodes.

The global demand for copper is expected to surge due to the rapid expansion of power grids and AI data centers. Industry projections indicate that annual global copper demand will rise from 34 million tons currently to 50 million tons by 2050.