Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation

Since the original Utah Copper Company began mining the low-grade copper ore in Bingham Canyon, the mine has become a huge open-pit that has produced more copper than any mine in the world, is one of the engineering marvels of the world, and is more than ¾ of a mile deep and more than 2 ¾ miles wide at the top. And it is still growing. Known as “The Richest Hole on Earth” it has yielded more than 18.1 million tons of copper metal, plus significant by-products gold, silver and molybdenum. Ore from the Mine is transported by a five-mile conveyor to the Copperton Concentrator where the rock containing about 0.6 percent copper is crushed and ground to face powder consistency before passing through a chemical flotation process where 28-percent copper concentrate is separated from molybdenite concentrate, which is packaged and sold to steel producers.

Seventeen miles to the north, the state of the art Utah Copper Smelter processes the copper concentrate to produce 720-pound copper plates called anodes for use in the nearby Refinery. The copper is now 99.6 percent pure. In the Refinery, the anodes are alternated with thin stainless steel cathode blanks in horizontal tanks filled with liquid electrolyte into which an electric current creates the chemical electrolysis process. Electrolytic refining produces two, 280-pound copper cathodes from each anode during a 10-day period. Cathodes are 99.99 percent pure copper. Impurities and precious metals that settle in the bottom of the tanks, are collected and refined at the Precious Metals Plant.