Visiting The World’s Deepest Open Pit Mine - Kennecott Copper Mine

You couldn't live a day without this material and it's pure

copper

, but how the hell is it done right? We visit one of the largest mining operations in the

world

to find out and we will take you with us. Welcome to Bingham Canyon Mine. Owned and operated by mining giant Riotinto, they have

mine

d here for 120 years and have produced not only

copper

but also gold, silver, malum and tum. Today, many claim it is the largest excavation on Earth, covering 27,000 acres and reaching 8 feet wide and half a mile deep. It's time to head down the shaft and see the first part of the process behind me, it's where the entire mining operation begins, it's the drilling and blasting, so we have huge production drills drilling 10 inch holes immediately behind me, there are the Blasters that are filling. each of these holes 200 holes for this shot with these propellants, the green wire helps with the timing to fire the shot and then these trucks will fill those holes with the primary explosive which is the emulsion that they will explode this afternoon at around 400 p.m. and then once the explosion happens, they can start moving the material.

The second step is the loading process. They have 12 shovels here loading ore and waste material 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They load into Cat 794 and Kamasu 930 Hall trucks more than 300 tons of material per truck called to the waist stump or to one of the crushers that right there is a p& 2800 shovel is an absolute monster to pass to those who have copper ore that it was blown up a few days before thanks for having us now on this is my favorite machine to take such a cool ride yeah okay the trucks we have loaded with copper ore have traveled from the bottom of the pit to here which is the crusher which is capable of crushing more than 10,000 tons of copper. ore per hour, that truck just dumped over 300 tons of ore in there, now it's being crushed, crushed, crushed, spit out and bottomed onto the conveyor which then takes it to the concentrator for the next step of the process and now we're at the part middle of the process, the concentrator, this is where they take the ore, remove the valuable stuff and discard the dirt before sending the valuable stuff to the final process, the smelter, so we saw the crusher, the material, Dro through that crusher , measured it and placed it. below the conveyor 6 miles reaches here to this frame in To this large reserve of copper ore from here there are four feeders below that pile that pull that material at approximately 8,000 tons per hour to the next part of the concentration process from here the copper The ore goes through a conveyor belt, it's rocks like this in sunken mills inside those sunken mills.

The mills have 8 steel balls and at that point it is also mixed with water so those steel balls hit the rock as they are thrown into that giant drum which reduces it to a small size and then once it is small enough, it is discharged again into smaller ball mills. It's with that water with those steel balls pounded in there until it turns into fine beach sand that then comes out. the other end in the cyclone, okay, the next part of the process, so we grind everything down to a very, very fine sand, mix it with water and then introduce some chemicals.

Now everything is pumped here. The chemicals are key because it starts to bind to the copper, the molly, the gold, the silver, the valuable stuff and get it out of the rock, when everything is pumped into these tanks, it gets agitated, which creates a foam and the molly, copper, the good stuff floats to the surface in that The foam overflows and collects to start forming that concentrate, while the water and the rock and the rest of the stuff we don't want stays at the bottom and then settles. They can pump, so this is the first step to really separating the good stuff. things from The Ore to create the concentrate we are looking for before this fusion process before we go to the foundry we have to complete our transformation into a stormtrooper, so we have jumpsuits coveralls sleeves leather gloves boots full face respirator helmet earplugs the ears are dressed I came out more confident than ever and now, for the next step in the smelting process, it is worth noting that Riotinto is the only integrated copper mining operation in North America, meaning they extract and refine the copper 99.9%, all in the same place.

They simply take the wet concentrate, dry it and turn it all into liquid with gas furnaces, separate the two and then pour the liquid material into huge anodes that are about 98% copper plus all the other metals mixed in, we're in the T house . which is where they take the almost pure copper and turn it into very pure copper, so the anodes that we saw coming from the smelter come here and then they go down to each of these cells, so they will have 46 of these in the half. the anodes then it will be anode and then one of these blanks anode one of these blanks they pass an electrical current through the cell which then heats the copper and then the copper well, how do I explain this?

Excites copper and copper. Look at this just like steel and ooh, that's really cute and it floats through water and sticks to this and only copper sticks to this, the rest, lead, silver, gold, the other metals then They sink to the bottom and are taken to the precious. metal installation, so when it is removed about 14 days later, it is pure copper which is then taken to market before finishing. If you're wondering. I would like to be able to see the

mine

with my own eyes. I have good news for you. Riotinto operates a visitor center. Normally

open

from April to October, which offers a beautiful view of the well and finally, to conclude, thank you very much to Riiento for inviting us.

I loved this visit.