Green Mining Of Copper & Gold & Lithium

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Many renewable technologies require expensive precious metals. But classical mining is quite rough on the environment. Using hot salty solutions near volcanoes should be cheaper and greener because of using geothermal energy.

Image by Steppinstars from Pixabay

While the world is slowly turning to renewable sources of energy it is proving to be hard. One of the biggest complications is that the development of the required technologies increases the demand for precious metals. Solar panels, wind turbines, systems for storing energy all need metals such as copper, gold, or lithium. And our current ways of mining aren’t exactly friendly towards the environment as it needs a lot of energy and creates a lot of waste and emissions. But there may be other possibilities.

Jon Blundy from Oxford University and his colleagues are proposing a fascinating method of mining precious metals from springs of hot salty water that can be found underneath volcanoes. On top of that, the mining would get a side bonus of geothermal energy. The team from Oxford focuses on a precious metal source we haven’t been using. But honestly, a large portion of places where we mine precious metals are actually the remains of ancient volcanic activity. So, Blundy and his coworkers decided to focus on places where volcanoes are still active.

This is because active volcanoes pump a large amount of precious metals into the atmosphere. But, a part of these metals doesn’t make it to the surface and into the atmosphere and stays caught in solutions that can be found in the hot minerals about 2 kilometers under the volcano. This green approach to mining precious metals could yield millions of tons of copper and interesting amounts of gold, zinc, silver, lithium, and other metals. On top of that, getting the minerals from the hot springs should be cheaper than regular mining. The green aspect of the mining activities would come from much less waste produced, less energy required, and the possibility of using geothermal energy usually easily available in places such as hot springs near volcanoes.

Blundy’s team has already verified that the hot springs that do have large amounts of precious metals do exist. They mined underneath volcanoes in Japan, Italy, Indonesia, and Mexico and used data from other geophysical researches. In the end, they concluded that the precious metals can be found underneath practically every active or even sleeping volcano.

Yet, we have to realize that this new green approach to mining precious metals won’t be easy. The salty solutions underneath volcanoes are quite corrosive and can reach temperatures of around 450° Celsius. And processing them will quire new technologies. On top of that, there is always the risk that mining near an active volcano could trigger a volcanic eruption. So, we need to mine only in safe locations but honestly, we don’t understand volcanoes that well.

The researchers estimate that the first mines underneath volcanoes could be created in 5 to 15 years and are now searching for viable locations where they could do some pilot tests. If the pilot projects show to be viable then expect us to see humanity mining volcanoes.

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