The remaining 80% of the world’s copper comes from copper sulfide ores, which don’t dissolve well in acid. To extract that copper, the industry uses a more energy- and water-intensive process that involves concentrating the metal in vats of chemicals before smelting it at high temperatures.
Ceibo is tweaking the lower-impact leaching process so that it works on copper sulfides. The company’s chemistry-based approach mimics the way naturally occurring microbial communities liberate copper from sulfide ores, but at an accelerated pace. By altering conditions within the rock pile, including pH and oxidation state, Ceibo’s tech makes it possible to recover more than 70% of the copper. Companies that are already mining copper oxides can plug the firm’s tech into their existing infrastructure without costly retrofits.
Ceibo is in the process of testing its technology in partnership with key players in the mining industry. The firm has also raised $36 million from clean-energy and mining financiers, part of a growing trend of investment in startups seeking to process copper sulfides with leaching. Among those startups, Ceibo stands out for being headquartered in Chile, the world’s largest copper producer. This could give the firm a home field advantage as it seeks to build partnerships with major industry players and rapidly scale its technology.
Key indicators
- Industry: Mining
- Founded: 2021
- Headquarters: Santiago, Chile
- Notable fact: Ceibo got its start offering dust suppression services to copper miners under a different name, Aguamarina. Dust pollution is a major challenge for the copper industry.
Potential for impact
While the cleantech sector’s appetite for copper is expected to surge, the mining sector isn’t keeping pace. With many of the best-quality ore deposits already exhausted, analysts predict a potential copper shortfall of more than 10 millions tons a year by 2040.
Liberating the potentially vast quantities of copper tied up in sulfide ores that aren’t economical to mine today may be key to closing the copper supply gap. Ceibo is aiming to produce a million tons of copper annually within the next 10 years, with further expansion in the future. At such scales, Ceibo’s relatively low-impact approach to copper processing could help clean up the industry.
Caveats
The idea of using acid to leach sulfide ores isn’t new; researchers have been trying to develop a scalable, cost-effective way to do so for decades. The problem is so well known that industry insiders sometimes refer to it as the Holy Grail of copper mining.
