Editing Copper extraction (section)

===Smelting===
[[File:World- Copper Production, 1946 - DPLA - 1e25affd63262ebf6f714b859fa37ae6.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|World copper production, 1946]]
Until the latter half of the 20th century, [[smelting]] sulfide ores was almost the sole means of producing copper metal from mined ores (''primary'' copper production). As of 2002, 80% of global primary copper production was from copper–iron–sulfur minerals, and the vast majority of these were treated by smelting.<ref name="Davenport">W G Davenport, M King, M Schlesinger and A K Biswas, ''Extractive Metallurgy of Copper, Fourth Edition'' (Elsevier Science Limited: Kidlington, Oxford, England, 2002).</ref>

Copper was initially recovered from sulfide ores by directly smelting the ore in a furnace.<ref>Robert Raymond, [[Out of the Fiery Furnace]], The MacMillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 1984.</ref> The smelters were initially located near the mines to minimize the cost of transport. This avoided the prohibitive costs of transporting the waste minerals and the sulfur and iron present in the copper-containing minerals. However, as the concentration of copper in the ore bodies decreased, the energy costs of smelting the whole ore also became prohibitive, and it became necessary to concentrate the ores first.{{citation needed|date=February 2025}}

Initial concentration techniques included hand-sorting<ref name="Gill32">C B Gill, ''Non-ferrous Extractive Metallurgy'' (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1980) p. 32</ref> and gravity concentration. These resulted in high losses of copper. Consequently, the development of the [[froth flotation]] process was a major step forward in mineral processing.<ref>Robert Raymond (1984) [[Out of the Fiery Furnace]], The MacMillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd, Melbourne, pp. 233–235, {{ISBN|0-271-00441-X}}.</ref> The modern froth flotation process was independently invented in the early 1900s in Australia by C.V Potter and around the same time by [[G. D. Delprat]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Historical Note |url=http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/guides/mine/historicalnote.htm |access-date=2007-12-30 |publisher=Minerals Separation Ltd}}</ref> It made the development of the giant [[Bingham Canyon mine]] in Utah possible.<ref>"BP Minerals completes US$400 million modernization at Bingham Canyon," ''Mining Engineering'', November 1988, 1017–1020.</ref>

In the twentieth century, most ores were concentrated before smelting. Smelting was initially undertaken using [[sinter plant]]s and [[Water jacket furnace (metallurgy)|blast furnaces]],<ref>S A Bradford (1989) "The historical development of copper smelting in British Columbia," in: ''All that Glitters: Readings in Historical Metallurgy'', Ed. Michael L. Wayman, The Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Montreal, pp. 162–165, {{ISBN|0-919086-24-1}}.</ref> or with roasters and [[reverberatory furnace]]s.<ref>E Kossatz and P J Mackey (1989) "The first copper smelter in Canada," in: ''All that Glitters: Readings in Historical Metallurgy'', Ed. Michael L. Wayman, The Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Montreal, pp. 160–161, {{ISBN|0-919086-24-1}}.</ref> Roasting and reverberatory furnace smelting dominated primary copper production until the 1960s.<ref name="Davenport"/>