Nowadays, high-end villa copper doors are widely used in high-end residences. But many people don’t know much about the production, nature and resources of copper.

Copper production

There are two types of metal copper production: fire method and wet method. Pyrometallurgical copper smelting uses copper concentrate as raw material to produce electrolytic copper through roasting, smelting, blowing, and refining. Copper hydrometallurgy uses a solvent to extract copper ore or concentrate, and then extract copper from the leachate. The main process includes leaching, purification, extraction and other processes. At present, the world's production of hydrometallurgical copper accounts for about 12% of the total. This method is mainly used to treat copper oxide ore.

The nature of copper

Copper is an excellent electrical conductor and heat conductor. Its electrical conductivity is 94% of silver and its thermal conductivity is 73.2% of silver. Copper does not oxidize in dry air, and forms a layer of patina on the surface in humid air containing carbon dioxide; it reacts very slowly with alkaline solutions, but easily forms complexes with ammonia. The standard electrode potential of copper is +0.337 volts. Copper cannot replace hydrogen in acid solutions, but it dissolves in oxidizing acids. The electrochemical equivalent of bivalent copper is 0.0003294 g/coulomb.

Copper resources

In nature, copper is mainly in the form of sulfides and similar compounds, copper oxides, natural copper, and copper sulfates, carbonates, silicates and other minerals of about 280 kinds. There are 16 main minerals: natural copper ; Copper sulfides: chalcopyrite, bornite, chalcocite, copper blue, kalsonite, tetrahedrite, tetrahedrite, sulphur arsenite; copper oxides: cuprite, black Copper ore; copper sulfates, carbonates and silicates: malachite, azurite, chrysocolla, cholelithiasis.

Copper is easily combined with zinc, lead, nickel, aluminum and titanium into alloys. Copper and its alloys are widely used in electrical appliances, machinery, vehicles, and civil appliances in the shipbuilding industry. It is an indispensable non-ferrous metal in modern industry, agriculture, national defense, and science and technology.