On Saturday afternoon, we went with our friends Rachel and Bill, south of Tucson to the ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center and took a mine tour. We arrived just in time for the 2:00 tour, and were bussed out to a viewpoint, to look down into the large open-pit copper Mission Mine, with all its normal activity of trucks and shovels hard at work. The Mission Mine is a quarter-mile deep, two miles from north to south, and a mile and three quarters from east to west. About six times the amount of earth moved to dig the Panama Canal has been mined at Mission Mine over the years.
Our next tour stop was at the processing plant, where trucks dump the rock, it is taken by conveyor belt into crusher after crusher, then sprayed with pine oil and water, and put into a large turning vat to separate the copper from everything else. The copper powder is dried and sent to Hayden smelter for refining and made into copper plate. It was all a very interesting process to watch.
The history of ASARCO and the purchase by Grupo Mexico can be found Here.
Our next tour stop was at the processing plant, where trucks dump the rock, it is taken by conveyor belt into crusher after crusher, then sprayed with pine oil and water, and put into a large turning vat to separate the copper from everything else. The copper powder is dried and sent to Hayden smelter for refining and made into copper plate. It was all a very interesting process to watch.
The history of ASARCO and the purchase by Grupo Mexico can be found Here.
