Blair Benner with Copper-nickel ore at the Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory.
Blair Benner with Copper-nickel ore at the Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory.
Mining has long been an economic backbone for Minnesota, fluctuating through the decades with the value of ore. Today, there’s a new mining horizon waiting to be tapped—rich copper, nickel, palladium, platinum, cobalt and gold possibilities from the Duluth Complex along the northeastern corner of the state.
NRRI—a committed research partner for Minnesota’s taconite industries—is now poising itself to carry on the same kind of bench-to-pilot scale research for copper-nickel processing by bolstering its hydrometallurgical laboratory capabilities.
NRRI’s non-ferrous expertise is already in demand. Teck Cominco, a $6.9 billion diversified mining company, asked: Could the Coleraine crew process 1,500 tons of copper-nickel ore from its Mesaba Deposit in just 12 weeks? Using a rod mill, ball mill, flotation cells and disk filter equipment from pilot scale taconite processing—and hiring 16 additional technicians to work around the clock—the Coleraine lab answered “yes.”
Fifteen hundred tons of mined rock were crushed, classified and concentrated to produce a 20 percent copper flotation concentrate which was sent to Teck Cominco’s hydrometallurgical lab in Vancouver, Canada.
“We’re here. Their deposit is here. It saves them a lot in efficiencies to have the copper separated from the tailings here instead of shipping it all north,” said Dave Hendrickson, Coleraine Lab director. “And we got the copper recovery they needed.”
As NRRI develops its new hydrometallurgy lab capabilities, Hendrickson envisions boosting the efficiencies of non-ferrous mining in much the same way NRRI has improved the taconite pellet processes over the decades.
“Copper-nickel processing is well researched, but you can always make the process better,” said Hendrickson.
Duluth Metals and Franconia Minerals are also talking to Hendrickson about future non-ferrous minerals research projects. And once PolyMet’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is granted, their NorthMet mining venture in northeastern Minnesota will begin.
Minnesota has one of the largest copper-nickel deposit in North America, along with other minerals needed by industrialized countries. The diversity of minerals in this area makes it even more economically feasible to mine because the value of each metal product is high.
“It’s long been known that Minnesota has rich non-ferrous deposits,” said Hendrickson. “One of NRRI’s earliest goals has been to define the economically viable minerals in Minnesota, so that exploration companies would be motivated to refine their technologies to extract them. We’re at that point in history now.”