Early in the Industrial Revolution, Swansea was known as 'Copperopolis'. Much of the smelting of the world's copper took place around this South Wales city. That activity left a legacy of contaminated soil and sand. Massive pollution also occurs in parts of Africa and South America, where copper ore was mined. Industry is now trying to electrify things faster, as we try to move to net zero. Availability of copper might be a limiting factor. The Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials is based at Imperial College, London. In partnership with a number of other bodies, it's exploring new ways of extracting copper, without further damaging the environment. One approach taps liquid copper-rich brines (the ores are ancient solid versions of these). The liquid brines are created by volcanic systems . Their geothermal energy can be used to extract the copper, as well as supplying energy to nearby populations. Potential sites, where this method could be used, have been identified in New Zealand and Japan. A second method employs genetic modification (GM) to develop plant-bacterial systems, with the ability to extract copper from contaminated waste left after mining for copper ores. Copper can be obtained, whilst simultaneously decontaminating sites (https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/mar/02/copper-scientists-london-energy-electrical). Perhaps the latter GM products could also be grown on Swansea's piles of contaminated spoil heaps? Grasses were developed to cover them but removing the metal was never considered an option.
No comments:
Post a Comment