https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2969-0661
Figures & data
Box 1. Geochemically scarce elements, other than Cu, that may have a substantial presence in copper ores (Ayres, Ayres and Rade Citation2002; Sracek et al. Citation2010; Mudd, Weng and Jowitt Citation2013a,b; Izatt et al. Citation2014; Chmielewski, Wawzczak and Brykala Citation2016; Weidenbach, Dunn and Tao Citation2016; González et al. Citation2017; Safarzadeh et al. Citation2018; Crespo et al. Citation2018; Makuei and Senanayake Citation2018; Mikoda et al. Citation2019a; Araya et al. Citation2021).
Box 2. Geochemically scarce elements, other than Cu, associated with electric and electronic equipment and electronic components of passenger cars (Andersson, Söderman and Sandén Citation2019; Buechler et al. Citation2020; Cesaro et al. Citation2018; Widmer et al. Citation2015).
Box 3. Subjects requiring major research and development efforts to narrow gaps in present knowledge.
Table 1. Geochemically scarce functional elements that may become associated with copper by alloying, coating and joining. (Samuels and Méranger Citation1984; Marshakov Citation2005; Karpagavalli and Balasubramaniam Citation2007; Chen and Bull Citation2008; Sarver and Edwards Citation2011; Jolly Citation2013; Ruzic et al. Citation2013; Garza-Montes-de-Oca et al. Citation2014; Imamura et al. Citation2015; Kanlayasiri and Ariga Citation2015; Laws et al. Citation2015; Young and Dunand Citation2015; Forsén, Aromaa and Lindström Citation2017; Guarino et al. Citation2017; Noor, Zuhallawati and Radzali Citation2016; Lee Citation2018; Nagel Citation2018; Ulman et al. Citation2018).
Figure 1. (a) Main steps in pyrometallurgical primary production of copper (cathodes). (b) Main steps in hydrometallurgical primary production of copper (cathodes).
Table 2. Estimated percentage of smelter input partitioning to matte for several geochemically scarce companion elements of copper (Moats, Alagha and Awuah-Offei Citation2021; Schlesinger et al. Citation2011).
Table 3. Reported (weight) percentages in anode slime for a variety of geochemically scarce companion elements (Hait, Jana and Sanyal Citation2009; Lu et al. Citation2015; Forsén, Aromaa and Lindström Citation2017; Jin, Hu and Hu Citation2018; Moats, Alagha and Awuah-Offei Citation2021).
Table 4. Estimates for several geochemically scarce companion elements as to the percentage of input with Cu concentrate partitioning to slags of primary copper pyrometallurgy (Ayres, Ayres and Rade Citation2002; Makuei and Senanayake Citation2018; Miganei et al. Citation2017; Moats, Alagha and Awuah-Offei Citation2021; Wang et al. Citation2017b).
Table 5. Reported concentrations of geochemically scarce companion elements in slags from primary copper smelters in Canada, Chile, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Germany, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Zambia (Mikula et al. Citation2021; Tian et al. Citation2021).
Table 6. Estimated partitioning of several geochemically scarce companion elements present in copper concentrates to dusts of primary copper pyrometallurgy (Ayres, Ayres and Rade Citation2002; Chen, Zhang and Jahanshahi Citation2013; González-Castanedo et al. Citation2014; Wang et al. Citation2017b; Avarmaa et al. Citation2019; Makuei and Senanayake Citation2018; Moats, Alagha and Awuah-Offei Citation2021).
Figure 2. Main steps in pyrometallurgical secondary production of copper (cathodes) from end-of-life products containing copper.
Table 7. Reported relatively rare elements produced by plants co-processing mined complex end-of-life products containing copper (references in text).