Salt Lake Tribune | 1915-11-20 | Page 18 | Cuts down Cost of Producing Copper

I GUIS DDI COST OF PRODUCING COPPER Anaconda Metallurgists Per. feet Process for Recovery of Red Metal. ' What is said to lie the greatest triumph tri-umph in the f-nnals of copper metallurgy ami uvat puis the Anaconda company in 1 , th front ranks of the low -cost producers 1 of copper has been won by the Anaconda metallurgists, says the Engineering and Mining Journal In an article descriptive of the remodeling o! the Anaconda -work?. The reconstruction work is ai- most riniehed and it is expected that it 1 : tvIII )h; completed by the end of the ( 1 present year. The writer says: t ! In September. 131o. about Si'00 tons ; of ore daily were treated by the new process. Applying the data derived from that month to the production J tiguies in U'13 and computing on the ' basis of Li cents a pound for cop-J cop-J per. It Is reckoned that the savins t . would have been about 57. 260. ".".. ' Putting the thin? in a different way the gain of valuable metals prevtoup-l prevtoup-l lv lost in tpilniKs find slat; would have been 5tt.v00.inH pounds oi copper. K nearly l.OOv.Ouu ounces of silver aJid i ' about dOuO ounces of gold. s The enormous saving is ben:?; ef- ' fecuvl at the cost of about S-VV" ; for the new plant. In other words, the outlay of that vast sum of money I ; will he repaid in about eight months. What has been accomplished I sounds almost fabulous. Formerly t the tailings wasted from the mill aa-I aa-I sp.yed about .62 per cent copper. Now ' they go only about ,1't per cent, and l ihere is a reasonable expectation thaL even that small figure will be lettered. The Anaconda ore fed Into i tha mill contains sixty pounds of ' copper per ton. whereof only one ( ! a. id one-third pounds now gos away Y ' with the tailings. The recovery iu t ' mi'iling. therefore. Is 97fi per cent. T' Not the least remarkaijle thing in f This great transformation was the l I skiii with which everything Viis done t ' without interfering with production, -t there having been no general s'uut-i s'uut-i dnwn of the plant, no diminution of the regular output. The alteration of :he concentrator was done section . by section, and so efficiently was tins nianaeed that the time of changing a c ' section from the oli style to tne new f ! was only twenty-six days. f The financial and scientific courage y of i'e Anaconda maji-agTr.eru is il- !ntrari iu the fact. that, a'ter It 1 ha J been pmnnsd to remodel the Vtis'v'e concentrator for leaching on a ruee sca'e. tha demonstrated su-( su-( yer- ry m' the flotation process Va ;ier; the abandonment of that plan, r ar.-i o-iiy t.-.e leaching unit then under is I i "'Tion was completed. e