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Massive Landslide In Kennecott Copper Bingham Canyon Mine, Oquirrh Mountains, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
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Bingham Canyon is not presently a source of notable mineral specimens. The Bingham Stock is a porphyry deposit, meaning that copper minerals—primarily chalcopyrite—are present in very low grades and disseminated throughout the granite-like host rock as tiny grains, seams and fracture coatings.
Recovery process
The extracted ore is run through a concentrator, where huge grinding mills reduce it to the consistency of face powder. Flotation then separates the gangue from the metalliferous particles, which float off as a 28-percent concentrate of copper along with lesser amounts of silver, gold, lead, molybdenum, platinum and palladium. A selective flotation step separates the molybdenite (molybdenum disulfide) from the chalcopyrite.
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