Inside America's Super Smelter

I have a go at industrial copper smelting and meet some incredible engineers! This process is far more complex - and significantly more ancient - than I ever imagined. Huge thanks to the teams at Rio Tinto, the Copperton Concentrator, and Kennecott Copper Smelter for showing me around their facilities and making this video possible. ---------- II ---------- Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:39 An accidental history of copper 2:43 Mining 3:01 Inside the concentrator 5:18 The super smelter 7:45 Electrolysis 8:46 Outro ---------- II ---------- This video was brought to you by an unhealthy amount of coffee and our awesome Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/atomicfrontier. ---------- II ---------- Hi, I'm James. I explore the world looking for interesting engineering stories which explore complex issues in interesting ways. I hold a First-Class Honors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Western Australia and am currently studying a Masters of Space Systems Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My website is https://www.atomicfrontieronline.com, I occasionally tweet from https://twitter.com/AtomicFrontiers, and you can join the Atomic Frontier Discord server to talk about cool engineering stuff at https://discord.gg/4QZc3jYdTR. You can help support my work and see some cool behind-the-scenes content at https://www.patreon.com/atomicfrontier.