ARBOK-Copper-Waters: Recovering Up to 30% of the 2035 Copper Deficit from Mine Waters by Cold Vacuum Boiling

Copper supply faces a structural gap: by 2035 the world is expected to be short of about 25% of the copper it needs, ore grades have fallen by 40%, and scrap covers only 18% of consumption. At the same time every active copper mine passes millions of cubic metres of acidic, metal-bearing water through its circuits each year, and this water is treated as a liability. We describe ARBOK-Copper-Waters, an application of ARBOK Zero Water Discharge (ZWD) technology, a cold vacuum boiling process that operates at ambient temperature without membranes, filters, coagulants or chemicals. The process separates the water from the dissolved salts, returns up to 99.98% of the water at pH 6.9, and splits the salts by density into dry commercial fractions: copper concentrate, iron, zinc and aluminium salts, arsenic and lead as metals, and concentrated acid. Only an inert residue of calcite and sand remains. For a feed of 30–300 mg/L copper, the mine waters of half of the world's roughly 700 active copper mines can return between 0.23 and 2.3 million tonnes of copper a year, up to 30% of the projected deficit, without smelter effluent being counted. We estimate the global effect at up to USD 30 billion a year.