Stuart, Australia
100 Hunter St
N/A
+61 747818211
This is a private employer, employing mostly locals.
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The copper refinery is a giant electrolytic cell, that is - it pushes something like 26000 amps into a vast football field sized area of large tubs of acid. Copper ingots from mount isa and elsewhere (?) are lowered down via a crane into large tubs of special fluid with stainless steel sheets, electricity is applied to ingot and sheet and copper from the ingot transfers and is grown on the stainless steel sheet. the slightly impure copper ingot is lowered down into a bath of battery acid - this will be the "anode". the stainless steel sheet is where the pure copper sheet will be grown, this is lowered down next to the copper anode ingot. the pure copper sheet is grown on the "cathode". remember - the cathode is where the electron flow actually goes to, you want a negative plate to draw positive copper ions to the stainless steel plate. once the stainless steel sheet has captured enough copper its raised (by a huge crane that raises and lowers all the ingots and sheets) from the battery acid bath. The copper split from the stainless sheet is itself a thin copper sheet, if you look out for the trucks heading to the port you'll see these thin copper sheets stacked up in piles on pallets. The electrorefining process at townsville only makes the copper a tiny percent purer than the original ingot , amazing to think so much energy is spent doing this BUT without it being that tiny fraction better, it's useless. the copper ingot is also removed when it becomes too thin and remelted into another ingot in a mesmerising process where glowing liquid copper pours like water into a huge rotating ingot mold. It was mooted the refinery would close in 2017 but plans must have changed.
Great facility
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