Southern Peru Copper

A drop box can be expensive to construct. One of the largest slurry drop boxes was buUt by Fluor Daniel for the Caujone mine owned by the Southern Peru Copper Corpora tion in Pem. It was designed to handle a tailing flow of 7.3 mVs (116,000 gpm). The drop was 10 m (32 ft) (Figures 6 24 and 6 30) deep and the slurry had to be redirected under an existing tmck road. The author was the hydraulic engineer on the project. 

Not every slurry pipeUne requires thickeners. Dredging pipelines and phosphate rock pumping are both trarrsport low-concentration slurries. These slurries are pumped over shorter distances and use pipes and pumps that are physically relocated from one point to another. Some pipelines operate totally as an open channel flow, such as the tailings pipeUne of Southern Peru Copper in Peru. 

Most operating plants that treat oxide copper and copper-cobalt ores are found in Central Africa and Southern Africa regions. A few operations exist in Chile, Brazil and Peru, where they treat mixed oxide sulphide ores or oxide copper gold ore. 

Currently in the United States, most of the lead produced comes from mines in Missouri, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana, primarily from lead-zinc and lead ores (361, 362). Worldwide, major lead deposits exist in association with zinc, silver, and/or copper (362). There are five major geological types of lead deposits volcanic-hosted massive sulfide deposits [Canada, Cyprus, Japan, Australia (Tasmania), Turkey] sediment-hosted deposits of sulfides interbedded with shales, and so on, formed in an anaerobic marine environment [Australia, Canada, Germany, United States (Alaska)] strata-bound carbonate deposits containing sulfide minerals [United States (Mississippi Valley), southern European Alps, Canada, Poland] sandstone-hosted deposits of finely crystalhne sulfides (Canada, France, Morocco, Sweden) and vein deposits of coarsely crystalline sulfide aggregates (western United States, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Peru) (364). The wide variety of compositions seen for lead minerals is illustrated by the representative lead minerals listed in Table XV (3,47). Below, we discuss the lead minerals that are most prevalent in nature in more detail. 

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