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   / 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   / atomicfrontiers  , and you can join the Atomic Frontier Discord server to talk about cool engineering stuff at   / discord  . You can help support my work and see some cool behind-the-scenes content at   / atomicfrontier  .