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Running on Empty: Copper

thehonestsorcerer.substack.com

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Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Glyptodon wrote: post #21
quickthrowman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aluminum wiring in homes, for example, has a very bad reputation. It has an undeserved bad reputation now, but it deserved the bad rep back in the 60s and 70s. The problem wasn’t solely the aluminum conductors themselves, it was also the terminals on wiring devices. The material the terminals and screws were made out of worked fine with copper, but the thermal expansion profile did not work well with aluminum condu…

I live in a home built after 2000 that had aluminum wires run to its heat pump. A few years back coolant leak from the heat pump lead to huge electric usage before the aluminum wiring lit on fire and shorted itself out. Since repaired, but was told at the time original installer didn't correctly do the aluminum grease on the exposed wire parts. That said I think the wiring there is still thick aluminum. Not sure I re…

[deleted]

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#52

Post by guenthert »

Glyptodon wrote: post #21
quickthrowman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aluminum wiring in homes, for example, has a very bad reputation. It has an undeserved bad reputation now, but it deserved the bad rep back in the 60s and 70s. The problem wasn’t solely the aluminum conductors themselves, it was also the terminals on wiring devices. The material the terminals and screws were made out of worked fine with copper, but the thermal expansion profile did not work well with aluminum condu…

I live in a home built after 2000 that had aluminum wires run to its heat pump. A few years back coolant leak from the heat pump lead to huge electric usage before the aluminum wiring lit on fire and shorted itself out. Since repaired, but was told at the time original installer didn't correctly do the aluminum grease on the exposed wire parts. That said I think the wiring there is still thick aluminum. Not sure I re…

> Since repaired, but was told at the time original installer didn't correctly do the aluminum grease on the exposed wire parts.

I know nothing about grease, but it's pretty obvious that a fuse was missing. You might want to check that such of correct rating is in place now.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#53

Post by throwaway173738 »

bonesss wrote: post #48
crote wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, all that electricity, even if you generate it with nuclear reactors, have to be delivered via copper wires. This is indeed a massive red flag. You need conductors, but the material they are made of is pretty much irrelevant. These days you'd have to search quite a bit to find not-ancient copper conductors in the larger electric grid. Aluminium might have a slightly higher resistance, but when you can just u…

Another red flag vis-a-vie energy source is ignoring hydro electric. High energy consumers and areas with a constant surplus of hydro are a good match. One of the new mega dams on Central Asia was restarted and funded primarily by an aluminium conglomerate - cheap and stable pricing at industrial scales.

This is why one of the two major Aluminum smelters is located in Washington. The economics of using hydropower to run the smelter are really good.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#54

Post by ForHackernews »

Are there any copper-rich asteroids out there?

Googling: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003206332...

> Asteroids have since long been considered to host significant resources of siderophilic elements such as Fe, Ni, Co, Cu, that could be exploited in situ. However bulk rock mining would be largely impractical. In this paper, we report on abundance and mineral occurrences of copper in H chondrites, identify Cu carrier minerals and interpret their distribution in the context of processes that must have affected parent bodies. This leads us to suggestion that some parts of S-type asteroids contain Cu in a form and amount that would satisfy requirements of potentially economically and environmentally more efficient exploitation.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#55

Post by stego-tech »

Taking a different tack to much of the commenters:

We’re collectively sitting atop every piece of copper we’ve ever refined, they’re just sitting and rotting in landfills instead of mines.

If I were a gambling dinosaur, I’d wager that landfill mining in developed economies will be a decently-sized business in a few decades, as we seek to recapture minerals and materials we once felt were disposable - but whose easily-available raw amounts we’d gradually withered down via mining or extraction. Depending on how material science and metal valuation goes, it might become practical or necessary to extract those metals from water sources or industrial waste sites.

It ain’t pretty, but we were never going to be able to mine Earth indefinitely - and we’re already at a point where, as a planetary species, we need to be more organized and restrictive about the use of non-renewable resources for optimal outcomes and long device/product lifespans.

The era of disposability has passed, we just need more companies to swallow that bitter pill and start adapting.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#56

Post by speed_spread »

IAmBroom wrote: post #39
wat10000 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland has a massive amount of geothermal and hydroelectricity. A large portion of that electricity is exported in the form of aluminum.

What a fascinating sentence to read!

Aluminum can be thought of as "solid electricity". Base mineral is abundant but transfomation is energy-expensive.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#58

Post by XorNot »

api wrote: post #49
chemotaxis wrote: post #2

I think the author is speaking authoritatively about things they may be less familiar with, or where they really want to push a particular doomsday / degrowth agenda (the only prescription at the end the article is that we need to stop technological progress). This paragraph in particular caught my eye: > Bah! Who needs copper anyway, when we have so much aluminum?! > Have you thought about how aluminum is made? Well…

It’s an ideology that’s been consistently and often staggeringly wrong since it first became very popular in the 1970s. Historically it’s been popular on the left, while demographic doomer stuff is more popular on the right. These ideologies are normally used as “problemist” lead ins to the ideology the author is really pushing. For the left it’s usually Marxism or anarcho-primitivism of some kind. For the right it’s…

This hits the nail on the head exactly.

Re: Running on Empty: Copper

#59

Post by XorNot »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #35
parliament32 wrote: post #5

Something I could use some clarification on: > Even though the industry would be willing to pay top dollar for each pound of metal delivered, there is simply not much more to be found. Copper bearing formations are not popping up at random, and there is no point in drilling various spots on Earth prospecting for deposits, either. The major formations have already been discovered, and thus the ever increasing investme…

We ran out of cheap pure copper a long time ago. Now we're producing copper out of ores that contain a very small proportion of copper. If the price goes up we'll produce copper from ores that contain an even smaller fraction of copper. Copper is 60 ppm of the crust. As long as the price keeps going up, we'll never run out.

It's also an asymmetric process: getting setup for less pure ore is capital intensive, but once you are the available abundance of your new feedstock can push prices lower then they were before.
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