Copper recycling and the environment

Recycling copper scrap makes economic sense, as the energy required to produce copper from scrap is only a quarter of that used to extract the metal from ore. This article describes the origins of the various scrap materials and the metallurgical processes involved in recycling.

The pollution generated by the various metallurgical plants and the methods implemented to reduce and avoid it will be analyzed in the second part of this article.

The complete study of the subject includes the articles :

• [M 2 240] Copper: resources, processes and products ;

• [M 2 241] Pyrometallurgy and electrorefining of copper ;

• [M 2 242] Copper hydrometallurgy (this article) ;

• [M2 243] Copper recycling and the environment ;

• [Doc. M 2 244] Copper metallurgy.