SandLix™, Anglo American’s novel heap leach course of, it says instantly addresses a number of the most urgent challenges going through the business with regards to future copper provide.
The miner states: “Two main traits are set to drive the demand for copper within the coming a long time: the pressing must decarbonise the worldwide financial system (the vitality transition), and the drive for improved residing requirements for a rising and urbanising inhabitants. At current, the copper business is experiencing the depletion of current orebodies and lots of the world’s remaining copper deposits are located in areas that make remedy tougher, with vital water shortage and pressures to scale back vitality consumption.”
SandLix™ has been particularly developed to economically deal with low-grade, complicated ores, whereas being far much less vitality and water-intensive than standard processes, similar to flotation. Anglo says that in 2025, the event of this progressive know-how – which has been ongoing since 2018 – has made vital progress in its journey in direction of commercialisation.
“By means of a methodical, risk-adjusted scale-up technique, SandLix™ has been confirmed to ship distinctive outcomes throughout various ore varieties, whereas sustaining efficiency because it scales from laboratory testing to pilot scale.”
The following step was to scale up the know-how for real-world testing. This concerned the event of a Containerised Heap Leach Reactor (CHLR) – 400 instances bigger than laboratory testing scale – to allow the testing of fifty t samples, validating chemistry and warmth switch at industrial elevate heights.
These pilot columns began in South Africa in 2024, testing materials from Anglo’s world operations, and also will be arrange in Chile to check quite a lot of ores and circumstances. “By mid-2025, the primary pilot column reached completion and demonstrated glorious outcomes that confirmed scalability of the know-how to industrial elevate heights.”
Within the third quarter of 2025, SandLix™ reached a big milestone in its improvement journey, with the testing of a 15,000 t heap prototype on the El Soldado copper mine in Chile coming to completion. “This marked a significant step in direction of commercial-scale manufacturing, efficiently demonstrating commercial-scale fluid and warmth dynamics with exact management, and confirming geotechnical design standards.”
The following stage, at present below improvement, is a commercial-scale system demonstration to verify course of integration and steady operation, Anglo says “transferring the business ever nearer to unlocking extra environment friendly, inexpensive and sustainable copper manufacturing.”
