Potential environmental pollution from copper metallurgy and methods of ...
Copper occurs in nature in the form of sulphide and oxide ores, salt minerals and as native copper. It is the second most used nonferrous metal in industry (Boulamanti and Moya, 2016).According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the 2019 global annual copper extraction was about 20 million tons (Fig. 1).The highest annual mining capacity was recorded in Chile ( million tonnes ...