火山卤水矿，真正的绿色来源

Science & technology

科技板块

Copper gushers

铜井

Brine mines

卤水矿

People may one day drill for copper as they now drill for oil

也许有一天，人们会像现在开采石油一样开采铜



Copper was the first metal worked by human beings. They hammered it into jewellery and ornaments as much as 11,000 years ago. Today, Homo sapiens uses more than 20m tonnes of the stuff a year, much of it in buildings and electrical infrastructure. More will be required in coming decades, to meet the need for widespread electrification brought about by the transition to less carbon-intensive economies. Copper is an essential part of batteries, motors and charging equipment. Solar and wind installations use more copper than their fossil-fuel counterparts, and electric vehicles contain four times more copper than do cars with combustion engines.

铜是人类最早加工的金属。早在11000年前，人们就把它锤成珠宝和装饰品。如今，智人每年使用超过2000万吨的稀土，其中大部分用于建筑和电力基础设施。未来几十年，为了满足向低碳密集型经济转型所带来的广泛电气化的需要，还需要更多的电力。铜是电池、电机和充电设备的重要组成部分。太阳能和风能装置要比化石燃料使用更多的铜，电动汽车含铜量是内燃机汽车的四倍。

This has spurred interest in new sources of the metal, most of which comes at the moment from rocks dug out of vast opencast mines that are then ground up and processed to release the copper they contain, typically about 1% of their mass.

这激发了人们对铜的新的来源的兴趣，目前大部分的铜来自于从大型露天矿山中挖掘出来的岩石，然后将其碾碎加工，释放出其中所含的铜，一般约为其质量的1%。

Metal-rich nodules scattered across various parts of the ocean floor are a possibility. But exploiting these brings technological and regulatory difficulties, and is in any case controversial because of the damage it would do to deep-ocean ecosystems. Jon Blundy of Oxford University, however, offers an alternative. This is to extract, from deep under Earth's surface, the mineral-rich brines from which ores of copper and other valuable metals are generated in the first place. As Dr Blundy points out, "pretty much all of the non-ferrous natural resources that we exploit come ultimately from ancient volcanoes."

有一种可能的来源是分布在海底各处的富含金属的结核。但是利用它们会带来技术和管理上的困难，而且无论如何都具有争议，因为会对深海生态系统造成破坏。然而，牛津大学的乔恩·布伦迪选提供了另一种选择：首先从地球表面深处提取富含矿物的卤水，从卤水中产生铜和其他有价值的金属。正如布伦迪博士指出的那样，“几乎所有人类开发的有色自然资源最终都来自古代火山。”

In particular, in 2015, he and his colleagues worked out the chemical details of how copper-sulphide ores form when sulphur-rich gases rise through the plumbing of active volcanoes and encounter metalrich brines trapped in rocks sitting just above pockets of magma. Modern mining operations dig up examples of these ores that formed millions or billions of years ago. Dr Blundy proposes instead to cut out the middleman and go straight to the deep copper-rich fluids themselves.

特别是在2015年，他和同事们研究出了当富硫气体通过活火山的管道上升，遇到困在岩浆口袋上方岩石中富含金属的卤水时铜硫化物矿石形成的化学细节。现代采矿作业挖掘出这些形成于数百万甚至数十亿年前的矿石。相反，布伦迪博士建议省去中间步骤，直接进入富含铜的深层液体。


As he writes in Open Science, he suspects these are found beneath every active and dormant volcano, though the concentration of copper in the brine concerned will vary from place to place. His evidence comes from electromagnetic surveys carried out on some 40 volcanoes, including Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount St Helens in America and others in Bolivia, New Zealand, the Philippines and elsewhere. These surveys consistently pick up highly conductive zones 2km or more beneath the surface, for which the simplest explanation is the presence of super-salty metalrich brines. This conjecture is reinforced by analysis of rock samples recovered from such depths under a number of volcanoes. These do indeed contain brines with varying concentrations of copper, as well as other valuable metals including lithium, ZINC, gold and silver.

正如他在《开放科学》中所写的那样，他怀疑在每座活火山和休眠火山下都能找到铜，只不过有关卤水中的铜浓度因地而异。他的证据来自于对约40座火山进行的电磁调查，其中包括日本的富士山、美国的圣海伦斯火山以及玻利维亚、新西兰、菲律宾等地的其他火山。这些探测始终能探测到地表以下2公里以上的高导电性区域，对此最简单的解释是存在超咸的富金属卤水。这一推测通过分析从许多火山下这样深度的岩石样本得到了证实，里面确实含有不同浓度的铜以及其他有价值的金属，包括锂、锌、金和银。

All this suggests that copper could be drilled for commercially in the same way that oil is—except that the boreholes involved would be considerably deeper. That would be difficult, but not out of the question. It would require equipment that could withstand temperatures greater than 400°C and contact with brines ten times saltier than seawater. But the prize would be worth it.

所有这些都表明铜可以像石油一样用于商业开采——除了钻孔要深得多之外。这很困难，但也不是不可能。它需要设备能够承受超过400°C的温度，并与比海水咸10倍的卤水接触。但这是值得的。它需要设备能够承受超过400°C的温度，并与比海水咸10倍的卤水接触。但这是值得的。

Individual volcanoes would, admittedly, yield only a fraction of the output of a big copper mine. Dr Blundy and his colleagues estimate, for example, that there might be as much as 1.4m tonnes of copper beneath New Zealand's White Island volcano, whereas the world's largest mines hold tens of millions of tonnes of it. But there are only a handful of such mines, most in mountain ranges near the Pacific coast of the Americas. By contrast, hundreds of volcanoes exist around the world, ready be tapped.

不可否认的是，单个火山的产量只是大型铜矿产量的一小部分。例如，布伦迪博士和他的同事们估计，在新西兰的怀特岛火山下可能蕴藏着多达140万吨的铜，而世界上最大的铜矿则蕴藏着数千万吨的铜。但是像这样的矿山只是少数，大多数都在美洲太平洋海岸附近的山脉当中。相比之下，世界上有数百座火山正等着开发。

The temperature at which the equipment used would have to operate, moreover, brings an opportunity. The heat involved might be employed to generate electricity—enough to power the drilling operation and perhaps even to yield a surplus. Sucking copper out of Earth's crust through 2km-long straws might thus be that rare thing in the mining industry, an actual environmental good.

此外，所使用的设备必须运行的温度也带来了机会。其中产生的热量可以用来发电——足够为钻井作业提供动力，甚至可能产生盈余。因此，用2公里长的吸管从地壳中吸铜可能是采矿业罕见的事情，但却是真正的环保产品。

来源：经济学人

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