Why Are We Sending Critical Metals to the Dump? | Jeff More | TED

So this is the truth about mining.

It's an absolutely essential industry.

In fact, we've even named historical ages

after the metals that are produced by mining.

So, for example, take the Bronze Age.

Now bronze is actually 90 percent copper,

so I think maybe some unfair branding.

It should have been the Copper Age.

But the only thing that happened before the Bronze Age was the Stone Age,

when basically, the level of our material science

consisted of looking for a nice rock to pick up and smash something with.

So the first metal

that humankind figured out how to transform into something useful

was copper.

As we advanced technologically,

copper became known as the industrial metal.

It typically works behind the scenes, but it is critical.

Just as some examples,

without copper, we’d have no lights in this auditorium.

Smartphones would not exist.

And that machine that your favorite barista uses

to make your favorite cup of coffee

would not be possible.

I know, that last one was really scary.

I'm sorry if I took it too far.

Here's actually the real important part.

Here are other things that are not possible without copper:

electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar power.

In fact, these critical technologies use a lot more copper and other metals

than the traditional non-sustainable technologies

that they're replacing.

This means that demand is growing dramatically,

to the point that miners are not sure

how they're actually going to meet that demand.

Today, globally, we produce 22 million tons of copper per year.

If forecasters are correct, by 2050,

there’ll be a supply shortage of 19 million tons,

almost equal to today's total production.

If we look out just six years, to 2030,

that shortage is predicted to be four million tons.

Now to put that into perspective, today,

there's about 250 operating copper mines in the world.

That would require 50 new mines to be built in the next six years.

Even if we could find that many new potential mines,

a mine typically takes about 15 years to develop into production,

so filling the gap with new mines is literally impossible.

We need other solutions, and we need them now.

So here's another truth about mining:

it's traditionally very wasteful.

This is a photo of a feature that exists at every mine --

it's the mine's waste dump.

This particular mine is a mine called Chuquicamata.

It's in northern Chile,

in a region that I spent a lot of time in,

that produces about a third of the world's copper.

The problem that we have here is that when they create that giant hole,

all that material gets dug up,

over half of it ends up here, in the waste dump.

This is a photo of another waste dump.

This one is of a mine in Canada, where we started.

And this gives you a bit of sense of scale.

In the bottom right-hand corner,

you see a tiny truck there, driving across.

in real life, that's actually a massive piece of equipment

that would dwarf your average pickup truck.

And this is where the problem is.

In all that rock piled up,

there's a lot of good copper that was thrown away in error and wasted.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to meet that demand

by simply wasting less of what we're already mining?

Well, there is. And let me explain.

Miners, of course, want to find and process as much copper as possible,

but they lack data.

Traditionally, there's been no way to actually see inside the rock

as you're digging it out of the ground.

This is a picture of the first decision step in the mining process.

It also gives you a sense of the scale of the mine.

If you look, you can see a little orange dot.

That's not a hobbit from "Lord of the Rings,"

that's actually a full-size human.

That massive shovel digs out the rock after its been blasted.

And here is where the most important decision in the entire mining process

has to be made.

Does that mined rock get put on a truck,

to be processed and turned into copper that the world needs?

Or does it go on a truck to be hauled to the waste dump,

never to be seen again?

And this is where new technology comes in.

It's hard to see, but if you look at the top of the bucket,

you'll see three boxes.

That's part of a system called ShovelSense,

that essentially turns this dumb loading instrument

into a smart measurement device.

By taking delicate equipment that literally sees inside the rock

as it tumbles into the bucket,

and combining that with AI,

we can create data that's never been available before

and allow the miner to make better decisions.

Now this wasn’t easy.

This had never been done before.

I think, frankly, nobody was crazy enough to try it,

so there was no spec that we had.

So we went with the toughest spec, which is military spec, for shock --

that's 50 G.

And our engineering team determined that our hardware would last eight years,

which sounded pretty reasonable.

Our first installation lasted ...

eight minutes.

Everything broke.

Everything broke.

Turns out it's not 50 G, it's actually 400 G, oops.

But in the last five years,

we've figured out how to make this not break.

And we're growing rapidly in the market.

By applying this technology,

we're increasing copper production at operating mines

by between five and 30 percent.

That's massive.

And this is the future of mining,

because it also means that these mines are using less electricity and less water.

And it's not just copper.

It also works with other metals, like nickel, iron, zinc, even cobalt,

all metals that we need for the clean energy transition.

At MineSense though we did start with copper.

We’re currently operating at 15 mines in South and North America,

and we have already increased copper production

by the equivalent of one whole new mine.

But we did that in two years,

not the 15 years it would take to have built that new mine.

For every ShovelSense that we install,

we produce enough incremental copper to build 15,000 Tesla Model 3s.

And we are expanding globally, and we're growing rapidly.

We believe that we'll be able to produce

two million tons of extra copper by 2030,

or, in other words, fill half of that supply shortage.

And it all comes down to not wasting what is already there.

Thank you, and if you happen to run into a miner,

please give them a big hug.

(Laughter)

(Applause)