Kennecott Corp. threw a party Thursday, and some 300 invited guests, including Gov. Mike Leavitt and Robert Wilson, chief executive officer of Kennecott's parent company, RTZ Corp., got a look at what $880 million will buy.
That was the price tag for the copper giant's new smelter and refinery in the foothills of the Oquirrh mountains west of Magna - a complex that Robert R. Dimock, president of Kennecott Utah Copper, termed "the most modern and environmentally efficient copper producer in the mining industry."Thursday's festivities began with a breakfast and briefing at Little America, followed by a bus ride for guests to tour the new facilities and then a lunch buffet back at the hotel.
Reporters got a sneak preview of the new plant on Wednesday, and it's safe to say most came away impressed that converting huge quantities of dirt into 3-foot-squares of pure copper can be done with less mess than most of us make fixing dinner.
That's the idea, of course. At the "new" Kennecott, cleanliness really is next to godliness. The new smelter is designed to capture 99.9 percent of the sulfur generated in the smelting process, and early tests indicate that target is being met, officials said.
It also captures waste heat as steam to co-generate some 85 percent of its electrical power.
Thursday's dedication ceremony was the culmination of a massive modernization project announced in 1992 that included upgrading and expanding the refinery, which is now highly automated with robotic systems moving throughout the plant with only their computer brains to tell them what to do.
Formerly, the smelter/refinery had to export 40 percent of its copper concentrate, said David George, director of smelting technology. But once the new facility is at full capacity, it will be able to process all of its concentrate at the complex.
Although the operative figure for the smelter/refinery upgrade is $880 million, that outlay is only part of the story. Since 1985, Kennecott has invested more than $1.5 billion to upgrade its Utah operations, including expansion of the tailings area. By the turn of the century, the company will have spent $2 billion in modernizing the entire process.
Dimock says it is money well spent.
"When the new smelter is at full capacity in the first quarter of 1996, we will be one of the lowest cost major copper producers in the world," he said. "Not only have we set a new standard for the copper industry, we have ensured the economic viability of Kennecott."
Officials said the new smelter uses a process called "flash smelting" in which the molten copper metal from the flash-smelting furnace is quenched in water and granulated instead of transferred by ladle and overhead crane. This allows the furnaces to operate at peak efficiency and eliminates the transfer of molten metal - a major source of emissions in the old smelter.
The second step in the process uses technology called "flash converting" which allows the smelter's primary pollution control device - the acid plant - to operate more efficiently and with lower emissions.