Codelco’s reported US$50 million investment in Robert Friedland’s I-Pulse supports the copper major’s belief in a technology “that will change the mining world”, according to chair Maximo Pacheco.
Pacheco, a Chilean economist and former energy minister of the South American country, said in a Bloomberg interview Chile had the world’s largest copper reserves and “we know that the world needs a lot of copper”.
“But we need to be competitive,” he said.
“We need to produce it with less energy. We need to cut our costs and make sure we can supply this market at the right cost.
“This will only be done with innovation and new technologies.”
Codelco joins BHP, Rio Tinto, Newmont, Teck Resources and Ivanhoe Mines as I-Pulse investors.
Mining comminution – crushing and grinding of rocks – uses 4-5% of the world’s energy. “It exceeds the amount of energy being used by all of the world’s aircraft flying around,” said I-Pulse co-founder Friedland.
“We’re compressing electrical energy and among other uses we’re using it to burst rock or tear it apart from the inside,” he said.
“For all of the history of humanity we’ve crushed rock from the outside, squeezing rock into little pieces. Now we’re pulling it apart with electro-magnetic pulses. So it’s a much more efficient way to get the metal out of the rock.”
I-Pulse was established in 2007 by Friedland and French electrical engineer Laurent Frescaline. It was formed to take military pulsed energy technology into civilian applications.
“We’re dumbing down [military] technology,” Friedland said. “They use terawatts; we’re just playing with gigawatts.
“We have been developing the technology for about 19 years with some assistance from the French government.
“Our technology can reduce the energy required to unlock critical minerals from rock by up to 80% and could render the ball and SAG [semi-autogenous grinding] mill circuits obsolete.”
I-Pulse’s portfolio includes its I-ROX rock-breaking development arm, G-Pulse drilling technology and I-Mine, combining I-ROX and G-Pulse to facilitate “continuous underground mining and processing, eliminating the need for chemical explosives”.
“It’s a significant investment for Codelco,” Pacheco said.
“This technology has a great impact on sustainability, not only in mines but also in exploration.”
