Rio Tinto plugs AWS into innovative copper process

Rio Tinto is harnessing data and analytics services from AWS to optimise a process it’s championing to extract copper from ore.

The miner said that AWS will also be the first customer of the copper produced with this process, utilising it in “components of its US data centres”.

The process, branded Nuton, uses micro-organisms to recover copper that is “too technically challenging or expensive to process in any other way,” the miner said.

Nuton is operational at an “industrial scale” at Gunnison Copper’s Johnson Camp mine in the United States.

In a statement, Rio Tinto said it had signed a two-year agreement with AWS to supply the copper and to consume AWS services to optimise the Nuton process and method.

The cloud services would” accelerate the optimisation” of Nuton technology at Johnson Camp.

“Nuton is also utilising AWS platforms to simulate … performance and feed advanced analytics into Nuton’s decision systems, allowing for optimised acid and water use while improving predictions for copper recovery,” Rio Tinto said.

Rio Tinto Copper chief executive Katie Jackson said that “industrial innovation and cloud technology can combine to deliver cleaner, lower-carbon materials at scale.”

“Nuton has already proven its ability to rapidly move from idea to industrial production, and AWS’s data and analytics expertise will help us to accelerate optimisation and verification across operations,” she said in a statement.

“Importantly, by bringing Nuton copper into AWS’ US data centre supply chain, we’re helping to strengthen domestic [US] resilience and secure the critical materials those facilities need, closer to where they’re used.”