Nuton’s water goals — improving water sustainability in our operations

“One of Nuton’s goals is to offer a processing technology that not only minimizes water requirements, but ultimately aspires to be water positive, by restoring more water than we consume through our process,” said Yusuf Jameel, PhD, Nuton’s principal sustainability advisor.

Water is one of the five pillars of Nuton’s Positive Impact ambition, and one that could be a “game-changer” for the copper industry, where mines tend to be located in water-stressed areas. 

Conventional copper processing technologies require substantial amounts of water, with estimates pegging copper water intensity at around 150m³ (~40,000 gallons) of water per tonne of copper produced (from mine to metal). As Nuton is a copper leaching technology, we have an intrinsic advantage of requiring less water than a concentrator – about a third of it. Nuton as a venture wants to take that advantage to the next level through chasing efficiencies in design, reducing evaporation, reusing wastewater in our process and other opportunities.

Towards water positivity — our North Star

Minimizing the water intensity of Nuton’s process design is an important part of the journey. But the team keeps a focus on its North Star of becoming Water Positive. The team defines being Water Positive as a situation in which we “replenish more water, at least of the same quality, than the water consumed during Nuton’s process.” This is a challenging long-term goal, but the team believes it is one that could strengthen the value proposition of Nuton and the social license of the mining industry.

Charting a water positive path — one step at a time

Every drop of water — even evaporates — matters in Nuton’s process. The current process design aims to minimize water evaporation from the heap through a thermofilm, which acts as a covering blanket and traps moist. By reducing leach pad evaporation, Nuton aims to conserve significant amounts of water, especially important in arid environments like Arizona and Nevada, where some of Nuton’s partners are located. The deployment of Nuton technologies at the Johnson Camp Mine in Arizona, currently under construction, is a prime opportunity to test these and other technical solutions to reduce water intensity and pursue Nuton’s ambition to become water positive. 

Nuton’s commitment to sustainability

The Positive Impact Ambition is a core theme in Nuton’s dedication to sustainable mining, with water conservation being a crucial component of that mission. Read about our additional Impact Pillars: Energy, Land, Society and Materials.