Texas Copper Smelter

Historic Project: Groundbreaking Work From Earlier in Fluor’s History

Client: Texas Copper Corporation

Location: Texas City, TX, U.S.

Map showing the location of Texas Copper Smelter

Executive Summary

Fluor was contracted by Texas Copper Corporation to provide engineering and procurement services for a grassroots copper smelting plant in Texas City. Using the parent company Mitsubishi's proprietary Continuous Copper Smelting and Converting Process, the facility would produce copper from copper concentrate.

Total copper production would equal 182,000 metric tons per year. The facility would produce 500,000 metric tons per year of sulfuric acid as a second major product.

Client's Challenge

Texas Copper Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Metals Corporation. The Texas grassroots smelter was the first application in the United States of the Mitsubishi Continuous Copper Smelting and Converting Process. This proprietary method was the world's first self-enclosed, oxygen-enriched, continuous smelting and converting system. The Texas City facility would be the third copper plant in the world using this environmentally safe process, along with plants located in Naoshima, Japan, and Ontario, Canada.

The 1,500-acre site is located along Galveston Bay and was landscaped with native trees and shrubs for environmental consideration. The primary source of ore was South America, and this ore would be be transported via barge to the new plant through a newly dredged channel connecting with the inter-coastal waterway.

Fluor's Solution

We engaged the talents of our Redwood City, California, and Houston, Texas home offices to execute the engineering and procurement scope of work. To extract the copper, the ore needed to be oxidized with oxygen-enriched air, yielding copper matte and sulfur dioxide. In the past, this process had been environmentally destructive, but the Mitsubishi process had virtually eliminated pollution issues.

Close to 99.9% of the sulfur dioxide was captured and chemically changed into sulfuric acid. The 500,000 metric tons of sulfuric acid was then sold for use in fertilizers and other chemical products.