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BHP innovates with Microsoft for copper growth
A collaboration between BHP and Microsoft is now accelerating discovery of advanced copper leaching solutions, to unlock value.
www.bhp.com
BHP and Microsoft are collaborating to accelerate the discovery of advanced copper leaching solutions by replacing manual laboratory processes with computational testing. The project utilizes high-performance computing to screen molecular compounds capable of extracting copper more efficiently from existing ore bodies.
Context of the Cooperation
Global copper production requirements have expanded due to population growth, the energy transition, digitalization, and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Because new copper deposits are increasingly difficult and expensive to develop, improving mineral recovery rates from existing lower-grade ores has become a critical operational lever.
Traditionally, discovering effective copper leaching agents has relied on sequential, manual trial-and-error laboratory processes. With millions of potential molecular structures available, physical testing would require decades to complete. To overcome this complexity and speed up the R&D timeline without losing scientific rigour, cooperation was established between BHP, Microsoft, and Prescience Insilico. This partnership combines BHP’s large-scale mining operations and metallurgical data with Microsoft’s high-performance cloud computing platforms and Prescience Insilico's specialized digital frameworks.
Technical Solution and Responsibilities
The technological solution is centered on Microsoft Discovery, a platform engineered to accelerate scientific research and development through cloud-based high-performance computing (HPC) and specialized AI agents. The computational workload is divided between the partners to achieve a scalable, repeatable screening workflow:
- Microsoft and Prescience Insilico provide the underlying advanced computing architecture, AI models, and quantum chemistry calculation engines.
- BHP configures and grounds these digital models with physical data representing the exact chemical and mineral conditions of the ore at its global operations.
The integrated system functions by running tens of thousands of automated quantum chemistry calculations and molecular simulations. This automated process screens over half a million target molecules, evaluating performance parameters such as extraction efficiency, operational constraints, toxicity levels, and environmental impact. The system filters these infinite possibilities down to a finite number of high-probability candidates.
Deployment or Implementation
The implementation strategy bridges digital simulation with physical laboratory validation. In the initial phase, the team successfully screened more than 500,000 molecules using the Microsoft Discovery platform.
The project has transitioned to its next phase, where the narrow selection of high-performing molecular candidates identified by the AI system is being extracted from the digital environment and transferred to scientists for physical testing in Australian laboratories. These field-derived lab tests validate the simulated performance parameters against the real-world constraints of BHP’s ore bodies before future scaling and industrial deployment across its global copper operations.
Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.
Deployment or Implementation
The implementation strategy bridges digital simulation with physical laboratory validation. In the initial phase, the team successfully screened more than 500,000 molecules using the Microsoft Discovery platform.
The project has transitioned to its next phase, where the narrow selection of high-performing molecular candidates identified by the AI system is being extracted from the digital environment and transferred to scientists for physical testing in Australian laboratories. These field-derived lab tests validate the simulated performance parameters against the real-world constraints of BHP’s ore bodies before future scaling and industrial deployment across its global copper operations.
Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.
