What is Copper Used For?

1. Building construction

The top use of copper is the construction sector. Nearly half of all copper supply makes its way into buildings, from homes to businesses. In fact, one home alone can contain on average 439 pounds of copper. Copper’s malleability makes it easy to solder, and yet it’s strong enough to create the bonds and junctions needed in electrical wiring and plumbing.

Copper tubing has a number of applications and can be found in water pipes, refrigeration lines, heat pumps and HVAC systems. And don’t forget the copper wiring for moving electricity throughout the house and linking to telecommunications and cable networks. Home appliances also contain copper tubing and electrical wires.

2. Electronics and electrification

Copper’s supreme electrical conductivity properties and abundance as a raw material make it the most efficient and cost-effective metal for electronics. The red metal is found in the form of electrical wiring and printed circuit boards in the vast majority of today’s consumer electronics — from cell phones, laptops and TVs to surveillance systems, power tools and robotic vacuum cleaners.

Copper is also necessary for the data centers and supercomputers behind generative AI platforms and cryptocurrency mining.

Additionally, battery energy storage systems, which allows electricity to be stored and used at a later time, is an up and coming sector with high copper demand. The energy storage market has been growing rapidly in recent years, nearly tripling between 2022 and 2023 alone. The two largest markets are currently China and the US.

3. Transportation and electric vehicles

The use of copper is also highly prevalent in the transportation sector, including in the fabrication of ships, railways, planes and automobiles.

Copper alloys are standard materials in shipbuilding, from bolts and rivets to propellers and condenser pipes. In the railway industry, the metal is used to manufacture many train parts, including motors, brakes and controls, and can also be found in electric and signal systems. Planes need copper for cooling, hydraulics and navigation, plus electrical systems. In the auto industry, copper is an essential component in brakes, bearings, connectors, motors, radiators and wiring. One conventional vehicle alone can contain as much as 50 pounds of copper.

The growing prevalence of electric vehicles (EVs) is another huge market for copper, as the technology relies heavily on the metal. In fact, each EV requires two to four times more copper than a conventional vehicle. EV charging stations also need large amounts of copper. As a result, analysts expect copper consumption from green energy sectors to grow five-fold by 2030 due to the rise of the EV market.

4. Industrial machinery and equipment

The industrial machinery and equipment used in many sectors, such as the petrochemical industry, is itself made with copper. This machinery and equipment includes copper pipe systems, electrical motors, evaporators, condensers, heat exchangers, valves and containers for holding corrosive mediums.

Corrosion-resistant copper alloys are critical materials in the fabrication of undersea installations, such as desalination machinery and offshore oil and gas drilling platforms.

As with the EV industry, copper’s cleantech metal status stems from its use as a raw material to manufacture windmill turbines and solar energy systems.

5. Medical sector

The medical field is another industry that relies on copper, in large part to copper’s antimicrobial properties. Research has shown that bacteria, viruses and yeasts cannot survive for long on a copper surface, as the metal interferes with the electrical charge found in microbial cell membranes. The US Environmental Protection Agency has said a copper surface can kill 99.9 percent of bacteria that lands on it within two hours.

To stop the spread of hospital-acquired infections, plastic and other metals are being replaced with copper or copper alloys on frequently touched surfaces, such as countertops, doorknobs, handrails, bedrails, call buttons, chairs and even pens. As per the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, replacing hospital surfaces with antimicrobial copper fixtures could reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections by at least 58 percent.

Additionally, copper is used in the surgical and medical devices in hospitals, such as surgical robots, MRI machines and medical implants.