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Copper Recovery and Reduction of Environmental Loading from Mine Tailings by High-Pressure Leaching and SX-EW Process
- Source :
- Metals, Volume 11, Issue 9, Metals, Vol 11, Iss 1335, p 1335 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The flotation tailings obtained from Bor Copper Mine contain pyrite (FeS2) and chalcopyrite (CuFeS2), these sulfide minerals are known to promote acid mine drainage (AMD) which poses a serious threat to the environment and human health. This study focuses on the treatment of mine tailings to convert the AMD supporting minerals to more stable forms, while simultaneously valorizing the mine tailings. A combination of hydrometallurgical processes of high-pressure oxidative leaching (HPOL), solvent extraction (SX), and electrowinning (EW) were utilized to recover copper from mine tailings which contain about 0.3% Cu content. The HPOL process yielded a high copper leaching rate of 94.4% when water was used as a leaching medium. The copper leaching kinetics were promoted by the generation of sulfuric acid due to pyrite oxidation. It was also confirmed that a low iron concentration (1.4 g/L) and a high copper concentration (44.8 g/L) obtained in the stripped solution resulted in an improved copper electrodeposition current efficiency during copper electrowinning. Moreover, pyrite, which is primarily in the mine tailings, was converted into hematite after HPOL. A stability evaluation of the solid residue confirmed almost no elution of metal ions, confirming the reduced environmental loading of mine tailings through re-processing.
- Subjects :
- Mining engineering. Metallurgy
Chemistry
Chalcopyrite
Metallurgy
Metals and Alloys
TN1-997
chemistry.chemical_element
copper recovery
Sulfuric acid
engineering.material
Acid mine drainage
tailings valorization
high-pressure leaching
Tailings
Copper
chemistry.chemical_compound
visual_art
engineering
visual_art.visual_art_medium
General Materials Science
Leaching (metallurgy)
Pyrite
Electrowinning
acid mine drainage
metal elution
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20754701
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Metals
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....625b9cc0b59146ffa6e3f25bf48f7488
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/met11091335