New Era

Pressure Hydrometallurgy
1. Introduction

Fathi Habashi

Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and

Materials Engineering

Laval University, Quebec City, Canada

Fathi.Habashi@gmn.ulaval.ca

Bishop Franois de Laval

(1623-1708)

1663 Seminary
1852 University

Quebec City

Pressure hydrometallurgy
Pressure hydrometallurgy is nearly

hundred and fifty years old.

It is applied for leaching of ores or
concentrates and for the precipitation
of metals or oxides from leach
solutions.

 Equipment used
has undergone
tremendous
changes.
The first autoclave
used by Bayer was
a horizontal reactor
1 m diameter and
about 2 m long.

Laterite project in Madagascar 2010

5 Titanium-clad autoclaves, each 40 m long and 7 m diameter

Vladimir Nikolayevitch
Ipatieff (1867(1867-1952)
professor of chemistry
at the Imperial Military
College in Saint
Petersburg in 1900
started a series of
studies on numerous
hydrothermal
reactions under
pressure.

At about that time, also in

Saint Petersburg, Karl Josef
Bayer (1847(1847-1904) an
Austrian chemist working in
a chemical factory to
prepare aluminium
hydroxide for mordanting
textiles before dyeing,
studied in 1892 the leaching
of bauxite by NaOH at
170C and under pressure in
an autoclave to obtain
sodium aluminate solution
from which pure Al(OH)3
would be precipitated by
seeding.

 The process immediately displaced the

pyrometallurgical process of Le Chatelier

that was used at that time and became the
largest pressure leaching process in the
world.

In 1927, Friedrich
August
Henglein
(1893-1968)
in
Germany treated an
aqueous suspension
of ZnS at 180C with
O2 under 2000 kPa,
converting it within
into zinc sulfate.
The work was done
in connection with
purifying coke oven
gas from H2S.

ZnSO4 solution

H2S-Free gas
Reactor
Coke oven gas

Oxygen

ZnS slurry
Pressure Leaching

ZnS(s) + 2 O2(aq) ZnSO4(aq)

In 1946, the Chemical Construction

Corporation in New York City had some
problems in the removal of carbon
monoxide impurity from synthesis gas, a
mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen for
ammonia synthesis

 This problem was given to Felix

A. Schaufelberger (1921-2009)a
young graduate from the Federal
Institute of Technology in
Zurich, Switzerland who had
joined Stamford Research
Laboratories in Connecticut a
year before.
Towards the end of 1948,
Schaufelberger succeeded in
precipitating pure copper from
sulfate solution by reduction with
hydrogen in quantitative yield.
He had also prepared the first
samples of nickel and of cobalt
metal powder.

It was also during this

period that a new look at
the old work was
considered by Canadian
metallurgist Frank A.
Forward (1902-1972) at the
University of British
Columbia in Vancouver for
leaching a nickel-copper
ore.

 The nickel powder prepared by

Schaufelberger, led to adopting
this technology.

It was Vladimir N.
Mackiw (1923-2001)
who made the discovery
that copper could be
precipitated from the
leach solution as copper
sulfide prior to nickel
recovery, when the
solution was boiled at
atmospheric pressure,
due to the presence of
trithionate and
thiosulfate ions.

 This opened the way for direct nickel

reduction from purified leach solution.

A by-product of this process was (NH4)2SO4
which was marketed as a fertilizer.
The process has been successfully in
operation by Sherritt-Gordon since then,
using a large number of autoclaves, and
now used worldwide.

From 1960 to 2001 all Canadian nickel currency was

produced by this technology

 To

supply cobalt to the Korean War efforts

in 1950-53, the initial two projects at
Calera, Utah, and at Fredericktown,
Missouri, were rushed unduly without
adequate piloting of process equipment.
The Freeport Sulphur Company contracted
for the development of an acid pressure
leaching process for laterite of Moa Bay in
Cuba.

Nickel from laterites in Cuba

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RECENT ADVANCES
Treatment

of refractory

gold ores.
Treat of zinc sulfide
concentrates directly
without roasting.

PRESSURE HYDROMETALLURGY

LEACHING

PRECIPITATION
y

In absence of Oxygen

In Presence of Oxygen

By H2

Bauxite

Uranium oxides

Nickel

Kaolinite

Sulfides

Cobalt

Laterite

Disulfides

UO 2

Ilmenite

Selenides

Wolframite

Tellurides

By SO2
Copper

H2 S
Nickel
Cobalt

Scheelite
Arsenides
Antimondes

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Looking back .
and looking to the future ..

Pressure
hydrometallurgy
is the technology
of the future

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THANKS

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