Outotec

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NEW SOLUTIONS IN

HYDROMETALLURGY
Developing alternative process technology
is not just nice, but necessary

s demand for basic metals

grows, engineers and scientists are looking for new ways
to extract these elements from
ores. The easy stuff has already been
found and processed. One of the main
challenges of mining and minerals
processing companies is now the economical processing of low-grade ores,
says Steve Rogers, managing director
of the Parker Center for Integrated
Metallurgy Solutions (Perth, Western
Australia; www.parkercentre.com.au).
Rogers says other challenges include
water and energy use, and the increasingly stringent requirements regarding the environmental performance of
mining and processing activities.
Minerals processing companies are
looking at flowsheets that can use
poorer quality water, such as tailings
wastewater or saline-process source
waters, he says. For example, copper
has been traditionally obtained from
chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) the main
copper ore by smelting. Most copper is still recovered from chalcopyrite
ores by smelting. However, smelting is
energy-intensive and entails high capital costs and long construction times.
Smelters can also emit considerable
amounts of SO2 gas a main cause
of acid rain.
Therefore, one of todays main challenges is to develop commercially

viable chalcopyrite-leaching technologies and this is a key objective of

many mining and minerals processing companies.
Currently about 20% of world copper is produced from large-scale heap
leaching of low-grade copper oxide
ores followed by solvent extraction
(SX) and electrowinning (EW). A small
number of plants treat secondary copper sulfides via pressure leaching, followed by SX-EW.
To help meet the challenges of the
minerals industry, the Parker Center
undertakes research with the cooperation of CSIRO (Melbourne, Australia; www.csiro.au) and several universities. Its main projects include:
developing a viable heap bioleaching
process for treating low-grade chalcopyrite ores; controlling ferrihydrite
precipitation in the zinc and nickel
industries; and developing new technologies for the economic processing
of nickel laterite ores.

Tackling nickel laterite ores

Most nickel has been traditionally

obtained from nickel sulfide ores,
even though nickel laterite ores are
the most abundant. However, technical challenges have so far delayed
the exploitation of laterite ores. As
the reserves of sulfide ores dwindled,
companies have focused on developing

FIGURE 1. Outotecs HydroCopper process is undergoing comprehensive testing at this plant at

Pori, near Helsinki, Finland

technologies for the economical exploitation of laterite ore reserves.

The companies involved with minerals processing have responded vigorously to those challenges and have
developed many novel technologies, especially leaching technologies. Several
of those technologies have undergone
extensive testing and are now beginning commercial operation or are on
the verge of commercialization.
A novel atmospheric leaching process for copper concentrates, called
Galvanox, is offered by Bateman Engineering N.V. (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.bateman.com), which has
its engineering center in Johannesburg, South Africa. Galvanox is a galvanically-assisted atmospheric leaching of primary copper concentrates
originally developed by researchers
David Dixon and Alain Tshilombo of
the University of British Columbia,
Canada. Bateman has obtained a license from the university to implement the technology (for flowsheet,
see online version of this article).
Chalcopyrite is commonly associated with pyrite (FeS2). The enhancement of chalcopyrite leaching rate,
when in contact with pyrite, has been
attributed to galvanic interaction between chalcopyrite and pyrite.
Pyrite acts as the cathodic site for
oxygen and ferric ion reduction reac-

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM JULY 2011

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