Pressure leaching of copper concentrate

Grzegorz Pietek, Zbigniew Szołomicki, Katarzyna Leszczyńska-Sejda. Mateusz Ciszewski

The focus of the article is to show results of hydrothermal processing of sulphide-type copper concentrate in a lab-scale pressure reactor. Investigation was carried out in the following ranges of the pressure process parameters: temperature 115 – 190 °C, total pressure 13 – 40 bar, Fe3+ addition 1 – 19.95 g/L, phases ratio S/L 0.1 – 0.25, leaching time 0.5 – 4 h. All tests were evaluated by analysing leach residue and pregnant leach solution compositions (Cu, Zn, Co, Fe content). Magnesium removal from the raw copper concentrate at ambient temperature by H2SO4aq addition, were also investigated. The following ranges of parameters: pH = 2 – 4.7, leaching time 0.5 – 2 h, phase ratios S/L 0.1 – 0.5 were chosen.