The demand for copper continues to rise with the increased standards of living enjoyed by the world's growing population. At the same time, we are faced with decreasing ore grades, increasing ore body complexity, cost of electrical energy, and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, it is becoming more important to accommodate these challenging ores, including both low grade sulphides and oxides, in an efficient manner. In this paper, a new low-energy process route for copper production that utilises synergies between hydro- and pyro-metallurgical processes is proposed. The process involves precipitating copper from a leach solution by pH adjustment. The controlled precipitation step separates copper from impurity elements and concentrates it in a solid phase. The precipitate is then added to a copper smelter or converter to supplement the standard sulphide feed. The individual processing steps and select potential applications of the process are described. Process mass and energy balancing indicates that by using this supplementary feed, copper production through a copper converter could be increased by up to 34% using existing excess energy.
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