Geological records of the Río Blanco deposit, in the ValparaísoRegion (Chile), suggest that copper recovery by rougher flotationis related to the style of mineral occurrence of sulfides and thedegree of supergene alteration. Using mineralogical criteria, fivedifferent geometallurgical units (UGM) for copper recovery havebeen defined to represent the entire deposit. This model issupported by more than 4,000 geometallurgical samples withinformation from drill core logging, chemical analysis,metallurgical tests and QEMSCAN~Rdata.In order to determine the influence of mineralization style incopper recovery, samples from all UGM were selected from asector of the deposit known as pilot block located in the DonLuis open pit. By analyzing 143 thin section samples, whichcompletely cover this area, it has been possible to identify thekey parameters associated with the style of mineralization thatcontrol copper recovery.Results show that the coarse
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